Cracker: Stoopid
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The coffee on Air New Zealand is disgusting. I think it's probably instant.
What's with that? I suppose it's cheaper and easier than brewed, but it's vile. There's a point at which 'budget' becomes a synonym for 'cheap and nasty', and Air NZ have reached it.
Have a cup of tea instead.
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It's not about liability in case my phone gets lost. It's a CAA regulation that prohibits sending unaccompanied cellphones, unless they're processed as freight.
Ah, yes ... The Global Terror Threat. The multiple orgasm that never stops for these petty bureaucrats. If ever there is a request made it can be denied with a shrug, a look of pain ("Oh, I'd so like to do this but..."), and an explanation that due to new regulations it can't be done. Followed by a matey whispered aside: "9/11 y'know - since then we have to be soo careful".
Bullshit! Let me say what Damien can't say because he's on TV: "F@#k You!! You F@#kers"
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I must admit to being really annoyed by AirNZ's RyanAir take on turning snacks into a profit centre = I wish people would ignore them and just refuse
I've entertained making my own sandwiches and hawking them from the back rows in competition with the trolley
I think the coffee has always been instant, and vile - for 30 years at least (but back then all coffee was instant, and vile and we didn't know the difference)
I do travel too much and need a chance to vent, my current pet peeves are the bozo who took all the seats with back support out of the 777s (remember when they used to touts those) and replaced them with the new multimedia system (which regularly leaves you looking at a windows blue screen - for god sake guys refuse to pay for it until it works) - and the other bozo who took all the clocks out of the Auckland domestic terminal (try and set your phone after coming off an international flight)
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oops, there should be more exclamation marks after F@#kers
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I'm one of those petty bureaucrats.
Ask any of us off the record and we will tell you:
1. The airport security process is theater - it serves no significant purpose.
2. We'd love to stop doing it, but the US would do something stupid and disproportionate in response (like issue a travel advisory warning their citizens not to travel to NZ). And if you don't believe me, note that every year NZ gets put on a "child sex trafficking register" because some right wing nutters in Washington don't agree with our decision to legalise prostitution.We would also like to legalise all drugs and sell them from pharmacies cheaply top responsible adults, thereby eliminating 75% of crime in NZ, allowing us to focus on the serious stuff and halving the prison population.
We would like to introduce a flat tax rate of 23% (which would be fiscally neutral).
We would like to get rid of the give-way-to-the-right anomaly, thereby saving 40 New Zealanders a year from an early death.
We would like to mandate that we stop exporting 15% of our electricity via aluminium ingots, thereby fulfilling our Kyoto requirement overnight, and mandate that power companies buy back electricity from anyone who pumps it into the grid at the current wholesale rate, thereby neatly dealing with future demand.
But we can't do any of these things because you keep electing grey, unimaginative politicians and allowing the media to get away with the half-arsed reporting that completely fails to explore important issues, while simultaneously buying wimmins magazines and fretting about our inability to chase a funny shaped ball around a field.
Sorry, I feel better now. But it does get me down sometimes.
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merc,
Vote for Slarty!
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Wow. Vote Slarty for president. Great post
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The coffee on Air New Zealand is disgusting. I think it's probably instant.
Flying back from Nelson a couple of months ago on a Air New Zealand Dash 8, I saw the coffee being prepared, and indeed it involved a catering-size can of Nescafe and hot water.
What makes the Air New Zealand coffee so disappointing is that they now serve it in the same sort of paper cups that you'd expect to get a takeaway espresso coffee in. It sets up the expectation of a nice coffee, so the watery reality disappoints.
But if you want, you can bring your own coffee or tea bag and the flight attendantess will add hot water to it.
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Yes, slarty and the Sensible Technocratic Party!
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But we can't do any of these things because you keep electing grey, unimaginative politicians and allowing the media to get away with the half-arsed reporting that completely fails to explore important issues, while simultaneously buying wimmins magazines and fretting about our inability to chase a funny shaped ball around a field.
Yes, the lumpenproletariat are simply shocking nowadays. Can't get them to follow our smug edicts about how to live their lives at all! What's up with that? (Not that I don't agree with most of your ideas, slarty, you understand. I just don't think telling people off about their poor recreational choices really... works very well.)
(Oh, and I can also rant about the importance of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly to the formation of our national character, if you like. It was a great magazine, back in the day.)
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peeves are the bozo who took all the seats with back support out of the 777s
Worse, those bozos replaced them with seats whose armrest don't go right up. Lucky enough to get a row of seats to stretch out on? traveling with children? forget any chance of rest and comfort, you only paid for a small patch so that's all you get.
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Worse, those bozos replaced them with seats whose armrest don't go right up.
A guy I know (yeah, one of those) who works in aviation says that there is a secondary latch behind/underneath the pivot point that allows the armrests to go all the way up. I haven't 777'ed since I got that piece of advice, but it might be worth investigating next time you do.
slarty's good post
Always follow the money. These legislation/policy changes are generally nix'ed by the influence of the groups who stand to benefit from them NOT happening.
Tinfoil Helmet Firmly in Place
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merc,
Damn yo hat! If we astronauts don't have a window, then we just spam in a can...
The Right Stuff -
Re: the airline food and coffee:
When did it become so necessary to eat (and drink) while travelling anyway?
Most trips in this country are what, two hours, max? Three hours on the ferry would be about the longest.
You're not going starve in that time. You're not even going to get a rumble-tum, unless you're particularly badly organised.
Just have a meal and/or a coffee beforehand.
Slarty for Truth, Justice, and the NZ way....one other truth about air travel is that if they really cared about our safety the seats would face backwards. Better chance of surviving a ditching, apparantly.It looks to me that that thing they advise you to do - lean forward and place your head on the back of the seat in front - is just so you die more quickly, because your neck will snap on impact.
