UK Census 2011

[john eden]

Looks like we have another one of these comng up.

last time there was a "hilarious" campaign for people to put their religion down as "Jedi".

Which I hated.

look - here is me hating it at the time:
http://www.uncarved.org/archive/news230401.html

This time around there's a concerted effort to get non-religious people to put a cross in the right box:

http://census-campaign.org.uk/

as the site explains, that will help with the correct allocation of resources, equality monitoring etc...

But yeah - the census, mad or what?

 

[Elijah]

If you dont understand how this works

 

[john eden]

So apparently the census forms are being sent out today?

Has anyone had one yet?

 

[paolo]

Private Eye have said that anyone ticking the Jedi box will be imprisoned for life on the planet Tatooine, which seems reasonable to me

 

[Sectionfive]

CACI are well dodgy aren't they?

 

[IdleRich]

I received the envelope with the form in the other day. But I used it to draw a map of this place where I was going to and, er, I lost it, so I can't really tell you much about it. Interestingly I got talking on the train today to some guy who was involved in it. He said he was in charge of a group of people who go round to people's houses and make sure that they do it or something. Also he said that the threatened fines for non-completion were never collected last time and speculated that it was an empty threat this time.

 

[baboon2004]

last time there was a "hilarious" campaign for people to put their religion down as "Jedi".

Which I hated.

These people must be killed, it's quite simple. Or sterilised at the very least.

 

[baboon2004]

Please don't kill my father.

I got one a few days ago. Mama Bandshell is filling it out though.

But it's too late to sterilise him

 

[Dr Awesome]

We had a similar Jedi thang here. It would have happened again no doubt but for the census being cancelled due to the chch quake.

Encouraged by an informal email campaign, over 53,000 people listed themselves as Jedi in New Zealand's 2001 census (over 1.5% of responses). If the Jedi response had been accepted as valid it would have been the second largest religion in New Zealand. However, Statistics New Zealand treated Jedi responses as "Answer understood, but will not be counted".[9] The city of Dunedin (a university town) had the highest population of reported Jedi per capita[citation needed]. In the 2006 census only 20,000 people gave Jedi as their religion.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Please don't kill my father.

He's not your father. This is your father:

 

[sufi]

How to Fill In Your Census Form without Lockheed Martin Profiting (long version)

Lots of people are angry that the UK Census has, once again, been awarded to blood-soaked arms dealer Lockheed Martin. The following anonymous article sent to PN explains how you can fill in your Census form without benefiting Lockheed Martin or creating funding problems for local authorities.

http://www.peacenewslog.info/2011/0...thout-lockheed-martin-profiting-long-version/

if you have an hour or so to spare

 

[mistersloane]

if you have an hour or so to spare

I love things like that, thanks suf x

 

[baboon2004]

Q18 (I think) = How well do you speak English?

Very well Well Quite well Not well

Why don't they just fuck off? What relevance does this self appraisal have to anything?

 

[alex]

I love things like that, thanks suf x

don't see how this helps anyone tbh, lockheed are going to get it in no matter what. You are just making more work for people over here. Oh and slicing your areas budget, I don't need that.

 

[mistersloane]

don't see how this helps anyone tbh, lockheed are going to get it in no matter what. You are just making more work for people over here. Oh and slicing your areas budget, I don't need that.

How's it gonna slice the areas budget? I don't think I read down that far yet.

I know what you mean alex, but I just like being a little shit.

 

[alex]

i dunno, spose it won't cut your areas funding unless a substantial amount of people were to do it. Just seems to me like the money the government are going to spend chasing up people who do this could be spent better elsewhere.

edit* don't get me wrong, i love being a shit

 

[Mr. Tea]

Q18 (I think) = How well do you speak English?

Very well Well Quite well Not well

Why don't they just fuck off? What relevance does this self appraisal have to anything?

It didn't say that on the form our house got sent, I think. Unless that's only for the person who fills in details for the whole household?

Anyway, it's not an unreasonable question - local authorities would probably appreciate some clue as to which areas are going to need the most translation/language training resources.

Also, from the comments on Peace News:

I am working for the census this year. I wish I had know about this guy or I wouldn’t be. I took the job because I didn’t see the harm in it and I am totally broke, I have no other job. I just wanted to say that census workers earn a flat rate no matter how much work we have to do. So all that extra processing work? It doesn’t cost the arms manufacturer guy a penny while I have a shitload more work to do for nothing. I feel really depressed now that I know about the situation and having a load of extra work dumped on me probably won’t help. I can say for almost certain that it’s not going to cause the bad guy any pain. I wish you’d thought of a way to protest that wasn’t going to affect the people at the bottom of the pile of badly. I also wish I’d known about this months ago. Feeling crap!

Could just be clever dissimulation by "the bad guy", of course...

 

[sufi]

anyone still not got round to it,

or even objected conscientiously?

It should be no surprise to any of us that the 2011 England and Wales census is being conducted by Lockheed Martin, the same company that we buy trident nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and F-16 fighter jets from. Or that the Scottish Census is being provided by CACI International, a defence contractor who provided the US Army with ‘interrogation services' at Abu Ghraib. After all, the late 19th century's mechanised census tabulation system created by Hollerith (IBM's founder) and Dr. John Shaw Billings not only saved time and reduced errors for the USA Government, but also led to the Nazi's ‘efficient' use of the IBM machines and assisted, through the Dutch census, to reduce the Dutch Jewish population from 140,000 in 1941 to 35,000 in 1945.
http://www.metamute.org/en/articles/steam_powered_census

is it possible to spoil yr census return?

 

[IdleRich]

I haven't got round to it yet. Someone came round my house the other day and reminded me. Guess I'll do it online in a minute.

 

[Sectionfive]

Never underestimate the Irish mammy.