Air New Zealand, Apples....

[MurrayD99]

Just to make it 100% clear, if any of you guys or your friends want to charter an Air New Zealand jet (or anything else they got in the hanger) to fly anywhere whatsoever, that's just fine by me. I'll stick with Qantas thanks. Yer want an apple?

Tasman war of words worsens

By TRACY WATKINS - The Dominion Post | Tuesday, 21 August 2007

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Trans-Tasman relations have nosedived, with both governments warning each other to butt out of their domestic affairs.

Debate on an 85-year-old dispute about apples, a senior Australian politician's visit to a strip club and Air New Zealand helping to fly Australian troops to Iraq have combined to create an icy chill.


Erebus article censor found at Air NZ By JOHN HENZELL - The Press | Tuesday, 21 August 2007

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An Air New Zealand computer was used to sanitise an online encyclopaedia article to make the airline look less culpable for its part in New Zealand's worst peacetime disaster.


An article about the 1979 Erebus crash on Wikipedia, an internet encyclopaedia able to be edited by users, was altered to state "pilots are divided to this day as to whether the responsibility ... should rest with the pilot or the flight planning department" over the deaths of 257 passengers and crew.
The alteration, which has since been deleted, was identified this month as coming from a computer using the Air New Zealand server.
An Air New Zealand spokeswoman said the company was investigating the allegation.
But Cabinet minister Jim Anderton said that, if true, the change was "outrageous (and) entirely erroneous". It was a case of the airline – now 80 per cent owned by the Government – trying to rewrite history to make itself look better.

[rrich]

He who controlls the past also controlls the future.

Or something like that... (George Orwell)

[Ashore]

History is written by those who won

[MurrayD99]

History is written by those who won

True - and Justice Mahon won the skirmish when he said it wasn't the pilots' fault...... This attempt to rewrite the record won't sell seats.

Anyway, what about the apples!

[bsrlee]

The apple thing is about 'Fire Blight' - an apparently common disease of Apple/pear trees in NZ, but absent here - until a certain NZ 'scientist' claimed to have found it here in one of the botanic gardens - right where he had visited a few months before. Prompt action by staff resulted in the diseased trees being removed, area sterilised etc & strangely enough, it hasn't been found anywhere else - I don't know if they are going to let him back into this country again.

I suspect this is also related to the unfortunate case a few years ago of Australian Vs Canadian salmon farmers - the Canadians wanted to loose, but had to put up a showing. Somehow they won, which has proven very inconvenient - their exports of fresh salmon to Australia are miniscule, but the court decision means that the US can flood the Canadian market with potentially diseased pork products, damaging the very successful Canadian pork industry.