> > New Zealand is its own country, yet NZ celebrates the birthday of another country's leader?
> >
> Heh. NZ, being an ex-british colony that didn't rebel and massacre our troops was allowed to keep all sorts of British holidays, and to keep the Queen as their head of state, so she's also (nominally) their leader.
>
> Ditto Canada, Australia, France (umm, no), and some other places.
>
> winter"The sun never sets"mute

Yes, the British monarch is still officially our head of state and is on the coins and things like that. We only became a country in 1840, and only stopped being a colony in the 1930s. Not a long history there.

We have a Governor General (the title of the monarch's official representative) here too, who I *think* is technically higher in rank than our Prime Minister, but I'm pretty sure that's mostly a ceremonial position. Certainly nobody here has the slightest feeling that the Queen has anything to do with running our country.

The most prominent holdover of it all is that the highest court of appeal for a New Zealander is still the Privy Council in England. Every now and then you read about some last-ditch attempt to take a legal case to the Privy Council after still getting the verdict you didn't want from the highest court in New Zealand.

I'm personally in favour of getting rid of the whole stupid connection. However, I *don't* agree with people who say we should also get a new flag so the evil imperialist Union Jack isn't messing up our nationhood. It's important to remember where you came from, too, and flags shouldn't be like advertising brands which get changed every time they start looking uncool. The current suggestion for a new flag is black with a silver fern on it, which is fine in itself as a symbol of NZ, but it's so so so so tied up with sports teams and commercial branding... ew. It would be like somebody suggesting the US flag should be replaced by the Nike swoosh.

Brunnen-"although being the only country in the world with a black flag would absolutely rule"G