Why New Zealand is and why the UK is

Having spent time living in both countries and having spent a not insignificant amount of time “watching the English” (and some of the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish for that matter), I’ve concluded that there are three principle things that define the United Kingdom, the opposite of which define New Zealand.

Now at this point, social anthropologists, both amateur and professional, might be gearing up to tear my argument to shreds on the basis that the definition of a country can’t be distilled down to just three things. Moreover, anyone with even moderate views on the role of Maori culture in New Zealand society and the development of modern New Zealand culture, is probably going to wonder why I am not about to list this country’s indigenous race as one of the three things that define New Zealand.

Age, Proximity and Population, are the three factors that I think you can argue, define New Zealand. The same three factors then go a long way to defining the UK. It’s just that based on the three factors, the UK is at the opposite end of the scale to New Zealand. So the theory and the observations supporting this theory have a relative comparison nature to them.

New Zealand is an incredibly young country. It was only in 1947 that New Zealand ceased to be a dominion of Britain and took on the responsibility and authority to be completely self governing. The New Zealand Passport as a document of national identity was created then and the country started on the journey to disconnect itself emotionally and literally from mother-Britain. Based on that year as some sort of birth date of the modern New Zealand, the country is only 61 years old. Being that young often creates a mood of energy and action, but also a resistance to hang on to old ways of doing things and old ideals and practices. The impetuousness of youth is not always valuable. Old practices cannot be said to be universally worthless.

With age comes maturity and a depth of national emotional intelligence. It can also help generate a clear sense of identity, crafted not over decades but over hundreds of years. Structures both physical and societal have had time to develop and be well established in a country that’s been around for more than a hundred years.

So how old is Britain? Well, choose your start point. As a somewhat arbitrary point you could pick 1066 and the Battle of Hastings. Or pick some point prior to that in the first millennium, from which some of the structures and traditions of Britain can trace their origins. Whichever point you select, Britain is an old country. Sometimes that helps brings a calmness and an order that comes from a nation that’s been around for hundreds of years. The opposite is also true. Tradition, structure, habit that have been built over a 1,000 years or more, can lead to a reluctance to change and a slowness of attitude that can leave it a little out of sync with the modern world.

New Zealand’s physical position on the globe is .... “interesting”. We have proximity to pretty much nowhere. Sure we are close to Australia (still a 3 to 4 hour flight away), but Australia is very similar to New Zealand on many levels, given the colonial backgrounds and histories of the two countries. So the major country with the closest proximity, culturally has only a small influence on New Zealand.

The island nations of Polynesia arguably influence New Zealand more. With similar proximity to that of Australia, these small nations have provided a fairly constant stream of migrants to New Zealand, especially to Auckland. With the biggest Polynesian population outside of Polynesia itself living in Auckland, the city cannot help but be influenced by the cultures of Fiji, Samoa, Niue, Tonga, the Cook Islands, etc. But beyond these countries there are virtually no nations with close physical proximity to New Zealand who influence us.

Britain couldn’t be more opposite on the proximity scale. Britain has proximity to pretty much everywhere and that has a dramatic impact on the country and the culture. Apply also the age of nation component and the impact of vastly different and diverse cultures with close proximity to Britain, has been going on for hundreds of years.

In the modern context, vastly different languages, food, histories, religions, societal norms etc, are all within a short flight of the UK, the nearest as little as 45 minutes. Whilst modern travel makes the influence of proximity occur more readily, it has always existed.

The proximity to other nations with other views, cultures, ideologies, ambitions, has of course led Britain into conflict, many many times. Conflict as a result of close geographical proximity has influenced the culture and behaviour of the nation, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Through two world wars and many other conflicts, the British people have had to endure suffering, pain, anguish and loss, hardship, as well as generating a need to adapt and change to the conflict itself. All of this has had an influence on the way a nation ticks, its attitudes and behaviours.

Whilst Britain groans under a population of just below 61 million people, New Zealand looks like something of a population minnow coming in at slightly under 4.3 million. Population creates both opportunity and problem and the consequences of these vastly different populations illustrate this quite well.

Britain enjoys competition in virtually every market space. Consumers enjoy low cost goods and services driven out of the fact that economies of scale have often been achieved and the market potential is such that competition at scale exists and keeps pricing keen. In New Zealand, the opposite is often true. Markets are measured more in the ten of thousands and hundreds of thousands rather than the millions. Population limits the number of players who can viably operate in businesses where infrastructure establishment costs need to be deferred over a reasonably big customer base. Take mobile phone costs - substantially higher in real terms than that which the UK population enjoys. Beyond the national airline Air New Zealand, second and third domestic airlines have over the medium term struggled to operate viable businesses - the market of travellers from the national population is just too small.

