Posts Tagged ‘dodgy statistics’

Labour reduces the number of cats getting stuck in trees every month

Written By: - Date published: 4:04 pm, August 17th, 2019 - 14 comments

Meanwhile, National signalled they need a hand with statistics, and the public gladly stepped up.

The truth behind job numbers

Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, July 25th, 2017 - 25 comments

Bruce Munro’s excellent piece in the ODT, looks in to the truth behind the Nats’ job numbers: “It does not take much digging in Statistics New Zealand’s latest Household Labour Force Survey to uncover a growing world of low-paid work, insufficient working hours, financial struggles and unfulfilled lives”.

NRT: National’s failure on rheumatic fever

Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, July 4th, 2017 - 22 comments

I/S at No Right Turn writes: “Five years ago, National set itself a target as part of its “Better Public Services” targets to reduce the incidence of rheumatic fever by two-thirds. They failed.”

Lies, damn lies, and National’s housing affordability statistics

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, June 19th, 2017 - 39 comments

RNZ: The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment ignored advice from the Reserve Bank over its new housing affordability measure, and made houses appear to be more affordable than they actually were.

Keith Ng’s four tax myths

Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, May 25th, 2017 - 23 comments

A useful piece from Keith Ng on myths about tax. It’s an extract from The PSA’s “Progressive Thinking: Ten Perspectives on Tax” booklet.

Billions of lies

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, April 29th, 2017 - 41 comments

The Nats are settling in to election mode – smoke and mirrors. Steven Joyce feeds us billions of dollars worth of lies.

The Nats’ new ‘swimmable’ rivers aren’t

Written By: - Date published: 3:08 pm, February 28th, 2017 - 15 comments

Under the new standards we have up to a 1 in 6 risk of serious infection at the times that we actually swim in rivers, and Smith is trying to hide this fact by fudging around with year-long averages. David Parker’s analysis yesterday was bang on.

Support party exposes National’s lie – government in disarray!

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, February 10th, 2017 - 56 comments

With this vicious infighting exposed the government is clearly in total disarray.

Unemployment rate up

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, February 2nd, 2017 - 12 comments

Despite National’s fiddling the figures on the way unemployment is counted, the unemployment rate is on the rise again.

Unemployment apples and oranges

Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, November 2nd, 2016 - 27 comments

A fall in the jobless rate is superficially good news, but most of the “fall” since May is due to changes in the way the measure is calculated. Wages remain flat, though less so for union members.

Chart of the day: The “building boom”

Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, August 26th, 2016 - 119 comments

building-consents

Foreign buyers estimated at 29%

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, August 25th, 2016 - 75 comments

Most of the media has reported the Government’s “3%” spin on the extent of residential property purchases in NZ going to foreign buyers pretty uncritically. There have been honourable exceptions, and yesterday property editor Anne Gibson in The Herald joined them.

Grant Robertson on the adjusted unemployment figure

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, August 17th, 2016 - 206 comments

“The sad reality is that while the change in measurement might elicit a lower number or percentage it will not mean one fewer person is unemployed.”

Listen to Nick Smith trying to defend fudged foreign ownership data

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, August 2nd, 2016 - 22 comments

Anyone who believes the Nats’ figures needs to listen to yesterday’s interview – Why won’t Nick Smith answer this one simple question? Excellent work from Garner.

Bill English unaware that GST is a tax shock!

Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, June 26th, 2016 - 69 comments

Is it true that 40 percent of us pay no tax? Why, no, no it isn’t.

The real reason that politicians will take no action on tax haven corruption

Written By: - Date published: 8:04 am, May 16th, 2016 - 22 comments

panamapapersoccupations

NRT: A waiting list by another name

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, March 7th, 2016 - 39 comments

I/S at No Right Turn on hospital waiting lists – and those that don’t even make it on them.

Kiwiblip!

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, June 21st, 2015 - 16 comments

Either Kiwiblog had a very large social media blip (one million page views in a day is pretty high), or  something is really wrong with Sitemeter, or there is a irritating bug somewhere bloating the numbers. I’d like to know one way or another, as I’ve had to deal with some strange spikes like this in the past  and they are tricky to track down.

Rod Oram on the RMA and spin

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, April 5th, 2015 - 66 comments

An excellent piece by Rod Oram on the RMA and the government’s attempts at spin.

NRT: This does not bode well

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, March 31st, 2015 - 22 comments

I/S at No Right Turn on the way that National is manipulating official environmental reporting to try and conceal the damage…

Polity: Key deluded on housing progress

Written By: - Date published: 1:29 pm, January 28th, 2015 - 28 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity on Key – “Is he deluded, or is he being deliberately misleading?”…

They’re lying to you

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, November 18th, 2014 - 37 comments

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

Elective surgery waiting lists

Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, November 7th, 2014 - 29 comments

The Nats have been manufacturing “good news” stories in health by creating a system that turns away one third of the patients in need.

More Nat lies

Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, September 4th, 2014 - 20 comments

National’s been lying about increased teacher numbers, and the state of the economy – and now they’re promising unaffordable tax cuts.

Polity: Regional income stats

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 30th, 2013 - 14 comments

The Herald says the regions have rising incomes, but caution against reading anything into it. DPF reads everything into it anyway. But when people with jobs stay in the regions and those without jobs go to where some jobs are – average incomes rise in the provinces. It is what you expect to see when there is a jobless ‘recovery’ like National is paying for with debt.

Spin v reality

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 13 comments

National have become a very adept PR machine. While not adept at running the country, they’ve become great at running statistics. John Key was pushing things a little too far with his lines that unemployment rising to 6.7% showed an improved economy and that Europe electing anti-austerity leaders showed their austerity policies were right, but […]

Bill’s Magic Numbers

Written By: - Date published: 8:12 am, June 12th, 2011 - 16 comments

Bill (and John and the entire National caucus) have been telling us that we are required to borrow $380 million each and every week.  Apparently we aren’t.

National fiddles as NZ burns

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 10th, 2011 - 8 comments

8,000 more unemployed in Q4 2010, and 1,000 more on the dole in January; New Zealand headed to a douple-dip recession after a year of anaemic growth; an average wage rise in 2010 of 1.9% with inflation of 4%. And a government focussed on manipulating statistics instead of coming up with an economic plan.

Key tries bad stats to mask pathetic record

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, February 9th, 2011 - 39 comments

In his speech yesterday, John Key made the extraordinary claim that the real average wage has risen 10% under his rule. That figure is wrong and the measure is the wrong one to use. But there’s a more fundamental check: look around you, is the average family 10% better off than 2 years ago? Who are you going to believe? Key or your own eyes?

Key – War on P?

Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, November 9th, 2010 - 17 comments

Do you remember when John Key declared War on P a year ago?  The action has been… underwhelming.  The Police have been getting on with quietly doing a good job, to be sure, but when you grandiosely declare “War” on something, you expect a bit more attention to have been paid to it.

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