Fleg

[morepork]

Thank Christ.

I just got back from Gnu Zulland a week ago (saw the Bloos go down in Chch) and the Tea Towel branding effort (i.e. the big sell-off) was a sight to behold.

Not happy about the state of some of my rivers either.

[cashead]

The whole thing was a confused mess. It's hard to pick where it was doomed, so I'll just list why it was fucking stupid from the get-go:

1. The entire thing was drawn into partisan lines, with the National Party basically steamrolling over all others and pushing through with the process, rather than trying to make it a genuine cross-party effort. More on this later.

2. The organisers failed to articulately and coherently explain why there was a need for a change in the flag, offering little more than weaksauce bullshit reasons like "they done got one," or "it's time for a change!" while failing spectacularly to address the inevitable respective responses of "so?" and "why?"

3. By failing to articulate a coherent reason why there needed to be a change, it created a reason void which was promptly filled with "legacy project for Key." This inevitably led to observations like "if this is meant to be his legacy, it shows how little, if anything, this government actually accomplished when not plagiarising and watering down opposition policy." This will be revisited later.

4. John Key going FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN FERN all the time and the abundance of flags with ferns (including 2 of the 4 originally selected for the first referendum) and the admission by the selection committee that they were influenced by John Key muttering "fern" all the time influenced them meant we got boring, shitty designs. I mean, look at this shit:




5. The selection committee, or "flag consideration panel," was dominated by lawyers, businessmen (one of which was the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi NZ), politicians and athletes. Only 2 of the 12 had anything even resembling experience or knowledge relating to vexillology. In fact, there wasn't a single actual creative or vexillologist in the consideration panel (if you're about to say "but what about Julie Christie?" then fuck off. Like, what the hell was she even doing there to begin with?). If I wanted to know about rugby, yeah, I'd ask noted rugbologist Brian Lochore, and if I wanted to know about throwing things very, very far, I'd ask noted former pro-thing thrower Beatrice Faumuina. But what the hell do they know about flags?

6. The public didn't, or refused, to engage with the process when the government solicited public designs, with a vague, incoherent and confused campaign about "what the flag means," complete with a farcical travelling discussion panel road show where no one attended, with people basically shouting at empty rooms. The Lazar Kiwi design sums this up nicely - the public saw right through the entire process as a farce, and took to mocking it openly.

7. The designs that were unveiled were deeply stupid, with two lazy-as-balls Lockwood designs that were obvious palette swaps, hypnoflag and a shittily-drawn silver fern version of those aliens from that Star Trek episode that were half black and half white. The discontent manifested itself as the Red Peak campaign, which gathered an embarrassing (for the consideration panel) amount of momentum, largely due to the fact that unlike the pieces of shit on offer, it actually had some thought and meaning put into it, and actually looked like a flag instead of shitty corporate logos or old Black Caps shirts.

8. Lockwood's blue-and-black fern design won the first round, quashing any further significant interest in a flag change, because fuck that noise. People also noticed that it was basically a silver fern and a black corner pasted on to the existing NZ flag over the Union Jack, which led to an embarrassingly hurried hue-change.



9. The timing of it coincided with swelling ill-will and frustration with the government, that had already hit MediaWorks (who own TV3 and Four) hard (and guess who Julie Christie, from the flag consideration, panel works for?), along with public resentment and anger over the TPPA process, and had seen Key get booed out of the venue at successive public appearances, scaring him away from the Waitangi Day ceremonies at Te Tii Waitangi. We also got to see Steven Joyce get a dildo thrown at him, because lol. Key would deny that it was about himself, but he had also made himself so intimate to the process, that he might as well have been humping the flag at public engagements, with the silver fern part wrapped around his dick.

10. The partisan nature of the process, the shittiness of it where it was clear from word go that Key was trying to rig the game for his preferred inane design, the failure and refusal to engage with the public when it actually mattered, and that it ended up being about being the NZ flag v. John Key's flag basically made what could have been a robust discussion about national identity into an arduous and costly farce, a deserved fat lip on the government's face, and frustration as we ponder what that $26million could have been better spent on (answer: literally fucking anything else).

So if someone said "sum all this up in one image:"



At the risk of making this an even more partisan discussion, the closing statement in opposition leader Andrew Little's editorial in the Herald couldn't have put it better.

I do not blame Mr Key for looking into the issue of the flag. I do blame him for not taking 'no' for an answer. His pet project has cost New Zealand $26 million - money we could have spent on doctors, teachers, police, healthy homes.

Quite fucking right, Andrew.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news ... d=11611452

[canta_brian]

And then we add a fern or a koru or whatever. But make sure everyone can read the for sale bit.

[Lizard]

Yep. Basically that.

FlaggyMcFlagface.

