A few years ago, I was emailling a mate who unfortunately was working in ACC (the safety nazis, not the Auckland City Circus, er, Council). An entirely innocuous email was bounced back from the Mailmarshall. I carefully scanned the email looking for un-PC thoughts and rude words to no avail. I sent it again. It bounced back. I then tried sending the email with one word deleted at a time to find out what I had done to offend. The offending phrase was " bar cum restaurant".
Cum was banned. Cum was wrong. Even it you were talking about summa or magna cum laude, you were wrong. I could understand it somewhat. The ACC is a government entity and is meant to be as culturally neutered as possible. That is just one of the many reasons people cite when they say to me they'll never work for a government department.
It was an even greater shock when I sent a copy of Zen State's post on religious shit to a mate at the BNZ, to help cheer him up through a mundane Monday and get this:
Message blocked by Bank of New Zealand due to inappropriate contentYou wunch of bankers. You censorious controlling know-nothings. What have we stooped to when we can't talk shit? You do not deserve the name Bank of New Zealand.
The content of your email sent at Mon Mar 13 ****** 2006 Subject:"[Fwd: Religious shit]" has meant that it has been blocked by Bank of New Zealand content filters and will not be delivered to *********. You may wish to revise the content of your message. If you have any questions or comments please contact Bank of New Zealand Helpdesk by phoning 0800 ASK BNZ (0800 275 269)
There. That's much better.
