How to fill in the census form
As many of you will have received your census form in the last few days, I thought it might be worthwhile giving you a guide into how to fill in the form.
Some basic guidelines first. It is the law that you have to fill in the form and return it. Or to be more exact, you can not fill it in but you have to have a good excuse. Actually refusing to fill it in is against the law. Just not getting round to it is not against the law. Bear in mind that of the millions of forms sent out in 2001, only 38 people had fines inflicted on them for non-compliance, and only one went to prison for refusing to pay. The fines were unlikely to be the full £1K.
It isn’t against the law to supply information that is not totally truthful and accurate, or to answer the questions in a round about way. You can also return the form before March the 27th using a bit of time travelling to accurately fill in the details about any temporary visitors staying at your home. To make sure that the Census people get their data you can fill in the details online and then as a backup fill in the paper form and send it back too, though while you walk to the postbox you probably have fold the form up a couple of times to keep it dry from the rain.
So how do you fill in the census? Here are some tips.
General questions
Q1 – Who lives at the address. Tick as many as possible. For instance it asks about people who are temporarily outside the UK for less than 12 months. If you ever go away on holiday to Spain for a holiday, then you can tick this box. If you are a travelling salesman and occasionally have to stay in hotels, then you could be a person who works from home within the UK.
Q2 – The number of people at the house. Answer as necessary according to Q1
Q3 – Give your names, but not necessarily your birth name. It could be your nick name. For married women, feel free to use your maiden name. Tick the individual questionnaire requested box for each person. Don’t worry about filling in the individual forms, you’ll send you paper form back before you receive the individual forms so it’s the fault of the Census that you didn’t receive the individual questionnaires in time.
Q4 – Tick any combination you feel like as you don’t know who will actually be staying overnight on the 27th as you will be sending the form back before the 27th.
Q5 – The number of people in Q4.
Q6 – Relationships of persons in the household. Even if you are married, you can say your are partners; it’s the modern way of saying husband/wife without being gender specific and not alienating those who aren’t married. We are in a progressive society you know. Or you could use the other relationship tickbox for everyone. “Other” doesn’t mean exclusive of the other choices, it can mean unspecified.
Q7 – Your house type.
Q8 – Yes, you have a front door unless you live in a hostel/hotel.
Q9 – The number of rooms in your house.
Q10 – The number of bedrooms. Feel free to include rooms which aren’t used as bedrooms but could be, e.g. offices or playrooms or even gift wrapping rooms, including those not legally allowed to be bedrooms, eg. lofts and garages. If you feel so inclined, you could include your living room if you fall asleep on your sofa watching TV.
Q11 – Tick you main central heating type, but also tick other central heating as the body heat from the humans in the property will also warm up the house. If you still have incandescent light bulbs then they are adding to the heating of the house too.
Q12 – Even you own the property, tick the rent free choice as you aren’t paying any rent.
Q13 – Tick other as you ticked rent free in Q12 unless you really are renting.
Q14 – Include as many cars that you can think of, including other family member’s cars which you might use even though you haven’t used them or probably will never do.
Personal questions
Repeat for every person who lives at the address.
P1 – This need not be the same name as you entered in Q3.
P2 – Sex, yes please! If you are transgender tick both.
P3 – Date of birth.
P4 – Tick your marriage status, though you could be separated on the 27th if you are married so using time travel tick the box as appropriate. Children will have the never married option.
P5 – If you visit family members for more than 30 non-consecutive days in a year, write down their address. Don’t forget that you do this as a family so everyone will fill in the same details.
P6 – Tick as appropriate according to P5.
P7 – Indicate if you are a student or child or neither.
P8 – If a student or child tick as appropriate.
P9 – Tick elsewhere even if it was England, Wales, Scotland, NI or Eire but write down the country in boxes provided.
P10 – Fill in as appropriate if you weren’t born in the UK.
P11 – Jump to P12 or P13
P12 – If you arrived in the UK after 27th March 2010, say that you intend to stay for 12 months or more. You might leave before 12 months, but reality is hardly ever the same as what you plan.
P13 – If you have a cold, tick bad because you probably do feel absolutely lousy. If you are in perfect health, tick good because you might have an undiagnosed disease.
