Unlike the season ticket renewals I had the "pleasure"of this dropping on my mat today.
The questions are quite intrusive in my opinion and they seem to want to know everything from your inside leg measurement to the colour of the toilet paper you use!
I'm quite happy for the population to be counted every 10 years and to disclose my name and address and those living at my address. As a keen family historian I've found such information useful myself so am happy to help any potential relatives or descendants 100 years or more down the line.
However, call me paranoid if you like, but i do wonder at the motivation of some of the questions and disclosure requirements.
Example (1) they ask whether you own your property outright, own with a loan or mortgage, have a part owned part rented (shared ownership property), rent a property or live rent free. If you own a property outright or have a loan or mortgage you are then asked how many cars you have got. Why isn't everybody asked this question regardless of the type of property in which they live I wonder?
Example (2) How is your health?
Example (3) Students. They want forms filled in to varying degrees for both home and term time addresses.
Example (4) How do you travel to work?
I could go on.
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I have tried to look up old family history matters and it seems to me that you must always grease the palm of the website that provides the info and I refuse to pay someone for info that my decendents have given freely. I am told you can get the 1811 census for free (woop e doo) but I have no clue who I would be looking for in 1811. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place! Then there is the cost of running the census during a time when we are continually told the country is broke.
19.2 Do you sit down or stand up when wiping?
19.3 Why dont you use paper like normal people?
1245.c Were your hands swollen like two balloons?
c. Yes
d. Now I've got that feeling once again
You've misread the form Len. Everybody has to answer the "how many cars do you have" question, but if you're an owner occupier you get to skip the "who is your landlord" question, as it's not relevant to you.
As Stig said, it's nothing sinister, it's for planning purposes. They need to know about patterns of housing, travel, health etc, so they can decide on how to allocate funding to various places.
Just count yourself lucky you don't have to phone the helpline. It's like pulling teeth. Took me two goes to get someone who'd worked out how to look things up on the system if the answer wasn't immediately obvious.
If you've got a problem with it, please bear in mind that the guy knocking on your door is probably like me - just doing as job for not much more than minimum wage.
Or for that matter answer every question. The questions I dont want to answer I will put N/A next to them or make something up.
I'm only renting the house I'm living in for a couple more months anyway so any data that can be drawn from my forms wont mean much anyway.
I'll know more when I have been on my training course Thursday.
Regarding your circumstances, it is a snapshot in time, it doesn't matter where you are a week or even a day later. So the data you supply means as much as the data from any other form you could pick on.
I had the same reaction (as the poster) last night. For me, it is the 'veiled' threat on the front cover in large print of a fine or being criminalised for not completing the form that offends me (and most people I think). They do love to use threatening words language don't they?
I thought coercion was a criminal offence. You or I would go to jail for forcing somebody to do something with a threat (or blackmail) but obviously (as we know) those rules do not apply to councils, governments, polticians, etc, blah, blah, blah.
Come the revolution, my Charlton brothers and sisters, I will be there as close to the front as I can get yelling "Freedom!" and "Premier league - we're having a laugh!"
Now, where is my copy of 1984, I must dust it down to see what it says about census'.
I got two yesterday, one in my new and one in the the house I'm renting.
To be honest it dosen't really bother me filling the forms, it just seems, in this day and age, a little old fashioned. At least we dont have to travel back to our birthplace on a donkey.
My private life is as dull as most peoples, I dont have any secrets.
I just cant see what the powers to be able to improve my life and others by me filling a form in full of information Bromley council no doubt already has.
Do any other European countries have census?
How many people do we need before it becomes a recognised religion ?
I don't have a problem with them asking me where I work, its not like they ask for salary details. There is actually nothing on there that governments don't already have somewhere, its just easier for them to analyse if they ask you to complete it rather than trying to bring all their scattered databases together.
So basically, everyone relax, fill it in, send it off and sit back and wait for the complete lack of policy decisions that as made as a result.
Yes it is.
And you will be hounded by people at your door asking you to complete it.
Although I don't remember anyone actually being prosecuted last time. But I do remember them saying not enough people had completed it to make analysis reliable.
And the door knockers are getting low pay so what ever you do, don’t take it out on them.
Anything that the goverment have on 'file' is bound to get lost, probably on the train by some 'outsourced agency' so that a scammer can defraud even more people, but because of data protection the goverment cannot do anything about it!
If they find that the transport is shite in South East London what are they going to do about it!, or anything else because we are being told that there is no money, and anyway they are no longer state controlled !.
Hopefully, I will have a nice collector like Saga Lout come round!