In the early 1970s, when rising inflation and unemployment tore through the economy, someone coined the aphorism “one man’s wage increase is another man’s job” (unfortunately, most of the talk was about men in those days).

It took off, in part because it appealed to common sense. If the price of something...

As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the world, politicians, medical experts and epidemiologists have taught us about flattening curves, contact tracing, R₀ and growth factors. At the same time, we are facing an “infodemic” – an overload of information, in which fact is hard to separate from fiction.

Misinformation about...

It looked just like any posed political picture. The politician, in this case the National Party’s newly elected leader, Todd Muller, standing by a bookcase. So far so normal. It wasn’t even a new photo.

Except that clearly visible in the lower left-hand corner was a powerful piece of political symbolism – a red Make...