The News

The following things have been annoying me:

• The main thing that pisses me off about John Key's comment ("We're not a country that's come about as a result of civil war or where there's been a lot of fighting internally, we're, we're a country which peacefully came together" ) is that the media have said that it is an insult to Maori. They have therefore interviewed a lot of Maori who have expressed views that show they are insulted. The problem is that I think Pakeha should be insulted too, and reporting it as an insult only to Maori is, well, racist.
• The Governor General recently replaced his old flag (adopted in 1937) with a new one because: "it was considered that the old flag lacked distinctive New Zealand elements and reflected an era before New Zealand became a sovereign and independent nation." Firstly: where the frig is our sense of history? Who cares if the old flag was spack - nobody even knows what the governor general's flag looks like anyway, and it's been around for seventy years. Secondly: to represent modern New Zealand we get - sheep, hay, hammers and some boats. Gee, what an awesome job of taking our identity into the 21st century.
• People whinging about Treaty settlements. This is the only way forward for New Zealand where we can hold our heads up. Affirmative action programmes that give scholarships or benefits to people based on race don't seem particularly effective for whatever reason. Treaty settlements allow past wrongs to be recognised and compensation to take a form that is specific to iwi, focuses on their land and gives them an iwi-wide basis to draw income and invest for the future. In a hundred years these settlements will be the reason New Zealand is a harmonious country.