P14 – If you are a parent looking after your children, tick the 50 hours/week choice as your help and support of them is related to your own old age. You are older than your children aren’t you? If you are a child, you do help your parents out with chores around the house don’t you? Things like helping wash up, or switch the channels on the TV because the old duffers can’t use the new fangled remotes.
P15 – Tick other and write Human. It is what the UN wants isn’t it, the merging of all countries into one? Or write in English, Welsh, Scottish, NI, or British in the boxes provided. Being more imaginative you could write Cornish, or Yorkshire born and bred, or Lancastrian.
P16 – Tick the other box and write in Human. In a non-racist society it doesn’t matter what you ethnicity is and we don’t care.
P17 – If you are Welsh indicate your language capability. If you are English and can speak Welsh even if only a few bars of the Welsh national anthem or can say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, then indicate this by writing in the area allocated for question 17.
P18 – Tick other – and you get the idea. Yep, write in English in the boxes provided.
P19 – Because you ticked other in P18, tick “very well” if you went to a public school and not at all if you live in Essex.
P20 – Write in Jedi, or write Atheist instead of ticking the no religion option. Do not tick the Christian choice unless you go to church every Sunday. Otherwise leave the choice blank.
P21 – Tick the “Another address” option and write in the address even if it is the same as that on the front of the census form.
P22 – Tick other, and you know what to write in.
P23 – Unless you are in tip top condition, tick the limited a little option. You do run out of breath running only a few yards don’t you.
P24 – Jump to P25 or P43
P25 – Tick other.
P26 – Tick as appropriate according to your work. Don’t forget that a child will never have worked so answer no for the questions P27-P31
P27 – If you are are unemployed, tick yes.
P28 – Tick yes because it’s a hypothetical question.
P29 – Tick as appropriate.
P30 – No matter what you were doing last week just tick other.
P31 – Write the year you last worked.
P32 – Blank
P33 – Tick as appropriate.
P34 – Fill in your job title, be imaginative. You can be as vague as you like and write “Employee” or as specific as you like. It needn’t be related to what you actually do. For example, you could be an arse wiper if your boss is one from hell.
P35 – Write in “Work”.
P36 – Tick as appropriate.
P37 – Write in “Running a business” as the main activity for your employer or business.
P38 – Write in as appropriate.
P39 – Jump to P40 or P43
P40 – Tick the no fixed place because it’s very rare for a company to actually say that you have to work at one place. Most contracts will state that you will work where the company states which could change anytime.
P41 – Tick any method of transport that you have used to get to work, including “other”.
P42 – Tick as appropriate.
P43 – Repeat P1 – P42 for other people in the household.
Visitors
This will include cats since they aren’t owned by you.
V1 – Write down the cat’s name.
V2 – The cat’s sex.
V3 – The cat’s date of birth, as best as you can guess.
V4 – Write down the same address that is on the front of the census form or that of a neighbour since cats will likely visiting them too.
Now go to the front of the census form and draw a squiggle and date it 27th March 2011. Don’t fill in your telephone number.
All this is not against the law. It is however against the spirit of the law. But if you aren’t in agreement with the census in the first place you probably don’t hold the spirit of the law in much stead.
Update 14/3: Two people who have refused to fill in the form are Janet Street Porter and Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch. Maybe they need these instructions.
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March 11, 2011 at 00:40 -
This sounds like excellent advice.
If I happen to be in the UK on March 27th I will most likely approximate towards it. Is ‘Pagan’ a religion by the way? If not the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster is a usful candidate: http://www.venganza.org/ -
March 11, 2011 at 01:16 -
Yes, my religion will be ‘Pastafarian’ for sure, although I am wondering about converting to a religion that has more than 17 letters, as this would mean I didn’t have room on the form. I have some more observations here. For example, you are REQUIRED DAMN YOU to use black or blue ink as the forms will be scanned. Will very pale blue ink be OK? What about answers that go outside the boxes? Crossings-out could be confusing for the computer, too. I’m going to rename my cat and dog (Kevin and Doris are favourites at the moment) so that they can take part. I wouldn’t want them to feel excluded.
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March 11, 2011 at 07:22 -
I had enormous fun a few years ago with the tax credit people with a crossing-out on the form. It resulted in me receiving an interest-free loan of several thousand pounds for several years before the dust finally settled.
