I don’t often read anything written by Heather Du Plessis-Allan, she kind of winds me up so I just don’t click on her articles. But her latest ‘Premium’ article in ‘A newspaper’ piqued my interest.
I had been thinking about doing a post about the Woman Who Isn’t Maori that Christie wrote about this week. You may recall the story was about a woman who objected to the constant addition of Maori words and phrases into Air New Zealand’s correspondence. She felt that it was all getting beyond a joke and chose to let Air NZ know of her feelings.
Well as I flew up to the big smoke on Saturday for The BFD Christmas get together, (on Air New Zealand as I was keen to actually arrive), I had been jotting down a few of the seemingly ridiculous Maori translations that are included in their quiz that is designed to keep you entertained while waiting for your cup of tea and Cookietime.
Who knew that Maori had a word for Italian Football? (Poiwhana Iteria apparently!).
Then I was bored and having finished my Top Gear magazine, started flicking through the Air New Zealand in-flight magazine enticingly entitled ‘Kia Ora’ (Gidday), where I found articles extolling some of Air New Zealand’s more woke virtues such as saving the planet from evil climates, women are awesome so can do anything, and their various programs encouraging diversity and inclusion wanting not just fat, tattooed, alphabet people with disabilities, but lots of Te Reo (Maori) speakers as well.
It seems that Air NZ is on a massive kick to Maori up their staff and have instigated quite a number of avenues for their people to get their culture on. Hell they even won the inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Team Award at the 2019 International Air Transport Association AGM recently! (That one’s going straight to the pool room!)
So I can understand why the ‘Woman Who Isn’t Maori’ decided to make herself heard, but her reasons are for her to explain, not for HDPA to tell her how she feels.
Heather’s story really is a bit of a big fat nothing and as it is ‘Premium’ you have to have stumped up your own hard-earned to be able to view it, (or just find out how to beat their paywall which really is ridiculously easy although I’m not going to tell you in case they figure it out and close that particularly loopy-hole).
Anyway, here is a short compilation of some of the silly presumptions that Heather trots out…
She knows you don’t have to be Maori to understand the phrase “kia ora”.
…she should see my third-year class. It’d blow her mind.
Goes without saying she wouldn’t be surprised …
She’d probably be expecting…
She’d probably also be expecting…
But, she might be surprised to…
Which, as I said, would blow the mind of the ‘Woman Who Isn’t Maori.’
…if the ‘Woman Who Isn’t Maori’ met them in a pub, she would probably think…
She’d get a surprise.
I’m going to hazard a guess that she’s probably feeling a bit raw…
I’d bet someone at some stage has told her off…
I can understand why that would rub her up the wrong way.
She’s feeling under siege.
Geeze that’s very presumptuous of Heather to think she knows how the woman feels, thinks and will react. It’s almost as if she was just trying to make up an interesting story using her own projected feelings. If not just Straw-Manning the argument of course.
Maybe HDPA was just running a little late and had to whack something out at the last minute, but you know, she’s one of our elite, premium, trained and skilled journos, so there’s a good reader, please just sit back and let her tell you what to think, and how to feel.
Ps. We will never tell you how you feel. We do it the other way around, we prefer to hear how you feel about our stories. Remember to stick to the rules when commenting though as I can reveal that all the Mods were presented with brand new, engraved ban hammers at the Christmas do, although I’m not sure how Nige got his home as he only had carry-on and I’m pretty sure you’re still not allowed to take hammers onto Air New Zealand planes. Although I’m sure HDPA will be able to sniff out a loophole easy enough.
