Dominic George: Chance no one will be satisfied with flag

The limited choice of flags means people can't vote for the silver fern on black - our version of the Canadian maple leaf.

I'm' still the only person I know to have been kicked out of kindergarten. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances but I recall someone annoying me so I doused them in paintbrush water. That was apparently the last straw for the teaching staff who told my mother it may be best for all concerned if I took some time off education before starting school.

That suited me fine as most of my recollections of that place concerned an abundance of arts and crafts, which I couldn't stand. I have an aversion to crayons, colouring pencils, felt pens, paint and pastels. I hate pastels. For some reason, they all make me feel nauseous. I felt there was far too much stuffing around with "snips" and coloured paper and not enough time for playing on forts, climbing trees and having the odd scrap. I also loved reading but they only had rubbish books and most of the time you had to listen to overly enthusiastic teachers reading you stories you'd heard before. And there was always someone who'd fart on the mat and ruin it.

After that unceremonious exit from kindergarten, I found primary school to be only mildly better. It was a Catholic school run by a sadistic old bag of a principal who fell well short of the virtues the school purported to instil in its pupils. Still, at primary school, there's plenty of time to let off steam in the playground before you engage in classroom activities; things like bull-rush, breakdancing and WWF (now E) wrestling a good antidote to creating title pages for your projects and decorating your work with pointless borders.

At high school, I discovered the hitherto unknown concept of "wagging", so art class was something I wasn't really that familiar with. The point is my lack of ability in the visual arts, which extended to graphic design and ruling straight lines, deterred me from entering the Great NZ Flag Competition.

Nevertheless, it's been fascinating to watch this glorified colouring contest from a distance. No matter what your opinion of the Prime Minister, you'd have to agree he's never shown this much passion for anything since his brief love affair with cycling tracks.

Getting Richie McCaw on board was nothing short of political genius as national fervour is on the brink of overflowing just weeks out from the ABs' defence of the Rugby World Cup.

And while the PM's disciples, like West Coast local body politician Andy Thompson, like to make it a left/right issue, the truth is the real fascination lies in the skulduggery of the process. To be honest, I don't actually care that much if the flag is changed or not, but the fact that we choose an alternative before deciding whether or not we want to change the thing in the first place is so absurd you can't help but think you've missed something along the way.

But you haven't. The truth of the matter is it's been stacked in favour of changing the flag since the outset. The strings have been pulled by the government under the guise of democracy ever since the idea was first mooted. Add to that, the four designs, two of which are nothing more than patsies, are going to be in our faces for the next few months. You'll see those silver fern/southern cross flags so often you'll be convinced it's changed even before you go to the polls.

The problem is there'll be widespread discontent with whatever the final outcome is because so many people want a black flag with a silver fern as seen at sports games involving New Zealand - our version of the Canadian maple leaf. That would be fine by me, as I say I'm not that bothered. But that's clearly not going to be the case. Instead, you'll get a typically compromised outcome that won't really satisfy anybody and the whole thing, as Massey University Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey said to me on the Farming Show a few weeks ago, will be "a bit of fizzer".