Tino Rangatiratanga flag should be for all of us

Maori people are currently debating which flag, from a number of  options, should be adopted as a Maori flag to fly alongside the New Zealand flag on Waitangi Day. Apart from one design, they are  awful.

But the best of them is actually damn good and should be adopted as the flag for everyone in New Zealand.

Flags from which a 'Maori' flag is being chosen in the current debates. Top left: Flag of the Independent Tribes; top right: the Tino Rangatiratanga flag; bottom left: the current NZ national flag; bottom right: the Red Ensign.

The Flag of the Independent Tribes was first used in 1834 and even served as a kind of national flag until the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. It’s a ghastly bit of cobbling-together. Also offered as sacrificial victims in the Maori flag-choosing process are the current NZ national flag and the Red Ensign. They’re as likely to be chosen as Hone Harawira is to join the ACT Party.

Which leaves just one: the Maori Flag, aka the Tino Rangatiratanga flag. It’s a great flag – simple, stylish, flies well and, with its koru motif, recognisably ours. I’ve yet to find anyone who doesn’t like the design, even if some people wouldn’t want it because of separatist connotations fanned by Maori and Pakeha racists.

Let’s neutralise the separatist connotation by making it the flag for everyone.

If we make it everyone’s flag, it can still be a little bit separatist. By moving on from the Union Jack, it can symbolise our final separation from Britain. (To be followed, asap, by turfing the British monarch as our head of state, and ditching other remnants of colonial cringe.)

The Tino Rangatiratanga flag is much better than the fern motif flag being pushed by Lloyd Morrison and others at NZFlag.com. I’m sick and tired of NZ being represented internationally by black imagery. It must come across to people outside New Zealand as monochromatic, boring and negative. We need some colour. The Tino Rangatiratanga flag gives us colour, but retains enough black to keep the Darth Vader brigade happy.

Personally I’ve long wanted the Hundertwasser flag as our national flag. Indeed, I own a Hundertwasser flag and fly it in my office. But I’m realistic enough to concede it won’t get the nod now. The Tino Rangatiratanga flag is next best in my opinion, and I’d be more than happy to be represented by it at a future Olympic Games.

Though the NZFlag website mainly pushes its favoured design, it does present alternatives, including the other flags I’ve mentioned. Morrison also explains very well why we need a distinctive New Zealand flag. His heart’s in the right place, even if his flag is wrong.

Tom Scott in the Dominion-Post, 31 January 2005.

Rimutaka realignment ready to roll: Huzzah!

(Click to enlarge.)

This image, from today’s Dominion-Post, shows the coming realignment of the worst of the Rimutaka hill road – all on the Wellington side of the summit. Work starts later this month and completion can’t come soon enough for those of us who travel back and forth regularly, hoping we won’t meet big trucks on the corners.

It’s a follow-on from the realignment work completed in 2006 on the Te Marua to Kaitoke section of the road between Wellington and Wairarapa. There are bends on the Wairarapa side of the summit that would also benefit from a bulldozer, and I hope  they’re next on the list.

The terrain is such that it will never be an easy road. A road tunnel would transform the trip, but the cost would be so high that it would never get off the ground…well, in this case, under the ground. Legend has it that the Americans volunteered to dig a road tunnel during the Second World War, presumably to improve access to the Featherston Army Camp. Google was unable to confirm.

I just hope that if the road becomes substantially better, it doesn’t attract more logging trucks – in which case we’ll be back to square one again.

The Dominion-Post article is here.

Normality resumes – Burmese cat rules

We picked up our new kitten, Java, on Friday night and have spent an interesting weekend with him. There was the expected nervousness and hiding away from the world. But he’s largely come out of his shell and is revealing himself as a friendly, playful animal with a frequent, loud yowl. We’re hoping to hear much less from him when he settles down further. He likes having his tum rubbed – a required attribute. Other required attributes he gets a pass marks on are being inside the bed and playing fighty-bites. (Our immediate family knows what the latter means.) Leapies and head-butts are absent so far but hopefully they’ll emerge. He purrs OK by most cat standards, though not (yet anyway) at the drop of a hat like his predecessor, Bob. Like Bob, he has a taste for power cords and computer wires, so bitter apple lotion will be applied liberally when we get back to Wellington tonight.

It’s nice having a cat in the house again.

Update, 29 July: Java is well settled in and really feeling his oats. I’ve considered renaming him Frenetica, but that could backfire if he turns into an adult slob. But right now he’s quite mad – tears all over the place, playing most furiously. None of our previous Burmese cats have been this lively, but then previously we’ve had kids at home – and earlier Liz was a stay at home mum – to spend more time with them and tire them out. Now there’s no one there during the day and by the time we get home, Java is desperate for attention, fun and games. Yesterday he discovered a big Kirkaldies paper bag:

The world’s newspapers at my fingertips

I’ve discovered a fascinating new website. Well, fascinating for news junkies like myself… It’s the Washington-based Newseum, which collects front pages every day from many newspapers in many countries. Below is today’s link page, saying there are 574 front pages from 53 countries. It it were a weekday there would be more – 800 of the world’s newspapers submit their pages. They include several New Zealand newspapers.

Jumping-off point for today’s North American newspapers. Clicking on a yellow marker brings up a small version of the front page for that locality's newspaper, and it can be made bigger for easy readingy. ( Click to enlarge this image.)

There are similar maps for different regions of the world and newspapers can also be selected from lists and pages of thumbnails. They open up very fast and are moderately readable on the computer screen. However, clicking a button can load a newspaper in much higher resolution PDF form.

The website also has general information about the world of newspapers, and descriptions of the physical Newseum museum and display centre, which opened in April 2009.

Sunday Mail (Brisbane), Sunday Sun (Calgary), El Espectador (Bogota). Click to enlarge.

Gulf News (UAE), Tribune (Mesa, Arizona), Leon Milenio (Mexico). Click to enlarge.

A model sister

I accidentally came across this gem in the New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 23 June 1849, at the National Library’s marvellous Papers Past website. Just the thing for young women to send to their brothers to encourage their undying gratitude? I think not. But it’s interesting, and gives an insight into a way of life for young people that is so different to 21st century New Zealand that it could be from a another galaxy.