UnNews:New Zealand keeps flag despite offer of Stars 'N' Bars
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| New Zealand keeps flag despite offer of Stars 'N' Bars | 
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25 March 2016
AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- New Zealanders have voted to keep their existing flag rather than adopt the "Stars 'N' Bars" recently discarded by the U.S. state of South Carolina. But Prime Minister John Key is facing a firestorm over the $26 million cost of the collective navel-gazing.
Kyle Lockwood designed a new flag for the state involving a silver leaf, though he ditched the star-and-crescent motif in his first edition. Mr Key ditched the Lockwood submission, and in fact all 10,000 contest entries, on finding out that states in the Southern United States were dropping the Civil War relic like hot potatoes, another state doing so almost every time that someone killed a Negro and claimed that the flag wound him up.
Mr Key, who has a hopped-up Chevy with a hood scoop on his front lawn, thought that it would be a "neat memento" if New Zealand adopted this orphan flag, and initiated the ruinous publicity campaign, which ended Thursday night as preliminary results showed that 57% of those voting want Mr Key to "do something else instead." One-third of New Zealand's registered voters showed the way by themselves doing something other than voting.
Asked whether the process had been worth $26 million, Mr Key said it had sparked an "enormous", healthy debate. It was so positive, he said, that he might start another debate "about nationhood" later this year, and find a way for it to cost even more. Perhaps New Zealand could vote on whether to petition for annexation by the Australian state of Tasmania, which is pretty near by. He added that his countrymen should "rally behind the flag that's been chosen by the majority, use it, wave it, be proud of it," which they could have done $26 million ago. "And celebrate that we've got an amazing country," if significantly poorer now.
Mr Key said he will keep the Stars 'N' Bars, which he bought at auction for a large portion of the $26 million, at his house, flying from the tail fins of the Chevy.
Sources[edit]
- Isaac Davison, Nicholas Jones, Catherine Gaffaney "John Key defends $26m flag vote". New Zealand Herald, March 25, 2016