The graph in that second link was made with my script here. Brad disagrees with some of the assumptions used (e.g. fixed "house effect" and constant smoothing parameter), so I don't want to tar him with any of my simplifications.

Using the term 'hack' to describe what was done is fundamentally misleading

'Hack' seems reasonably descriptive ... oh, wait you're not talking about the journalism are you?

I realise that sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, but I'm finding it pretty hard to believe that the story reflects a lack of "basic understanding". At some point you have to wonder if maybe the author is just flat out lying to the public, because they know their job is selling advertising not reporting news.

If Russel Norman wishes us to believe that his police complaint is about upholding the rule of law, and isn't a political stunt, he should stop publicly talking about it

Without public pressure, the police will just sweep this under the rug. Dr Norman is totally correct to keep this in the public eye.

I'm not convinced that R^2 is a useful measure of goodness of fit in this case, especially with the ridiculously prescriptive interpretations given by this textbook.

The real problem here is confounding variables.

I suspect our reactions might be coloured by whether or not the police got it right. With Bradley Ambrose it looked like they were smearing an innocent man, whereas Banks is quite obviously guilty, so it's a bit harder to feel any sympathy for him.

What does this mean for Key's "complied with the law" test? Presumably "avoided scrutiny until the time limit expired" passes somewhat under that bar?

In saying that they would get back to surplus faster than National, Labour is ignoring the money that we would get from asset sales, but counting the revenue that we would get from those assets;

Surely you need to compare like with like: Debt is a liability, assets are ... assets. Assuming market valuations, these have to zero out. The interesting comparison is revenue from dividends versus interest on additional borrowing.