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March 11, 2011 at 11:45 -
Can you tell me how to do this, please.
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March 11, 2011 at 13:03 -
I made a mistake in writing in my income (forgot to account for pension contributions) and the way my correction was interpreted meant they chopped a digit off my income. The silly thing is that I noticed the problem ( as in where’s all this money come from?) before I’d been sent any paperwork and had called them about it. I was expecting them to take it all straight back as a genuine mistake, but it ran on for months, getting ever more ludicrous.
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March 13, 2011 at 14:50 -
Thank you Dave for that snipet of info.
We have traced you’r I.P address and have pinpointted the location of your home.
Be assured that an officer will be visiting you at your home.
we will be reviewing our records and if indeed they show that a discrepancy has happened,along with the above confession of you having knowledge of it,you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
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March 11, 2011 at 01:34 -
Answer each question: “This answer has been deliberately left blank.”
I can’t see a problem with that.
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March 11, 2011 at 03:06 -
Re advice for P19
Oi! Moonbeam, you looking for bovver? Ditant fink so, why doncha p#ss orf.
Cascadian (from the land of the Boleyn sisters)
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March 11, 2011 at 05:51 -
Still no census form here…
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March 11, 2011 at 14:56 -
Perhaps you don’t exist.
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March 11, 2011 at 06:24 -
May I postulate the effect of the Law of Unintended Consequences on your thoroughly sane and laudable ideas?
In the preamble, there are words to the effect that the census will get back to you if they cannot understand your answers. The effect of wholesale non-compliance will be that thousands of civil servants will be kept sucking at the taxpayers’ teat contacting private citizens to get answers that conform to Government expectations. I’m not sure that is a good thing.-
March 11, 2011 at 07:46 -
Anyone employed to work on the information extravaganza will be out of work come July.
https://censusjobs.co.uk/fe/tpl_census01.asp?newms=info35 -
March 11, 2011 at 11:36 -
Tscohhh..
Every silver lining has a cloud doesn’t it?
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March 11, 2011 at 06:44 -
Previous rants from me on the census have said it all. I had an idea for a lampoon of it, 101 Alternative Uses For A Census Form, but may not have enough spare time until the
fascist/stalinist bureaucratic snoop-document is due back, so if anyone else wants to run with the idea… -
March 11, 2011 at 08:13 -
XX woodsy42 March 11, 2011 at 00:40
Is ‘Pagan’ a religion by the way? XXA term covering many Earth based religions, but basically yes. And in Iceland the Heathen* priests have full mariage/birth/funeral functionary powers. So put you name as “Thorgard Thunderfartsson”, or somerthing.
(We prefer Heathen and consider “pagan” a sop so as not to “offend” christians”)
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March 11, 2011 at 08:22 -
pagan is a geniune religion and one which is trying hard to get itself better recognised by the use of this census, we only achieve partial recognition as 7th largest in the uk last time, estimates place our real numbers far higher but persecution and being treated as a joke keeps the recognition low.
Although extra votes would be nice it would also be nice if all those who state themselves as pagan are in someway pagan, although it can mean “of a spiritual nature with no specific religion” too so you can probably count yourself pagan if you seriously want to.
Just if you’re going to fill it in with a joke answer please make it an actual joke rather than just a wrong answer done to mock someone elses path.
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March 11, 2011 at 09:18 -
What does question P5 mean anyway? Are they looking for second homes; people that take long holidays? Surely they don’t intend to include people who stay with a friend or relative thirty times a year?
Perhaps the question is expressed more clearly in the other 56 languages that are available?
As an aside, surely ALL telephones in the UK use the symbols 0 to 9 which you need to recognise but not necessarily have an associated meaning for if you dial a ‘number’. So why do 8 of the alternatives have ‘squiggles’ instead? Perhaps the ‘squiggles’ mean, “Tough luck! No one here speaks your language”.
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March 11, 2011 at 09:58 -
And did you notice that you can only write in English or Welsh. So if you can’t read English or Welsh, you probably can’t write them either. So what’s the point in having alternative languages available.
I wonder how many other countries produce official documents in multiple languages for their immigrant population or do they all expect the immigrants to have learnt the local language to some degree. I suspect it might only be America and even they will probably limit it to Spanish.
