Legal Beagle: The flag referendum: complicating your decision
106 Responses
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I'd say typography is maybe 25% "science" (around measurable stuff like usability) and the rest "art".
Essentially, the "typography community" is a "guild" that has developed a set of rules or schema as to what is regarded as "correct". This schema is akin to the laws of rugby, chess or Mornington Crescent - they are internally consistent and testable, but there is no real empirical foundation for them.
Of course, because the population are conditioned to accept these rules, we will tend to subconsciously favour compliant styles (and you only have to walk into a dollar store to see how non-compliance is subconsciously tagged as cheap and nasty - while presumably the packaging designers, coming from a different culture, consider their work attractive and professional).
See also the fetishisation of Greek and Roman culture by the British education upper classes, including attempts to apply Latin grammar to the English language.
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By not just giving the job to a team of professionals and presenting the result as a fait accompli, the business necessarily becomes amatuer and political. The referendum should have asked if there was a desire for flag change and the threshold should have been really high 75% or more for change. Then passed on to experts, what the flag looks like is actually irrelevant, it is what it symbolises that matters. The flag is supposed to represent all New Zealanders. Not just a majority of New Zealanders.
The biggest risk with the ‘new’ flag is that if voted in, a very large minority will feel left out. Bad flag. Being asked to swear allegiance to a symbol you don’t want is a fundamental of fascism.
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Being asked to swear allegiance is a fundamental of fascism.
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Johnny Canuck, in reply to
Being asked to swear allegiance to a symbol you don’t want is a fundamental of fascism.
New Zealanders aren't asked (and don't have the opportunity) to swear allegiance to the flag.
Many (new citizens, MPs, police officers, military personnel, judges ... and in theory teachers) are required to swear allegiance to a protestant monarch and his/her heirs and successors (presumably for eternity - even if they turn out to be frightful fascists).
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Next Wednesday TV2 screens the episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon Cooper tells us to vote for a new flag.
Since far more people will see this than an election day tweet, we can look forward to Jim Parsons getting a visit from the NZ police.
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linger, in reply to
akin to the laws of [...] Mornington Crescent – [...] internally consistent and testable,
You've clearly never played Mornington Crescent.
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william blake, in reply to
New Zealanders aren’t asked (and don’t have the opportunity) to swear allegiance to the flag.
Isn't that what the referendum is demanding, or meh not so much for you?
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linger, in reply to
Nah. We really don't do that. Swear at the flag, maybe.
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Jeremy Andrew, in reply to
I'm pretty sure the wording of the referendum isn't "Which flag do you choose to bow down and abase yourself before". Even the FB lunatic fringe haven't raised that one yet.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
You obviously don't understand the rules
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linger, in reply to
Hey, if you’ve understood the rules, you haven’t played it properly :-P
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william blake, in reply to
It's also not a colouring in competition.
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West Finchley
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I'd imagine there would be new naval and merchant ensigns after the fashion of Canada's. I don't think it wouldn't need legislation (at least for the Naval ensign), just a general order.
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Not online yet so far as I can see, but John Roughan seems to have changed his mind. He really is agonising over this.
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Alfie, in reply to
Not online yet so far as I can see...
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You know, if I were Andrew Little, the week after Key's flag humiliation I would announce a policy of a move to a Republic with a new flag, the required legislation to be triggered by the death of the Queen.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
but John Roughan seems to have changed his mind. He really is agonising over this.
He is still all over the place...
The thing about good design is it's like a good waiter (and cooks) - you should never really be aware of them, as they just unobtrusively do what needs to be done.
Same as typography is a craft that enables comprehension otherwise it's just making pretty patterns, not communicating.
IMHO
It's about the content not the process. -
Chris Waugh, in reply to
a policy of a move to a Republic with a new flag
But only after a long, thorough, and properly consultative process in which all the issues, especially the place of the Treaty in the new republic, are properly thrashed out and the best possible new constitution drawn up, then it all put back to the public in a properly organised referendum, perhaps requiring some sort of super majority to pass.
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Matthew Hooton, in reply to
But only after a long, thorough, and properly consultative process in which all the issues, especially the place of the Treaty in the new republic, are properly thrashed out and the best possible new constitution drawn up, then it all put back to the public in a properly organised referendum, perhaps requiring some sort of super majority to pass.
What you really mean as you don't ever want there to be a republic. The process you suggest is not realistic in a messy pluralistic society. Has any new republic come about the way you suggest?
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Matthew Hooton, in reply to
giving the job to a team of professionals and presenting the result as a fait accompli,
You're aware we're living in a post-Somme/ post-Gallipoli political environment? It has been quite a number of decades since people have been happy to leave decisions to the experts, especially questions of national identity. Decisions which are left entirely to the experts (e.g., Official Cash Rate, which drugs to buy) are quite rare.
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Brickley Paiste, in reply to
Couldn't agree more. I didn't vote in the first flag thingy and won't be voting in this one. I do plan however to join the orgiastic book burning that follows the announcement. Nationalismo o muerte!
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
It has been quite a number of decades since people have been happy to leave decisions to the experts, especially questions of national identity. Decisions which are left entirely to the experts (e.g., Official Cash Rate, which drugs to buy) are quite rare.
Something about your comment suggests that you haven't spent a lot of time in post-quake Canterbury. BTW no-one appears to have tapped the hapless Roger Sutton to add his bit to the pro-change BS-fest. Bet it's been thought of, though.
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izogi, in reply to
He really is agonising over this.
It seems like a very trivial thing to agonise over in the context of everything that our nation's columnists could be writing about. But that's been this entire circus since its beginning.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Canvassing opinion...
But that’s been this entire circus since its beginning.
Though it is a 'four star' circus and not a '3 ring' one...
and that is the finest swamp kauri sawdust on the tent floor!
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