Lindsay Mitchell

 Regular readers will know I love data. It's like a toy you can play with in different ways. The visual representation relays speedily w...

Three graphs for you from March quarter benefit fact sheets released today. Unsurprisingly, large increase in Jobseeker numbers year-on-yea...

In regard to my last post questioning what children learn from beneficiary mothers with ingrained helplessness and over-developed senses of...

Here is a mother on a Sole Parent Support benefit. She has four children and debt to MSD of nearly $10,000. She repays $46 out of the basic ...

 From Newshub : ACT is accusing Labour MP Willie Jackson of "perpetuating a victimhood mentality" for saying we have "institu...

The worst form of racism perpetrated against Maori is that "they all think the same way." They don't. Never have and never wil...

 Is it interesting that of those people convicted of breaching covid 19 restrictions  - most were men - around half were under 30 - around h...

Great column from Damien Grant this morning. It nails the frustration that those of us older than most current  MPs feel. "One of the e...

 According to today's Economist A commission in Britain that was created after last year’s Black Lives Matter protests to investigate ...

Indexing benefits to wages last year set a precedent. They've been indexed to inflation since 2001 but indexing to wages had always been...

 Having a bit of a tidy up when I came across these photos which show the development of one of my favourite subjects and paintings, Herbie:

The PM's office was trying to get data to show that rents have risen in line with wage increases apparently. PM's chief press secre...

A media report yesterday talked about landlords "threatening" to hike rents in response to to Labour's closing the "looph...

Over the ten year period to 2018, births of NZ European babies were reasonably evenly spread across the economic deciles with the fewest bei...

 Statistics New Zealand compiled a report called Housing in Aotearoa 2020 which is full of interesting data. This graph painted a slightly d...

She wrote me, "...we’ve come so far, and I know that we can make it through together." She did. The PM. Tonight. Just now. Person...

  (Left click on image to enlarge) Note a marked reversal in a number of positive trends since 2017. Source

  Data source

A reader kindly sent me a response she received yesterday from MSD. She'd asked if any cost benefit analysis has been made of Temporary ...

 National is at last complaining about an issue I (and probably others) was blogging about over a year ago. National’s Housing spokesperso...