I like the individual websites for each languages – Not!
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March 11, 2011 at 11:05 -
Over here in France it’s French or nothing.
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March 11, 2011 at 11:52 -
Since I still fill in my cheques in English this could cause me a problem.
Although so far no one has ever sent a cheque back to me demanding that I write it in French. This has been going on for eighteen years.-
March 11, 2011 at 22:06 -
If your account is with the English section of the bank then you have no problems as friends of mine found out. The local branch of the bank even offered to fill in the cheque for them even though they have been filling in cheques in French for years.
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March 31, 2011 at 01:38 -
I actually phoned the Census Helpline to ask the relevance of this question to the purpose of of the Census; after much uhm-ing and ah-ing, the gentleman I was talking to said he could not see any relevance at all. Anybody else able to help me with this?
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March 11, 2011 at 09:38 -
Don’t forget to spill tea on the form and request another copy. When that arrives, send in the original tea-stained one. In fact, send in the other as well, with coffee stains and a different set of answers.
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March 11, 2011 at 10:24 -
It says “You should:” use black to answer, tick, capitals etc. The dictionary definition of “should” is:
used for talking about what is right, sensible, or correct
used for saying or asking about the right or sensible thing to do or the right way to behave
used for saying what is correct, especially when the situation is different from this
used when you have strong reasons for believing or expecting something
used after “if” or instead of “if” for describing a situation that may possibly happen
used for saying what someone thinks is important
used for saying what someone decides, suggests, or orders
used for describing a fact or event that someone has a particular feeling or opinion about
used for saying what the purpose of an action is
used for making polite requests or statements about what you prefer
used for saying what you would do or how you would feel in a situation that you imagine
used about a situation in the past when you said or knew what you would do or what would happenWow, such a lot of definitions of the word “should” and yet on the census form the word “should” is not clearly defined. I “should” give up smoking but I’m not going to. The UK government “should” stop killing Iraqis, but they’re not going to etc. Should is clearly open to interpretation, just like all words. I interpret it as an invitation to complete the form in the way they ask and like all invitations I can decide not to take them up on their invitation and fill in the census form any way I like, using purple ink or red or rainbow colours. I am being pedantic but is there a legal prohibition against being pedantic?
It does not say you “must” fill in this form the way we say or we will prosecute you. Is this particular section covered by the Census Act 1920? I admit I haven’t read the Act or the Statutory Instrument they shat out of Parliament a few months back in order to do this census because I simply can’t be arsed reading their fictional legalistic rubbish.
I have also considered the box where your signature is required and I am going to make sure that my signature runs outside the box. What is going to happen if I sign outside of the box? Is the entire country going to collapse because I write my signature outside the box? It drives bureaucrats crazy if you don’t stay within the lines.
I am not against the census per se but I do take offence at the threat of a fine if I don’t fill it in. They call it “law” but in actuality it’s simply blackmail. If I was offered £50 for my time and the valuable data I am going to hand over to Lockheed Martin, then I might feel differently about the census. After all, I’m not that bothered about their questions. It is merely their bully boy tactics that I take offence to and the attitude that my data isn’t worth paying me for but they will remove, by force, my hard earned cash from me if I don’t give them my data.
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March 11, 2011 at 19:00 -
‘Should’ is a recommendation; ‘Shall’ is an instruction.
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March 11, 2011 at 10:32 -
You know, I have spent large chunks of my adult life conducting research. All i can say is thank G-d I never met anyone like you when I was asking people to fill in questionnaires
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March 11, 2011 at 11:50 -
Comes from working as a software engineer (where engineer really does mean engineer) where you have to control dump stupid computers and tell them everything to the smallest detail and if you miss something out, it’s liable to break down big style. So you have to think out every possible scenario, every path, every known unknown. And don’t trust the manual and don’t assume anything the manuals say is correct.
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March 11, 2011 at 12:14 -
Good post from Snakey, as it’s bureaucrats sending out the form I’ll give ‘em a quote from Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris –
“They’ve sown the wind, well they’ll now reap the whirlwind” -
March 11, 2011 at 23:43 -
[beep] You have a Syntax error in your [SQL] command on line 2 near “control”
Just remember – TOM: Totally Obedient Moron.
