Qatari515, I think you'll find that rule about family on duty trips came out in a circular about 2 months ago although I don't recall it mentioning crew directly but I guess it refers to all of us.
Swede basher - you are right standards are already difficult to maintain and getting worse with people like MF & PB (I'll abbreviate them this time!) seemingly taking a lot of what can loosely be termed as decisions. The whole thing is centred around the dwarf and whether he will change his style. I've been in the industry a lot time and I really cannot believe some of the things I've seen here...not innovative firsts like a lot of what EK did in the early days...purely uninformed, poor decisions based mostly on whims (I have firm evidence of this on numerous occasions). You might be interested to know theres no corporate strategy...not my opinion but actual fact.