Debate descends into silliness

Mike Treen would like me to print his "devastating response to rightwing , self-professed “expert”, Lindsay Mitchell and her nonsensical “graphs” " as described by Frank Macskasy.

devastating response to rightwing , self-professed “expert”, Lindsay Mitchell and her nonsensical “graphs”. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/07/right-wing-blogger-makes-fool-of-herself/#comment-186703

Right wing blogger makes fool of herself

A right wing blogger has made a fool of themselves trying to dispute figures first revealed by me in the Dailyblog about how a huge gap had grown up between the number on benefits and the number being recorded as unemployed or jobless in the household labour force survey. She was replying to a column by my colleague Matt McCarten in the Herald on Sunday.

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I better oblige.

My response has been left as a comment. The number of working-age people on benefits is actually higher than the number of unemployed or jobless.

The debate has just become very silly.

(Thanks by the way for the comments regarding whether there is any point in getting involved in this manner.
Weighing up the pros and cons, the answer is probably 'no'.)

And just for Mr Treen, here is the final chart rather than a "crude drawing". He still maintains,

"But, even when we combine the benefit numbers, the huge gap between the number on benefits and numbers measured as jobless remains."

A right wing blogger has made a fool of themselves trying to dispute figures first revealed by me in the Dailyblog about how a huge gap had grown up between the number on benefits and the number being recorded as unemployed or jobless in the household labour force survey. She was replying to a column by my colleague Matt McCarten in the Herald on Sunday.

She did a crudely hand-drawn graph allegedly showing that if you combined the numbers on the unemployment benefit with the number on the sickness and invalid benefit you get a completely different picture. Well that is true with a hand drawn picture. However, if you actually use the official numbers from the Department of Statistics website and use an excel spreadsheet to draw the graph the picture is a little different (actually a lot different!).

- See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/02/07/right-wing-blogger-makes-fool-of-herself/#comment-186703