I've turned my attention to Britain, recently.

Today, I found this really interesting little video interview where a British intellectual by the name of George Monbiot grills a member of parliament - Hazel Blears.

I think this is a very profoundly obvious illustration of how english speaking intellectuals act in a misguided manner. The sport that we who have many words engage in, is persuasion. We are strong-willed folks, who have these visions for how to make the world a better place, and we go about trying to persuade others to see things as we do. I think that's our biggest wrongdoing. We ourselves, of course, are enthusiastic about our ideas, and are trying to accomplish something really great. But we're going about it the wrong way... and I wonder if the way Hazel Blears approaches her work and her life embodies the true Britain. Is Britain a hen-pecked nation?

I can see what Monbiot is trying to point out, in the interview - his idea is that this is a woman who doesn't deserve to be in office, because she doesn't have any kind of independent judgement about matters. But to my sensibilities, it seems that he's being a real asshole.

Something I've written about before, is that I have been working on a community theatre production recently - Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" - and one thing I've seen is that our director has a very easy going, passive approach. His assistant director did most of the choreography. But it seems as if this passive approach really paid off. I don't think that directors who are domineering are effective. I've worked with a few of them. Because our director is passive, each member of the cast was given the freedom to develop their own character according to their own vision. And together we really produced an excellent show. We have extremely small audiences - mostly family and friends of the cast in a venue that sits hundreds. But people go out at the end of the night muttering about how professional a performance it was.

In the same manner - intellectuals in New Zealand also take a passive approach. There doesn't seem to be any persuasion at all in their public discourse - except when it comes to marketing goods and services through advertising. I was listening to a broadcast one day about a new form of military naval vessel which had been comissioned. And the interviewee started talking in light of her value judgements about the thing - she said they seem "snazzy" or something like that. But then she immediately realised that she had crossed an ethical line, and during the rest of the interview, she was very careful to be transparent and frank about the thing she was talking about.

Because of this ethic which journalists and intellectuals have in New Zealand - it appears to me that they, as a nation, come to more accurate conclusions by and large than the rest of english speaking world. And consequently, they are more progressive. They were the first nation to give women the right to vote, for example. They seem to stay somewhat ahead of the curve on these things.

And golly, reading some discussion boards where folks who are immigrating to New Zealand are talking about their move, and their new life - you see nothing but unapologetic enthusiasm.

Personally, in many ways, I really find a lot more food for thought in Canadian and British journalism. But I believe that we deep thinking folk might have a better niche in our societies if we keep our debate among ourselves - in internet forums, for instance. We should let journalism, on the other hand, be a thing which is transparent and frank - and does not seek to persuade or impose value judgements on the things it reports on.