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<quote>is just so you die more quickly, because your neck will snap on impact.</quote<
And that lifejacket under your seat is filled with granite.
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We would like to get rid of the give-way-to-the-right anomaly, thereby saving 40 New Zealanders a year from an early death.
Really?
Having driven in many countries around the world I think the turning left give way rule is a pretty good idea. It throws a little more safety to cars performing the most dangerous maneuver (right turn across traffic flow) and takes a little power away from the vehicle performing the easiest maneuver(left turn), making the whole intersection thing a little more evenly balanced.
If anything the rest of the world should get in step with us. -
When did it become so necessary to eat (and drink) while travelling anyway?
I think it's cos a) otherwise even a 40-minute flight would be a bit boring without the distractiong of a cuppa, and b) there's the 1960s mystique of the jet age - even though air travel is now only slightly more glamorous than catching a bus, we still like reminders of the olden days, of martinis, San Tropez and trolly dollies.
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or do you mean the t junction rule. that one is confusing, what do you suggest as an alternative.
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Thanks Slarty, for confirming everything I thought I knew. I shall FW your post to my wife, who has conniptions every time we get near a Customs desk (such is my inability to not Fight The Power
The airport security process is theater - it serves no significant purpose.
No, it employs people who would otherwise be unemployed. And allows us to determine who will proudly wear the brown shirt - we'll need them to inform/torture fellow citizens when the Junta takes over
We'd love to stop doing it, but the US would do something stupid and disproportionate in response (like issue a travel advisory warning their citizens not to travel to NZ).
They went one better: don't implement these changes and we won't allow your planes to enter US airpsace
every year NZ gets put on a "child sex trafficking register" because some right wing nutters in Washington don't agree with our decision to legalise prostitution.
Yeah, but they were aided by local wing-nuts in the media who wrote stories about 12 year olds plying their trade in Papatoetoe (in the lead up to the final vote on the Prostitution Law Reform bill). Based on anecdotes, not facts. (Which is why I got het up earlier this week by the report that the AB loss led to an increase in domestic violence - another report based on anecdote)
We would like to mandate that we stop exporting 15% of our electricity via aluminium ingots, thereby fulfilling our Kyoto requirement overnight
Yes, in Brisbane recently I gazed upon the Comalco high rise and pondered how many of the floors had been paid for by NZ taxpayers. And didn't they threaten to quit NZ a few years back? And the Govt caved to their demands (for continued mega-cheap electricity) because they were fearful of losing local jobs? Wouldn't it have been cheaper to have found them new jobs?
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merc,
Timely, we just gave the US owned smelter a secret HUGE discount for electricity supply.
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Robyn wrote:
I think it's cos a) otherwise even a 40-minute flight would be a bit boring without the distractiong of a cuppa, and b) there's the 1960s mystique of the jet age - even though air travel is now only slightly more glamorous than catching a bus, we still like reminders of the olden days, of martinis, San Tropez and trolly dollies.
Yeah, but (a) is best dealt with by a book; (b) wasn't that a long way ago now? Even I'm too young for that image, and I'm in my mid 40s.
I see it on the Cook STrait Ferry as well - I swear half the passengers head straight for the cafe as soon as they get on board. There's not a huge amount of glamour attached to the Cook STrait Ferry, unless I've missed something, and that Warratahs song about Cruisin on the Interislander is the acme of sophistication...Actually I quite like the Warratahs, which shows just how uncool they are.
OK, the coffee's not bad on the Ferry these days (not great either, but better than in the air) - certainly better than it was on my first trip in 1982, when you got it from a machine, and the tea, coffee and hot chocolate all came out the same spout, so you had to hope the last person had the same drink you wanted.
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A guy I know (yeah, one of those) who works in aviation says that there is a secondary latch behind/underneath the pivot point that allows the armrests to go all the way up.
No way! How cheated and dumb do I now feel. You can't imagine how pleased I was with myself for having a row of empty seats... Then I had 13 hours battling those arm rests and all I needed to do was RTFM.
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when you got it from a machine
But I can assure you that that was a good step up from the coffee they served in the 60s & 70s on those ferries.
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RE: the security excuse
A couple of years ago I cycled over to Westland and stopped at Punakaiki. I was locking my bike outside the Department of Conservation kiosk when a uniformed DOC-Nazi leapt out and screamed at me (in upper case, like this): "OI YOU! TAKE THAT BLOODY BIKE AWAY -- RIGHT NOW!".
My bike, so he claimed (via the medium of shouting), was a security risk. Nothing was to be left outside the DOC kiosk because it might be the work of terrorists.
When I asked how a bicycle could possibly be a terrorist threat he said (and I quote his exact words from my diary): "You might have packed the bicycle frame with Semtex".
In his razor-sharp mind, nothing was more probable than international terrorists hack-sawing up a bicycle, packing the tubing with Semtex, welding the bicycle frame back together again, flying to New Zealand, taking their Semtex-packed bicycle off the plane, cycling 300 kilometres to a DOC kiosk in the middle of nowhere, locking the bicycle up, blowing the shit out of the kiosk, and then walking 300 kilometres back to Christchurch airport rubbing their hands with glee at the enormous terror-coup they'd inflicted upon Western civilization.
I defy anyone to come up with a stupider fear-of-terrorism situation than this.
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What's stupid DH is your post. I'll have you know that I know for a fact that the scenario you're describing is HAPPENING ALL THE TIME ACROSS NEW ZEALAND!!
The problem is that the MSM won't report it because the Government won't let them. They're scared it will harm our tourism. If it wasn't for the vigilance of Winston Peters and the SIS we'd all be speaking Al Qaidish now.
WAKE UP NZ - THE TERRORISTS ARE AMONG US!!
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