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March 11, 2011 at 11:16 -
Marvellous stuff – especially the end bit, about the ‘spirit of the law’, which is so carelessly treated by our masters we ought to treat it the same way.
Loved it, every bit of it, and shall take the advice offered – thank you.
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March 11, 2011 at 12:01 -
Don’t forget to also rub a colourless candle gently over the ‘OFFICE USE ONLY’ sections.
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March 11, 2011 at 13:14 -
Or be more blatant and drip candle wax “randomly” over the form – it was, after all, filled in by candlelight in a house with no heating.
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March 11, 2011 at 13:22 -
I am, by the way, toying with a themed census return (if I return it) – a Victorian theme in the manner of 1861. A quill pen, ferrous oxide ink, 1861-style handwriting (very difficult to the modern eye) with answers determined by what was possible in 1861.
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March 11, 2011 at 19:03 -
Take care. The paper the form’s printed on seems very porous, and diluted ink could ‘spread’.
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March 11, 2011 at 13:19 -
Old Holborn has an excellent form for you to give to anyone who comes to harass you for not completing the Census. Indeed, for any form of governmental front door harassment.
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March 12, 2011 at 15:21 -
Thanks for this info on Old Holburn – hadn’t heard of them before.
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March 11, 2011 at 13:21 -
You could always answer “Don’t understand” to every question. It’s a perfectly legitimate answer, when for example, the cops read you your rights and ask you if you understand them. No., you say, and they are fucked.
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March 11, 2011 at 18:40 -
The form states that the relevant boxes must be completed.
It does not state that the form has to be returned in its entirety.
A scalpel & ruler enable lots of small boxes to be cut out. Those that have answers in seem to be prime candidates for removal.
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March 11, 2011 at 18:50 -
A very, very, broad felt-tip pen is another writing instrument that may be useful.
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March 11, 2011 at 19:47 -
Blue highlighter pen FTW!
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March 11, 2011 at 20:12 -
I plan to fill in the form using an eye-liner pencil whilst munching on buttery, Marmite-y toast. Then I might clean some shoes on it. It’s quite possible that some ‘glueing’ might get done on it. Then I might fold it up and shove it deep into my most capacious handbag where it might become smeared and covered with bits of fluff. It might even find a bit of chewing gum stuck to it. Then I might choose to take it out of my bag on a very windy day and it might get carried off on a gust of wind and land in a puddle. Then I might post it.
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March 11, 2011 at 19:09 -
I’ve just picked this up from the news items on my browser homepage. Says it all, really.
“If you’re wondering if automated payment machines receive census forms, you would be right. A form was reportedly posted to a car park ticketing machine at Dorset’s Moors Valley Country Park. Addressed to ‘The Occupier: Pay on Foot Shelter’, the machine now faces prosecution – with a fine of up to £1000 and a criminal record if it fails to fill in the form. To the amusement of staff at the park, they are now figuring out what to put as its job, language and religious beliefs.
In response to the mix-up, the Office of National Statistics explained to Yahoo! UK News: “In a small number of cases the Royal Mail or Local Authority coding will be wrong and a form will go to a non-residential address but these are often difficult to spot amongst the 26.5 million addresses without a field visit. On balance it is more important for the accuracy of the census that we count all residents so we always err on the side of safety and send forms to all properties.”
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March 11, 2011 at 19:46 -
Mine has now turned up. I notice that I could face a fine if I supply false information. However, I don’t see any conflict with crossing out the declaration. Refusing to declare that it’s the truth doesn’t mean it isn’t
I’m going to ignore the telephone number box as well.
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March 11, 2011 at 20:17 -
March 11, 2011 at 20:35 -
I notice there’s a barcode on the front. I wonder if I could improve that with a bit of black ink? It’s not in a “for office use only” section.
Oh, and if my son has an imaginary friend, should I enter said friend as a member of the household or as a visitor? He refuses to provide an alternative address.
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March 11, 2011 at 20:48 -
“Do not tick the Christian choice unless you go to church every Sunday.”
It’s an old cliché, but going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to MacDonalds makes you a handburger. My bible says the meaning of true religion is to look after the widow and the orphan.
