OPINION: Every lottery ad ignores the twin truths that you are less likely to win than to be struck by lightning and that within a decade most lottery winners are back where they started.

OPINION: After six months of fighting for the right to live in his own house, Joe Bennett is staying home.

OPINION: If many people are saying that Mr Marryatt's pay rise is an abomination, and if what many people are saying is justified, the solution seems simple: revoke the pay rise.

OPINION: Several alarmed readers have written to warn me about the Food Bill, writes Joe Bennett.

OPINION: It was good to be back in a bar, albeit one built of shipping containers titivated.

Is it true that I just spent the weekend on the fabled West Coast where the whitebait run and the mountains soar?

OPINION: 'Stay where you are,' said Angela to a pair of buttocks. The buttocks, clad in fawn trousers, stayed where they were.

OPINION: Hi, Joe, congratulations on your new mobile phone. Sorry we made your old one obsolete just when you'd begun to get the hang of it, but hey, that's progress. And the good news is your new phone is just one cool dude. Welcome to tomorrow!

OPINION: Joe Bennett: The election won't compare with a six-week orgy of auto-eroticism but it'll do to pass the time.

OPINION: If someone happens to occupy the same lump of territory as you he's automatically your mate, your hero and your representative?

OPINION: In the course of years in the classroom I taught several thousand kids. I don't remember many of them with clarity. But some I do.

Welcome to "Ask a Social Scientist." OK, eager members of the public, put your questions.

OPINION: To spare you the haemorrhoidal risk of spending six weeks on the sofa eating official snack bars here's my souvenir lift-out guide to the You Know What 2011.

OPINION: Yoo hoo, hello there, it's me, Angela, your friendly Bulgarian hit man. Angela's a professional name, of course, my nom de fusil, so to speak.

OPINION: It was the briefest, happiest, most honest and therefore best wedding I have ever attended.

I had just finished checking my Lotto ticket when my uncle arrived. I was surprised to see him. As a family we make North and South Korea look like mates.

OPINION: Last Wednesday I wrote about an elderly prisoner. To my amazement several readers thought I was writing about Mr Murdoch.

OPINION: What kind of situation would you expect to see when one of the world's most powerful men gets thrown behind bars?

OPINION: Sometimes I wish the Darwinian struggle for survival were allowed a freer rein.

JOE BENNETT - © Fairfax NZ News

OPINION: Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder, and I find that's true for this city in Spain. But not for my pantry in Lyttelton.