Despite the frequent (and somewhat habitual) moans of the British public, the UK has an extensive and generally speaking, well operated national rail network. Services are reasonably frequent and rail is a viable alternative to the car, for getting from one place in the country to another. The population is there to support such a high establishment cost infrastructure. In New Zealand it is not - hence the very limited rail network and range of services available here.

With population though comes issues of density, space, intensity. The countries are reasonably similar in terms of land mass (NZ is only 10% bigger by land area than the UK), yet with its small population, New Zealand enjoys population densities that are low. Very low. Pretty much everyone has some real space to breathe in. Only within the last 10-15 years have high rise apartments and multi level dwelling spaces been built in New Zealand - principally in Auckland, NZ’s largest city and business capital. A typical NZ house will be a single level dwelling, on its own piece of land. Even within the main cities, back in the 1970s the typical land area for each NZ home was a quarter-acre (about 1000 sq metres) section. Noticeably fewer of those remain today in the cities such as Auckland, but the densities are still low by UK and UK city benchmarks.

In many areas of UK life, its large population leads to an intensity in day to day living situations that is often less than pleasant to live with. Trains services, made possible because of the large population, endure disproportionate loadings on certain routes leading to many services being rammed full with passengers enduring long journeys, standing the whole way and packed in like cattle. Tensions rise, anger flares, violence occassionally erupts. The mood is certainly anything but relaxed. Similar scenarios, created by too many people being in the same space at the same time, can occur on the roads, in supermarket carparks, on Oxford St in London.

Noted for its relaxed demeanor and friendly easy going ways, New Zealand’s mood is typically relaxed because of the absence of population density and therefore population related intensity. Fewer people simply allows a lighter mood to exist.

Now, to the point about the Maori and what contribution New Zealand’s indigenous race makes towards defining the way New Zealand is. There is no question that Maori, it’s culture, history and population helps define how many things occur in New Zealand and the way New Zealand culture as a whole is. Relative to other colonised nations - Australia included, New Zealand has taken a fairly sophisticated and open-minded approach to dealing with historical grievances of Maori and in ensuring that the culture of the indigenous race is maintained and has a permanent place in New Zealand’s overall culture and national development. Rightly or wrongly however, I believe that the factors of Age, Proximity and Population are more powerful factors than Maori in defining the way modern New Zealand is, relative to a nation such as the UK.

New Zealand and the UK sit at opposite ends of a spectrum. The former is incredibly young, without the physical closeness to other nations that creates powerful influence and with a population that is perhaps a long way from being optimum. The latter is old (bordering on ancient), physically close to a vast array of influencing nations and with a population that is perhaps heading to the point of being excessive.

And there friends, endeth the observation.

Unprecedented use of the word ‘unprecedented’ in an unprecedented number of reports ...... about events allegedly without precedent

I think it started with the dreadful events of September 11, 2001. That act of terrorism, horrendous and shocking in nature, did genuinely seem to be without precedent. Aircraft used as guided missiles, crashed into skyscraper buildings, was certainly not what most average men and women would consider a likelihood. Certainly those news reports were the first time that I can consciously remember the word “unprecedented” being used in every news segment and piece and often repeatedly across paragraphs in a single report. Associated with that event, their use seems to me to be have been well judged and appropriate. Nine eleven was ‘without precedent’.

But now, it seems that any event of any standing or notability, anywhere in the world, is described as “unprecedented”. Be that event a natural disaster or the very man-made nature of the current financial crisis. Listen carefully the next time you switch on BBC News 24, BBC World, Sky News, CNN and I’m sure you’ll see what I mean.

Is the root cause of this a problem of making news seem more compelling and essential viewing? Is the belief that in describing any event as “unprecedented”, it will give the news more of a “must consume” status, that will then capture us and hold us, rather than say ...... letting us wander off to make dinner, watch a film, or go shopping?

We are in a consumerist and materialistic world, where we are constantly being marketed at by brands, products and objects, suggested to be the latest and greatest, vastly improved on the ones before. It would seem to me that the terminology within news reporting, especially the use of “unprecedented”, is a reflection of that world, where the level of hyperbole and dramatic persuasion, has to constantly increase, just to even get us to partially engage with its message.

Or do journalists just need a bit of help from some clever copywriters in the marketing communications world, to find some new and interesting words to use?

Two ears, one mouth

A short passage quoted from Jon Steel's book 'Perfect Pitch'. And with grateful thanks to Jon Steel, for writing something so eloquent, intuitively correct and inspirational to those of us who sometimes feel intimidated by the 'talkers' in this world:

"..... what follows is perhaps the most important lesson I have learned over the years of making new business presentations. It is also one of life's most important lessons, and you will see that it is a consistent theme of this book. It is this: successful communication and persuasion is not, as most people think, about being good at talking, having the gift of the gab. No, the best communicators, the best persuaders, are the best at what they do because invariably they are good listeners."