Just a thought.
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March 11, 2011 at 20:48 -
hamburger, even
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March 11, 2011 at 21:15 -
I wonder how the computer copes when someone blacks-out the box with a felt tip pen, then uses black ink for the tick?
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March 11, 2011 at 22:24 -
You can also be in 2 places at once:
http://aaaaargh.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/not-making-cencus/ -
March 12, 2011 at 08:23 -
I had a laugh reading the suggestions here. I admire that English “leave me alone” spirit you all display. But I hate to admit that the census is important. Our omnipresent state needs to know how many people live here, how old they are and where they live. It has to plan provision of hospitals, roads, schools and the like.
I do object to being ordered to do anything by those who should be civil and servile. A few monetary prizes may be a better waste of money than police and court time to get us to participate. And I don’t know why someone’s race or religion is any concern of the state ( and are questions which will mitigate against accurate and truthful answers anyway). In general however, a census is probably in the public interest.
Oh, and I never give my telephone number when asked on state forms. I know they listen to all our phone calls. Like they are reading all our comments and our browsing history. I get photographed a lot too. It also is none of their damned business.
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March 12, 2011 at 10:29 -
How many questions on that form does the state not already know the answers?
Why should I waste my valuable time collating info, just because it can’t be bothered to?
If hundreds of thousands illegal immigrants don’t have their data collated, how does that help the state plan for the future?
RIRO
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March 12, 2011 at 16:29 -
What do you mean the state “can’t be bothered” to collate info. That’s what the effing census is! And it’s kiinda hard to collate info on illegal immigrants, since by being here illegally, they’re somewhat hard to track down and post a bloody form to! What is your point??
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March 12, 2011 at 17:15 -
RIRO
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March 12, 2011 at 18:51 -
What are you on about? Why not say something sensible? MEPB
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March 12, 2011 at 19:15 -
Rubbish in, Rubbish out.
If hundreds of thousands of illegals aren’t on the database, it’s useless as an accurate snapshot of the UK.
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March 12, 2011 at 19:34 -
I know what RIRO means. It’s just you seem uncertain what you’re upset about.
The census provides a reasonably accurate picture of the legal inhabitants. Your argument is like suggesting the Inland Revenue shouldn’t bother with any financial records since they can’t tax criminals. You seem a bit worked up about the effect of illegal immigrants on statistics – is that really what you’re so exercised about?-
March 12, 2011 at 22:45 -
“The census provides a reasonably accurate picture of the legal inhabitants. ” Not.
Back in 2001, 3 million people refused to comply.
Add to those all the illegals, and all this 2011 census does is waste a monumental amount of Taxpayers money; and, inhabitants time.
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March 13, 2011 at 16:24 -
Are you not aware, Paul, that the Inland Revenue ceased to exist a couple of years ago? Being merged with Customs & Excise to create Gordon’s Frankensteinian Monster, HM Revenue & Customs?
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March 12, 2011 at 23:55 -
Reminds me, I must go practice with my lightsaber so I can answer the ‘Religion’ question truthfully.
I was going to answer ‘Na’vi’ for ethnicity, unfortunately I’m not very tall so I guess ‘Human’ will have to do.
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March 14, 2011 at 20:42 -
I think that much of the census info (perhaps not all of it) is important for social policy planning and for ensuring that local authorities get the government grants they are entitled to, and I don’t think that the data will be misused. But The EVIL company Lockheed Martin (LM) , who make things like cluster bombs and Trident nuclear missiles (and also have a sideline in data processing) have the contract to proccess the census forms for the UK Government. I would HATE to see LM make a profit from my form (and if you boycot the census they make a very easy profit indeed for doing no work at all!) The following basic technical info is therefore perhaps helpful (all from public and official websites). LM got the contract because of their proven efficiency in census data processing (eg, in the USA census, etc) using computer technology. (LM are not interesed i n the truth or otherwise of the info. That is a problem for the UK Government). LM wants to make money on this contract.
All those BARCODES on the census forms are VITAL for the high speed scanning process of the forms (at at rate of about 15000 pages per hour). If ALL these barcodes are fully blacked out, or covered with extremely sticky stickers, that scanning system can’t work, for the forms have no longer a “scannable” identity. If ALL printed code numbers are also unreadable, the data processor will have to do a manual search by street address before he/she can get started at all on the form.
