How much money is the Flag Consideration Panel paying for Jim Mora to keep talking about this boring and unpopular referendum?

2. How much money is the Flag Consideration Panel paying for Jim Mora
   to keep talking about this boring and unpopular referendum?
   The Panel, RNZ National, Wednesday 25 November 2015

   Part 1 of 2: The Pre-Panel (3:45 to 4 p.m.)
   Jim Mora, Andrew Clay, Peter Elliott, Zara Potts, Jesse Mulligan

   Three things particularly bothered me about this Pre-Panel:

   1. The fact that the first of today’s “Quick Questions” yet again concerned the flag referendum. I seriously think that the Flag Consideration Panel has paid some money to RNZ National to make sure it gets daily coverage during these discussions. Perhaps someone might like to put in an Official Information Act request.

   2. Far worse than Prof. Burrows and his ridiculous band of troughers, however, was the light-hearted and unconcerned way the Panelists discussed the banning of the burqa in the Swiss canton of Ticino.

   3. Worst of all, though, was the little item towards the end of this Pre-Panel. Zara Potts read out, in as neutral a tone as she could manage, that “a recent study out of ISRAEL shows that anxiety around threats of terrorism can actually wreak havoc with a person’s mental and physical health.” The idea of a terror study being carried out in Israel, a state which inflicts massive terror every day in the Occupied Territories and Gaza, is absurd, and an obscene distortion of the truth of the situation there. The fact that none of the other people even mentioned this absurdity tells you all you need to know about how serious they are, and also about their basic sense of right and wrong.

   Here are the “highlights”…..

   JIM MORA: Coming up: How terrorism makes us sicker. On the Panel after 4 o’clock, with Andrew and Peter, two very convivial conversationalists—
   ANDREW CLAY: [snort] Ha ha!
   PETER ELLIOTT: No pressure!
   MORA: The shooting down of the Russian jet, what to do about drunks, the upcoming seasonal event—-
   ANDREW CLAY: Ha ha ha ha!
   MORA: Norwegian wood, isn’t it good, taking yoga into prisons, and is NIWA looking for oil? So a lot of things to chat about with, ahhh, Andrew and Peter after four. One Quick Question: “I understand that the winner out of the five choices in the first flag referendum must achieve 50 percent of the total vote. So it may not just be a question of saying the one with the most votes is the winner unless one is streets ahead of all the others. Are you able to confirm this please? I have this ghastly feeling that the maths of this may be beyond the officials.”— Linda Wilkins of Petone.
   ANDREW CLAY: Ha ha ha ha!
   PETER ELLIOTT: Ha ha ha ha!
   MORA: I don’t know if the MATHS is beyond them Linda, it depends on whether you approve of the process. Here’s Professor Andrew Geddes on preferential voting, from Otago University’s Faculty of Law.
   ANDREW GEDDES: [He briefly explains how the process works and then finishes with….] You can rest assured the officials are more than capable of handling the maths associated with it.
   ZARA POTTS: Ha ha!
   MORA: Ha ha! Thank you, Andrew Geddes. …

   ………

   ZARA POTTS: Now while we’re talking about banning things, the Swiss canton of Ticino has just voted to ban the burqa. Anyone flouting this new law will be fined 10,000 francs, which is about 15,000 New Zealand dollars.
   MORA: This is just this canton, is it? ‘Cos I think the Swiss parliament rejected the idea of banning them.
   ZARA POTTS: Yeah it’s just one canton, sort of, ahhh, the Italian-speaking one, so it’s basically that one.

   ……

   JESSE MULLIGAN: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
   ANDREW CLAY: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
   PETER ELLIOTT: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
   ZARA POTTS: Now terrorism is certainly the topic that seems to be on everybody’s mind at the moment, and with Christmas coming up it seems that Americans in particular are feeling more jittery than usual. The anxiety has been fueled in part by the travel alert that came out yesterday, in which they said that no place in the world is safe, so it’s no wonder that they’re feeling a little bit anxious. Ahh, but a recent study out of ISRAEL shows that anxiety around threats of terrorism can actually wreak havoc with a person’s mental and physical health, and in some cases, uh, terror threats have been linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. So it basically showed that people can actually worry themselves sick, ahhh, through anxiety, and so what do you do to kind of, ahhh, not be anxious? And so what they were saying was tune out from the news, don’t watch the news. If you’re feeling particularly jittery, don’t watch the news and particularly those repeats where they just keep showing the same pictures again and again.
   ANDREW CLAY: But that’s sound advice for news, full stop. Because most news is news, you know, due to the fact that it’s bad.
   ZARA POTTS: That’s right. But I think people get caught in a pattern where they just keep watching it, and keep rewinding and watching the same pictures again and again. And they said don’t worry about flying, because the probability of a terrorist attack directly affecting YOU is quite low.
   MORA: I notice your voice got more soothing as you went along.
   ZARA POTTS: Did it? Ha ha ha ha!
   MORA: You can worry yourself sick about ANYTHING.
   ZARA POTTS: You can. The research on this is pretty good. They say it lowers your immune system so you’re more at risk from things like colds and flu as well as things like—-
   PETER ELLIOTT: I think that’s just higher stress generally isn’t it?
   ZARA POTTS: Well, anxiety, yeah. Anxiety and stress….

   …ad nauseam

   Worse—far worse—was to come, however. Professor Al Gillespie was on the way….

   End of Part 1.
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