Monday 26 March 2007

Two graphs tell one story

Unemployment down? Then why are the numbers of sickness and invalid beneficiaries up?

Lindsay Mitchell has two graphs that between them tell a story about political manipulation of figures.

RELATED: NZ Politics, Welfare

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the statisticians at WINZ had been busy just plotting graphs without analyzing them to gain meaningful knowledge. Had they done some correlation analysis, they would have picked it up and include it in reports for policy-makers. Or perhaps, that the statisticians have done their job properly, but policy-makers chose to ignore it for political purposes. It is time that someone in the department must take a short walk up to K'Rd from their Queen St, office to hitchhike home.

Peter Cresswell said...

Far from ignoring this phenomenon, FF, it's clear enough that it's created by policy-makers, for ends that are nothing less than overtly political.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the people on those sickness and invalids benefits are sick as a result of the effect on their minds the policies of our politicians have had on them. ;-P

Seriously, I stopped being surprised ages ago. But I will never stop being horrified.