Doing The Census Is At Best An Inconvenience And At Worst Very Intrusive, But Why Is It Still Required When Most Of The Data Is Already Accessible To The Authorities
Once every decade, there is a legal requirement for all of us in the UK to fill in a census document giving a large amount of personal data about who we are, where we reside and what we do. In these days of awareness about civil liberties and the invasion of personal privacy, the subject has become a delicate one, giving rise to countless discussions both in favour of and against the requirement for such a thing. These comments on the subject are my own and each of us is entitled to have their own opinions.
To be honest, my first thought to quite a few of the questions on the form is that the data requested is already visible to the government from other official organisations. The tax office is aware what my employment status is and who I get paid by. The electoral roll without question has the names of all the adults known at my address. My passport and driving licence show when and where I was born. My medical records indicate my usual state of health, what surgery I have experienced and whether I have needed a pacemaker, have had Laser eye surgery prescribed or broken my leg. So possibly the much mentioned invasion of privacy isn’t necessarily such a big deal.
Of course, a century ago, almost all of this data would not have been easily accessible so it was sensible for the form to collate all of the information in one official document, but nowadays, a central computer could very quickly pull together most of the information needed, although the financial implications of funding that computer would undoubtedly be ridiculous!
The supposed excuse for the census is that it will allow the government to allocate sufficient funds to the most relevant areas for the next decade. Just how this relates to the current budget decrease in almost every area is something which will only be figured out in time.
However, it is useful to know just how many individuals are troubled by poor health, or how many infants under five years of age there are in a specific area, or what the ethnic population of a area is. At least we are not expected to let them know our preferred brand of shower gel or washing up liquid, what newspaper we buy, whether we still use glasses or are wealthy enough to have spent money on Laser eye surgery or whether we put petrol or diesel in our vehicles!
The one area on the census which is doesn’t have to be completed also seems to be one of the most discussed. You don’t need to say what religion you adhere to (or don’t), but despite the fact that you don’t have to respond to the question, the government will still use the answers from those who do bother to help assess funding in the next few years. So, for example, if all those who consider themselves to be atheist or humanist chose to ignore the question, and all those who are part of an organised religion answered it, the assumption would be that the country was one hundred per cent religious. And despite the fact that we would all be aware that this was totally wrong, funding for faith schools, charities and other organisations would increase. Likewise, choosing to tick ‘Other’ and inserting something witty like Jedi (as happened in 2001) or a imaginary religion like ‘The Laser eye Sees All Community’, will also be interpreted as meaning that you are ‘religious’ and will be incorporated in the collated statistics as a person who believes in a specific faith system, therefore skewing the true picture.
Curiously, completed censuses are being processed by an overseas company better known for selling aircraft, missiles and countless other hardware and software products, which has prompted a few activists to come up with ways of manipulating responses so that the forms are unable to be read by computer scanners as intended, but have to be processed by employees. Whilst I can’t pass judgement on the legality of what is being suggested, such activities do mean that the company’s profits from processing the census contract would quite probably be reduced, giving them less money to invest in manufacturing weapons, radar solutions, bombs controlled by Laser eye technology and much more.
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