The actual info on the forms is meant to be read by high speed computer scanners using “Optical Mark Recognition” software (OMR) for tick-boxes and “Optical Character Recognition software (OMR) for the writing ( neatly in boxes as instructed). OMR can’t handle messy corrections (with lots of helpful arrows etc) in box ticking (“sorry, it should have been that one…”) and OCR can’t read proper joined-up writing, upside down writing, writing interspersed with phantasy characters, writing which is not in a designated “writing space” and so on (and OMR & OCR do of course not understand what they are reading in any case). So there you are: a lot of scope of turning fast and cheap computer scanning into slow and expensive manual work for LM.
The big bar code on the front of the form is to be scanned by the Royal Mail against the mailing data base, and that info is fed straight to the census people who call on people’s houses if they haven’t received a form. They will do this SELECTIVELY, and focus on areas of high non-return rates (obviously, they don’t want to waste their time chasing up empty houses, which are randomly distibuted everywhere). If the Royal Mail can’t read that big barcode through the envelope’s window (they are not allowed to open the envelope) either because the form has been wrongly inserted in the envelope, or because the barcode is actually unreadable (or both), LM’s porcessing centre will have to deal with it. In theory, in such cases a census collector could call who may then erroneously insinuate sent in a form if the processing centre is too slow in dealing with returns of this type.
finally, the worst thing you could to is to make an on-line census return. LM loves that!-
March 14, 2011 at 21:48 -
Interesting that you think the information from the census is very useful in setting out the grants to local authorities. That the issue many have with the census. It’s every ten years, but people move house on average about 7 years. And from one year to the next a council might have a total change in immigration levels. The data is out of date within years and well before the next census.
The issue with Lockhead Martin doing the management of the data collection is a bit too much of a conspiracy theory to be honest in my opinion. The fact that LM do bombs and weapons and stuff is a bit silly. Why don’t you refuse to use Toshiba products because they are heavily involved in making nuclear power stations. Why not refuse to use any bank becasue all of them will have invested in some dodgy company or country to varying levels.
The problem is that the grants are set against the census data. They shouldn’t be. Rather than national government setting out what a council gets, it should be the local authority saying how much they need with lots of evidence based on local needs.
There is another census which is more useful. The ONS’s General Lifestyle Survey which is done every year.
At least we can agree that the census is not a good thing, though for different reasons.
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March 15, 2011 at 08:27 -
The Martin Lockheed contract to process the census returns is not a conspiracy but a public fact. The contract was let in 2008 and was controversial at the time. Its value is about £150 million. If you do a bit of googling for terms “uk census lockheed martin” you will get the press releases from Lockheed Martin itself, from the UK’s ONS (Office for National Statistics) and heaps more official and perfectly public info on the subject. See also e.g. the Observer of 20 February and other press coverage.
I agree with your comment on Toshiba. There should be more info about about the nasty activities of firms who make common consumer products and on banks with objectionable connections. Some people try hard to be ethical consumers, but it is hard work and time consuming to check it all out. That is their personal decision and they are free to do so. In the case of Lockheed Martin and the Census, however, we are told that by law we MUST use their services for the census. Many people object for precisely this reason.
I agree with your comments on council grants based on census data: it is a crude, inaccurate and often unfair system, but that is how, unfortunately, it is done currently.
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March 15, 2011 at 09:54 -
Tom,
Sorry, I didn’t mean that it was a conspiracy to hide the details of the LM contract. What I meant was that it’s a conspiracy thing about LM being able to take the data. Yes they are American. Yes America can request American companies to hand over some data to the goverment – but not willy nilly and only after legal process. But to think that the census data will go to America is the conspiracy theory bit. Even if it was the case, considering the amount of data our goverment holds on us in various forms (read the Silent State by Heather Brooks), what would go to America is chicken feed.
Re Toshiba. My point is that even with the publishing of the “nasty” things that companies do many people wouldn’t care. And these nasty things are only nasty to some people. To me, what Toshiba and LM and Barclays are doing is totally legal. They are not committing illegal acts.
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March 15, 2011 at 13:02 -
Hi SBML,
Comments are closed.
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