Dear New Zealand
How’s it all going? For those speculating in property, the party must never be ending, for those renting, your life of misery continues unabated. Kia ora to you all.
Look I thought I’d just touch base over this flag business. The simple fact my dear sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind is that we need the debate for a new flag. Not a change of flag mind you, we need the debate.
There are so many things this land of the wrong uptight crowd need to be in total denial over, that a pointless debate on which flag to wave around is necessary so we can block out any focus on the issues that actually matter.
The disgusting fact of 250 000 children in poverty needs more now than ‘it’s the parents fault’ to dismiss it.
The reality of a massive methane release caused by human pollution creating a sudden climate change event needs to be ignored so that Government are never forced to act on our global emissions.
A property speculation bubble caused by free market lax regulation has to be ignored and allowing Auckland to sprawl all the way to Hamilton has to be promoted as the solution.
Inequality, poverty, TPPA, under funded social infrastructure, the ending of public broadcasting, mass surveillance lies, the incredibly high suicide rates, private prisons, our alcoholic culture, corporate welfare, Police abuses of power, abuses of political power, privatisation of housing and water and state assets – we need to be distracted from all these hard issues that challenge the 30 years of neoliberal myth making that your success is your private privilege while those who don’t succeed have only themselves to blame.
Trevor Mallard unkindly suggests the flag debate is a vanity project for the Prime Minister, but that’s only partly true. The sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind need this distraction as badly as the National Party Government do. We need to pretend there is no depression in NZ, we need to pretend that those who are poor choose to be poor, we need to be able to hop into our 4x4s and drive through leafy suburbs and pretend there are no issues that demand critical thought beyond what Mike Hosking, Paul Henry and the NZ Herald tell us.
NZ needs this 26 million dollar waste of money because we don’t want to focus on the actual issues that confront our country because that would require re-evaluating our own privilege.
In a consumer culture as shallow as the current Prime Minister’s soul, a flag debate is as intellectually bankrupt as we can hope for.
God defend NZ, because NZers won’t.
But Gareth Morgan believes a new symbol (flag) will bring us all the changes we want – feed the starving, house the poor, clear the motorways in Auckland, raise min. wage, create tons more jobs, provide educational equality, etc …
Unfortunately he’s been unable to tell me what has changed that means a new flag is required ‘right now’. He’s also of the belief that the flag change will only cost $26m. That’s just for the ref. The total cost to NZers will far exceed $50million.
You say @ Martyn.
” God defend NZ, because NZers won’t.”
Well, I do , and would . And there are many others who feel the same way thank you very much. That’s a bit if a wiffy logical fallacy Mr Bradbury, you should be careful how you write some of the things you write, as do we all I suppose.
The trick is to organise them/us into an army and storm our government buildings and take our parliament back . Isn’t it really that simple ? Sure there’d be a few weeks of the ‘ What the fuck now’s ? ‘ but I bet we’d muddle through.
Imagine our land without greedy Banksters bleeding us dry ? Imagine our lands back in our hands and us with an all areas pass to our many rich resourses ?
Imagine yankee doodle psycho jonky-stien and his cronies in a what was once SERCO prison ? We could have a new national holiday . The National Pelt Them With Shit day. Now, that’d be worthy of a new Flag.
Unlike them, we need a Leader and we don’t have one . That’s basically the problem. Who’s going to step up to the school yard bully and knock him on his arse ?
Totally Support Your Post Country Boy
Why don’t we save most of the $26 million by simply getting Mike Hosking to host a Seven Sharp design a flag competition. We know that those worthy hosts on that programme will pick a flag that reflects the views of everyday New Zealanders. I know what will win even before they start. It will be a blue flag but instead of the Union Jack in the left hand corner it will be the National Party logo and instead of the southern cross it will be a silhouette picture of John Key.
God defend NZ, because NZers won’t.
Right there.
The greastest enemy of Nu Zilland isn’t Australians. Or Americans. Or the French. Or Muslims or Asians.
It’s the people you meet everyday in the street.
NZer’s are the greatest enemy of NZ and their casual apathy is the greatest assest of NZinc.
Maybe NZinc should be rebranded as BetterLifeIndustries, or BLind for short?
Happy happy days
@deflatermouse – yes I do agree with you. I call the situation you raise, the enemy within.
Perhaps as well as a flag change, we can have a referendum to change the name of the country. Something that reflects the real New Zealand. Maybe something like Hobbitland, Disneyland, Keynasia, Apathetica.?