When we become a republic I hope the lesson is learned and we just get a panel of vexillologists to design an actual flag. Or go for Red Peak, or just delete the Union Flag and centre the Southern Cross.

[morepork]

And then we add a fern or a koru or whatever. But make sure everyone can read the for sale bit.

That about sums it up. An entire country prostituted to wealthy foreigners for cheap consumption. Shameless pig-ignorant selfish thundercunts.

[UGagain]

In a Land of Plenty

[morepork]

In a Land of Plenty

This is excellent. Thank you.

[UGagain]

In a Land of Plenty

This is excellent. Thank you.

You're welcome. It should be mandatory watching for everyone in NZ. Especially the Labour Party and the Greens.

[morepork]

I'd go further and put in the school curriculum. The bit about defining the lowest possible benefit rate based on subsistence nutrition is frightening.

[UGagain]

I'd go further and put in the school curriculum. The bit about defining the lowest possible benefit rate based on subsistence nutrition is frightening.

The Treasury and the Reserve Bank are full of people like her.The economics profession has a high rate of sociopaths and very low rates of empathy and ethics.

Most of them are just well trained idiots, but some are truly evil.

[jared_7]

In a Land of Plenty

Cheers for that.

[rowan]

All I know is my whanau finds the Union Jack as insulting as African-Americans find the Confederate flag.

[UGagain]

All I know is my whanau finds the Union Jack as insulting as African-Americans find the Confederate flag.

On a scale of 1 to 10 how insulting is that, dude?

[UGagain]

In a Land of Plenty

Cheers for that.

My pleasure.

[canta_brian]

In a Land of Plenty

Another cheers

[J Dory]

In a Land of Plenty

This is excellent. Thank you.

It is good. Thanks UG.

[Mr Mwenda]

In a Land of Plenty

Watching this, thanks. Very depressing in its familiarity - the unbinding of another society documented in 80s video colour. I didn't realise that the NZ's labour party leadership sold its soul before the UK one. Usch.

[Mr Mwenda]

Finished this. Definitely some psychopaths on display there. Chilling.

[UGagain]

In a Land of Plenty

Watching this, thanks. Very depressing in its familiarity - the unbinding of another society documented in 80s video colour. I didn't realise that the NZ's labour party leadership sold its soul before the UK one. Usch.

Dennis Healy. Dec. 27th, 1975.

( Healey was asked whether there was a need to “curb the vast wage increases now being sought in the nationalised industries”)

I have set those out in detail in various statements … I must, however, remind the hon. Gentleman of one fact, which, since his right hon. and learned Friend referred yesterday to my speech at the Mansion House, may be worth stating again. I think that there is now general agreement on both sides of the House that the major cause of the inflation now racking Britain is the excessive increase in the money supply which took place in the last year of the previous Conservative Government … I am sure that the Leader of the Opposition will now concur, although she was a member of the Government who were responsible for that large increase in the money supply.

Monetarism was well entrenched in the UK Labour leadership before Thatcher came along.

[morepork]

Sooooooo...seems the Fleg effort was part of a bigger thing after all. A logo for flogging off blind trusts to wealthy foreigners. Have we really been so asleep at the wheel that Key has done another Celtic Tiger on us? Jesus, this will get ugly...

[UGagain]

Sooooooo...seems the Fleg effort was part of a bigger thing after all. A logo for flogging off blind trusts to wealthy foreigners. Have we really been so asleep at the wheel that Key has done another Celtic Tiger on us? Jesus, this will get ugly...

Eh?

[morepork]

Sorry. Referring to Key's derivatives jollies in Ireland and his free market slash and burn mantra (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=10336608).

lockstockandtwosmokingbarrelscharlesgettherifleout.jpg

[UGagain]

Sorry. Referring to Key's derivatives jollies in Ireland and his free market slash and burn mantra (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=10336608).

lockstockandtwosmokingbarrelscharlesgettherifleout.jpg

I hate Fran O'Sullivan almost as much as I hate John Key.

[cashead]

Sorry. Referring to Key's derivatives jollies in Ireland and his free market slash and burn mantra (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=10336608).

lockstockandtwosmokingbarrelscharlesgettherifleout.jpg

I hate Fran O'Sullivan almost as much as I hate John Key.

So where does Larry Williams rate?

(pro-tip, have a bucket ready for when you read this.)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11617973

[UGagain]

Sorry. Referring to Key's derivatives jollies in Ireland and his free market slash and burn mantra (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news ... d=10336608).

lockstockandtwosmokingbarrelscharlesgettherifleout.jpg

I hate Fran O'Sullivan almost as much as I hate John Key.

So where does Larry Williams rate?

(pro-tip, have a bucket ready for when you read this.)

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/artic ... d=11617973

I don't read that sort of stuff. I haven't read any local press in years and I don't watch TV. It's all neoliberal nonsense/corporate propaganda.