Answer The Question!

Hooray, says I, for New Zealand TV. If you want my full, unvarnished opinion I'd have to say it was shit - the very first time I turned on a television in New Zealand I was confronted by Jack Duckworth's glum, pug like visage, staring at me across the oceans from the snug of the Rover's Return - but with one little silver lining, namely their news, which is great. News reportage is New Zealand is an object lesson in how to make a very -a veeeeeeerrrry - little go an extremely long way. Since life in New Zealand is largely free of the wars, terrorism, disease and government corruption that is such a feature of life in other parts of the world the hard working news hounds of the land have to extract the maximum amount of dramatic news coverage from the bare minimum of interesting events.

Take today, for example; I watched the New Zealand Minister for Education (possibly. I think) get comprehensively savaged by a Kiwi Jeremy Paxman, a verbal mauling that ended with a glorious ten to fifteen second shot of the minister struck dumb in front of the camera - sweating, shaking, jowls a-tremble - and completely unable to answer the question put to him. The director must have been loving it, and Kiwi Paxman almost definitely had a boner squirrelled away there under his desk. Luckily the interiew was being conducted via satellite, otherwise Kiwi Paxman would most likely have vaulted said desk, ripped his fly open and started teabagging the minister live on air. It was masterful stuff, great to watch for those of us who like to see governments discomifted in any way possible.

And why? What had the minster done to deserve being disembowelled on national TV? Nothing much, really. There's a school somewhere that's been allowed to fall into a pretty shocking state of disrepair. That's it. Not good, but the 45 minute dossier it is not. But I like that, especially compared to Britain where the people cower in their hovels lest bombs and bird flu strike them and their families dead. I think it makes for a happier populace.