Centre-left writers who constantly criticise the public or who refer to them as “sleepy hobbits of muddle Nu Zilind” and suchlike remind me of the Brecht satirical poem when he suggests to the East German leaders that if they don’t like what “the people” think of communism, they should dissolve the people and elect another.
No doubt if the Greens/Internet Mana had won the election there would be massive support from them to change the flag, so why not swallow your pride and support it anyway, even if you don’t agree with everything else the government does?
A much better strategy is to engage in the flag debate and point out how many of the wrong directions in our society are related to deference to Britain [and now America] – as symbolised by the Union Jack in our national flag. We are still deferring by following Britain and the US into war in Iraq and in promoting the TPPA. Challenging that, including taking the Union Jack out of the flag, will be worth more than $29 million in the long run.
you’re right, we should totally replace the union jack … with old glory. i mean aren’t we part of the states now? were in the club right?
Not if John Key has anything to do with it.
The change of flag will not be in New Zealands interests but a move toward corporisation .
JK never does anything unless its in the interests of his cronies,and that will be as Martyn says a distraction from what is really happening thanks to Keys watch.
Keith Locke,if John Key wants to change the flag and is all for the war in Iraq and hes all for TPP, its John Keys deference to Britain and America that is the problem not the peoples.
The real BUBBLES we all need to be panicking about is the burp of methane the Arctic scientists are thinking could happen any minute. They are worried more about stopping that burp, so collectively as a ‘race’ we can buy time to control the CO2. A huge burp of methane will push us to near term mass extinction taking a decade or two. This has happened before so the scientists aren’t guessing, the Permian mass extinction that occurred 252 million years ago was related to METHANE!
This event may already be comparable to, or even exceed both the speed and intensity of the Permian mass extinction. The difference is this is human caused. This event is gaining speed in a non-linear fashion. Be afraid of the real bubble. Ironic that the greedy housing bubbles and Wall street bubbles will be nothing to the planets bubble it has in store which will take us out.
Also not reported on the pathetic ‘cooking frog news’ is that the Antarctic has had x2 unprecedented high temperatures of up to 63 f, 17c. I am listening right now to RNZ talking about drilling for oil in the Arctic we are dead as a Dodo.
fuck. drilling in the arctic? oh…fuck. on a lighter note sleepy new zealand would now be at the frontier of a new oil rush!. expect american warships back in our harbours soon. think of the jobs!
There is no need to change the flag, none. I’ll happily support diverting the $29m to the Sallies, Women’s Refuge or any other reputable charity.
I think you forgot the ever increasing national debt Martyn the last time I checked it was oh $80.000.000.000 +
…and rising every second, of every day while John Key and Bill English are in power @ Liberty Bell
@Liberty Bell, in another Blog article currently running right now, Keith Rankin points out that people confuse national debt (owed by the Government) with total debt which also includes the debts owed by individuals (mostly mortgages) and businesses. I think your figure is for Government debt only, which Keith Rankin says is still fairly moderate compared with most other western economies.
If you, or Keith Rankin can produce the total debt figures, I think they will make you wince. The question that is not asked about the Government debt is why the Government borrows from anyone except the Reserve Bank, which already produces cost free all of our notes and coinage.
Personally, I’m fine with the flag changing, I’m glad it’s finally being put to a referendum, and I have no problem with how the referendum is being done. I’d just rather it had happened under a Labour government, because it’s a little embarrassing to be seen to be agreeing with John Key on…well, anything, really.
However, I was in favour of changing the flag long before I even knew John Key existed, and my opinion on that issue is completely independent of who’s wearing the Prime Minister trousers at any given time.
If the question of a new flag followed a successful referendum on a Republic, I would see some point in that. John Key is really saying that in his world there will never be such a referendum.
On the official flag-changing website, standfor.co.nz, where they ask people what they stand for, you’re supposed to say all sorts of warm fuzzy things. But a lot of the comments are anti-change, either because they want to keep the present flag or because they say there are far more important things to spend the money on.
In one side of view, I disagree with our flag changing, because it may open the way for American takeover in creating our country as another American state, as has been done with Hawaii. It will open avenues to overwriting our laws to American standards of law. Our military bases will be taken over. TPPA will create further crippling situations to the people of our nation. Democracy, and all that democracy stands for will be gone.
In another view, there could very well be the advantage of New Zealand becoming independant of our monarchial system. We could create our very own identity as a country. We could be a self suffiently run country.
The big question remains, if New Zealand changes its flag, will we remain democratic?
NZ is hardly democratic now with Key as a one man band deciding everything.If Key wants to change the flag its for his own agenda. If he wants to stop being tied to Britain it must be an American want,not NZs.
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