No Problems?
For some reason the people running for re-election come up with strange proposals for non-problems.
In Canada you have this: Stephen Harper vows to outlaw travel to ‘places that are ground zero for terrorist activity’. Every government issues travel warnings designating places that are not considered safe for their nationals, so why waste time and money criminalizing people who are stupid enough to go despite the warnings? All this would do is put the burden of proof on individuals, i.e. people would have to prove they weren’t terrorists, rather than the government proving they were.
In New Zealand when he was running for re-election, John Key, brought up changing the country’s flag. Well, he is doing it, and these are the candidates. This is expensive. This takes a lot of time and resources to organized all of the elections that are anticipated. It is hard to believe that New Zealand doesn’t have better uses for the funds that will be spent on this.
11 comments
Sadly, none of these New Zealand flag designs made the cut.
I like the Kiwi Terminator one best 😉 . But anyhow, the point seems to be that the New Zealand flag looks too much like the Australian flag and there’s nothing a Kiwi hates worse than to be confused with an Aussie. For one thing, it might confuse the sheep 😉 .
Is it just me, or do some of these flags look a little froo-froo to be the representative flag of a country? Look more like an advertising banner to me.
Changing the subject, I just saw video of a newly discovered deep sea creature. Pastafarians now may have a new mascot, and, boy, is it oogly.
Pastafarian creature
The selected designs reflect the silver fern, the koru [the wave/fiddlehead symbol], and/or the Southern Cross constellation. Their national sports teams are called the All Blacks, and in addition to wearing black kit/uniforms they have a black flag with a silver fern on it. The koru is a traditional Maori design. The Southern Cross is a symbol New Zealand shares with Australia and represents the position of both in the southern hemisphere. New Zealand uses four red, five-pointed stars, while Australia uses four white, seven-pointed stars, and one smaller white five-pointed star to represent the constellation.
Juanita, that thing does resemble an overcooked nest of angelhair 🙂
Here is an animated GIF that makes it clear what the differences are between the current flag of New Zealand and the Australian flag.
I do have to say that at a distance, when all you can see is the blue field and the jack in the corner, they can be hard to tell apart. So I can see why New Zealand might want a new flag. Especially given the confusion to sheep issue if an Aussie is mistaken for a Kiwi or vice-versa. 😉
Actually, John Key wants a new flag to do something that might be remembered.
The Gif doesn’t mention that the New Zealand blue is actually slightly lighter than Australia’s.
My complaint with the submitted designs is that most of them will be a pain in the butt to manufacture. So is the US flag for that matter, but at least you can sew together rectangular strips of red and white cloth and a blue square of cloth then sew on the stars. But cloth comes in rectangular bolts, not in curves, so the flags that have two colors separated by curves will be ridiculously wasteful to manufacture. None of which matters for small printed flags, but the big flags will be a pain.
Probably the cleanest simplest easiest to manufacture design is the blue field with the Southern Cross on it, no jack. Which is why it probably won’t get chosen.
So… is he a “junk food John Key”?
And the little jack… does it sit in the corner?
They already make a lot of fern flags, and with the current CAM systems, assembling flags with curves is not a big deal. If you look at all of the steps in producing the current flag with the Union Jack as the canton, it isn’t as simple as it may appear.
Well, Steve, he does have a lack of real substance 🙂
Nursery rhymes, Steve ? 🙂
Bryan, anyone who has long since consciously decided to write doggerel for public consumption has already given up any notions of pride that would prevent using whatever material comes to hand… 🙂
I knew a fellow in high school whose family name was “Jahnke.” They pronounced it just like “junkie,” and he suffered no end of razzing about it, mostly without complaint. I always sympathized, but that didn’t prevent me from participating in the razzing. Hey, “Bates” is itself no easy family name for an adolescent to bear…
Steve, you are cutting the GOP out of your audience using nursery rhymes – they don’t understand them.
There is no ‘safe’ name for an adolescent. Most societies send them out on ‘manhood’ quests in hopes that they won’t return 👿