End of school year!

I remember your attitudes. I'm onto my third iPhone; don't worry, you get used to passively supporting child labour by purchasing a few.

Eh, all the other phones are probably just as bad in terms of child labour.
One of my old teachers was pretty big on human rights and he had an iPhone so...

There's only so much support you can give an issue. If you truly wanted no involvement in 'slave labour' or whatever you want to term it, you'd probably have to live in a cave, make your own clothes, and drink your own piss. Doesn't mean that it's right, but it's unfortunately one of the necessary evils we have to deal with.

Thanks, Obama.

I guess it was less of a problem when we made stuff in our countries, but, you know, comparative advantage n'all...

Or it was outsourced to our colonies

Yes, those were renowned for their excellent human rights.

Talking about the colonies, what's this flag change that I've been hearing about?

Is the potential replacement, as I would imagine you'd have seen if you saw any news article on the subject.
Personally, I think it's awful. The design is cluttered and doesn't flow well. The stars, particularly in red, don't match with the fern. The shade of blue also looks like the MSPaint default blue, which doesn't work on flags.

Basically that flag was a clear case of design by committee.
"Lets change the flag! Lets use a fern! That's what a lot of people think our symbol is, it's got sports and stuff. And we'll use black, that's our national colour right, because sports."
"But I don't want to change the flag. How about we put the old stars on it. The stars remind me of the old flag, which I like."
"I... guess we could do that."
and thus the blueblack mess was born.

It didn't help that 3 of the 5 options we were given in the referendum were ferns, the government effectively decided that there would be a fern on the proposed flag. Probably because they thought it would be good for the tourism industry, to support 'brand New Zealand'.

I don't think the country really got an opportunity to see any well designed simple flags over an extended period of time, particularly those that incorporate korus, stars or geometric arrangements.
Instead, the blueblack fern was popular with people (well, the most popular among the five options) because it's a lot like the current flag, and seemed like what a flag 'should be' to people who didn't think about it much.

Personally I hope we vote for no change, and we repeat the process in 10 or 20 years and pick something decent.

Yeah, when I saw the shortlist, it was very 'fern heavy'. It did seem a case of, like you say, trying to throw all the national identities onto a flag. I'm surprised a Kiwi didn't make an appearance to be honest.

From what I also know, it was to try and make the flag more distinguishable from Australia's. Half the flag is still essentially the same except for the different colours of the Southern Cross.

It's a bit disappointing more flags weren't considered; I think I read that two were designed by the same person, but then again, you'd probably get pieces of shit drawn by school kids as entries.

I like the old flag, but I'm probably biased.

Eh, I don't think the kiwi looks that good on a flag, and it's pretty difficult to stylise. It kinda just turns into a couple of weird blobs. I thought that the most successful designs, in my view, generally used a koru.

That's one excuse, but I'd say it's mainly to get rid of the British flag in the corner.

Well more were 'considered' in the shortlist of 40, there were some that were alright in that list. However the committee picked the 3 ferns and black stuff out of the 40. The committee which included precisely 0 design experts, for that matter.

There were some really good pieces of shit drawn by school kids.

Certainly superior to the referendum's winner, I feel.

Our current flag has problems, and eventually it needs to be replaced. However this referendum has been no solution.