Too bad “Sack the politicians that spent money on this” wasn’t an option. I have a feeling it would have won outright, with a majority of the votes.
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I love most of the intra-Russian krai and oblast flags, particularly Murmansk:
But a lot of them are interesting:
[there was one with a reindeer on it I always liked, but it’s not on this list, maybe it was Soviet and was discontinued.] Here it is, flag of Magadan:
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This. The flag change was a John Key vanity project and no way was I voting for “his” flag. It was rather obvious why he liked it, anyway:
Plus the referendum was just a way of keeping the TTP out of the news.
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New Zealand votes to keep
BritishEnglish, Irish and Scottish flag(s) in their flag
FTFY
Flags withing flags within flags…
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I laughed when I saw the “Black Jack” flag, but after a few minutes I actually kind of liked it.
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In 200 years the Martian colony New New Zealand will have a similar debate about this one.
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[quote=“daneel, post:5, topic:75588, full:true”]
When is Hawaii going to change their flag?[/quote]
We did. In addition to the Union Jack in the corner, it used to have 9 stripes in the order red-white-blue. Now it has 8 stripes in the order white-red-blue. If that’s not change you can believe in, I don’t know what is!
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Island nation of choice for the discerning émigré…
And my personal choice for the Flag of Earth…
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Hawaii’s Union Jack was more artistic appropriation than colonial imposition, and it’s been around for 200 years now. Plus, it’s vastly better than about 45 other states’ flags, like mine. Does anybody in Hawaii want to ditch it?
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Maybe they’ll start using the fern for sports events and the like. That would be pretty cool. Is a great design. Sucks to have a flag that most people have to look at for a while to identify as not belonging to the larger, more famous country.
i really liked the new design. can’t believe they decided to stay with the old design after all that, but change is hard.
I thought that I had seen all the shortlisted options, but I like the red peak one much better than anything that I remembered. I looks like a proper national flag, whereas the koru and fern frond options all looked like the product of a corporate logo designer. If I were a voter, I would have gone for the red peak option over the existing flag.
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[quote=“varghesemac, post:29, topic:75588, full:true”]
Does anybody in Hawaii want to ditch it?[/quote]
Some of the sovereignty groups do. There is some dispute over the flag’s origins, eg whether it was adopted as a sign of friendship with George III, whether it was imposed on Hawaii by a British admiral, or whether it was an attempt at appeasing conflicting US and British interests.
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Those spiral-like designs were not nautiloids, but rather the koru, or fern frond, design which is used copiously in Māori art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koru This is recognisable in the logo for Air New Zealand: http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/2/2f/Air_New_Zealand.svg/revision/latest?cb=20100513073511
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Red Peak was not in the original short list of 4 flags, but was added by the Prime Minister after a public upswelling of support.
I voted for Red Peak in the first round and would probably have voted for it in the second. The Koru and Silver Fern designs are complex emblems and not really suitable for a flag. Although the stylised koru is admittedly better than the fern.
But the other real issue is that even if a new flag had been chosen, it wouldn’t have been one able to unite NZ Māori and Pākehā under one flag. The Tino Rangatiratanga flag would still fly and there would still be arguments about precedence and respect … 
Much better for New Zealand to settle its Treaty issues once and for all, then select a flag we can all be proud of.
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Yes, Britain was more progressive than the US on Slavery, but it was only 30 years more progressive (if we take the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 and the Emancipation Proclamation as the right milestones).
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What is it with the southern cross it’s pretty prominent where I live and I’m not even in the southern hemisphere. There are also many former colonies of the Empire that don’t have the union jack in the top corner.
You are probably mostly looking out of the Milky Way and so are spoiled for choice in obvious, bright constellations. We look in and get a beautiful galactic centre (which is too difficult to stylise) but the constellations are all a bit Meh. With maybe the exception of the Southern Cross, which is itself not really much to write home about. But beggars can’t be choosers …
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Excuse me. The Australian flag is almost identical to the NZ one (the NZ one came first by several decades).
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