Kiss and tell: The 2011 census wants to know your sleeping partner
Survey already criticised for level of intrusion, with more questions than ever about citizens' domestic arrangements
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Here is some sound advice for anyone having an illicit love affair: if you do not want to be found out, do not arrange to sleep together on the night of March 27-28 2011.
That is the night when the Government is going to count the British population, creating a precise, comprehensive record of who was sleeping where, how old they were, what ethnic background they came from, and what kind of central heating kept them warm that night. The 2011 census is already being called a "snoopers' charter". It is certainly going to give everyone an incentive not to lay their head to rest in the wrong house, at least for that one night.
The Conservatives complained yesterday that the 32-page questionnaire is too long, too expensive, and likely to undermine public support for the exercise, especially since anyone who does not fill in the form risks a £1,000 fine. They will be sent out by post but it will be possible to fill them in online.
Census forms have grown longer and more complex with each new census, and next year's will set a new record for the level of detail it demands. Householders will be required for the first time to give the sex and date of birth of any visitor staying that night.
This will also be the first census with a question about same-sex civil partnerships. The question about a person's marital status has expanded from four possibilities – married, separated, divorced, or widowed – to eight. Householders will also be asked to state how many bedrooms are in their home, information that could affect the size of council tax bills, and whether its central heating is gas, electric, oil or solid fuel. Another new question is about second homes. Anyone who stays at a different address for more than 30 days a years will be required to specify the address. For MPs, that information is now public knowledge; others might wonder why the state needs to know.
There are new questions aimed at learning more about immigrants, ethnic minorities, and those with little command of English. There is a long question about ethnic grouping, another asks whether he or she holds a British passport. Those not born in the UK will be asked when they arrived here. Those here for less than six months will be asked how long they intend to stay. And anyone filling in the form whose first language is not English will be asked to categorise their command of English, from "very well" to "not at all".
"An increasingly invasive census will erode public support, cost more and result in a less accurate survey," the Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Nick Hurd said yesterday. "Just because the Government has the legal powers to ask these questions does not give the state the licence to ask anything they want. These bedroom snoopers are yet another sign of how the Labour Government has no respect for the privacy of law-abiding citizens."
The Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith said: "The questions have been devised to produce reliable and accurate data. The Office for National Statistics has carried out extensive consultations and testing to ensure that the questions are justified."
The way we lived: How the census has evolved
*1801-1831 The first census, on 10 March 1801, was collected by parish, there were no household details.
*1841-1901 The census of 1841 was the first to record the full name, sex, age (rounded down to the nearest five, if aged over 15) and occupation of each person living in a household.
In 1851, questions were added about the relationship of each individual to the head of the house.
*1911-1931 In 1911, census saw the introduction of a question about the fertility of marriage – prompted by the concern about falling birth rates – and a distinction between occupation and industry. This innovation not only produced more accurate results, but allowed new theories about social class to develop. In 1921, people were asked about their education and their means of how they travel to work.
*1951-2001 War meant that no census was taken in 1941, but peacetime prompted another expansion. In 1951 questions regarding place of work, educational standards, and household amenities were introduced. Examples include questions about educational qualifications (1961); how many cars each household owns (1981); and an assessment of an individual's health (2001).
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Comments
Here is a link I was sent recently....frightening but sadly in the UK this has overtones of reality
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/sc
As I recall, in the last census, some questions such as ethnicity were not compulsory to answer and I declined. Many others of my faith also did the same resulting in the released information suggesting a decline in my faith between 1991 and 2001.
Sebmel has the right idea, a short trip to France.
The only thing that bothers me is, have they left off the English/white ethnic choice off the census questions as some have said? If so, why? Would they, (new labour), actually be afraid of what the results of that and other related questions might be?
Funny, isn't it?
I found out about why some think the English aren't included in the 2011 census test. When you go to the Office of statistics on their 2011 page and click on the October test census for England, you get a blank page!! I wonder why?
Is there a prison sentence for not paying the fine?
Could you get a criminal record for not filling-in a form?
Fascist methodology without a clear-cut fascist ideology, what do you call that?
If you wish to protest, but not face a fine, then choose your answers at random, roll a dice, flip a coin ....
I might even try and get admitted to the local psychiatric hospital
Proof of postage is not proof of receipt...if it arrives...BIN IT !
Good idea, Sebmel if you go to France for the day, I and others will surely join you on the ferry, but isn't the UK Border Agency introducing E-borders? Just to keep track of us all?
http://www.travelbite.co.uk/editors-blo
Our leaders are criminals...i have nothing but contempt for these idiots
I shall be in a hotel somewhere on that date, just to screw up their figures
Its all starting to smack of 'are any of your grandparents Jewish'
I guarantee that mine wont arrive, and hence will be binned...sorry I mean, I will be unable to complete it, as I never received it.
What an excellent idea. This really opens up some interesting angles. Well, 'drlizmiller' you are a star.
The information is then made available to thousands if not millions of people.
What legal right does the government have to ask any of the questions?
Amongst other things this Act says:
1 Power to direct taking of census
(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, it shall be lawful for His Majesty by Order in
Council from time to time to direct that a census shall be taken for Great Britain, or
for any part of Great Britain, and any Order under this section may prescribe—
(a) the date on which the census is to be taken; and
(b) the persons by whom and with respect to whom the returns for the purpose of
the census are to be made; and
(c) the particulars to be stated in the returns.
The Act also says there are penalties if you do not complete the return when requested to do so.
This Act was passed by a Liberal coalition government headed by Lloyd George.
I don't think the Welsh Goat envisaged that we would ever have a Stalinist Government.
Go to this link and download one of the pdf documents on the right hand side.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011-censu
I will not be answering questions about my ethnicity, religion or the person with whom i spent the night, even though the census data are kept secret for 100 years (not forever, as the questionnaire falsely implies)
Fiction is wonderful. They, for all the huff and puff, lack the human resources to check if factual or not .Not even there in SA. where everyone was lumbered with a damn ID card.They still bullshined the census left right and centre. Nobody ever got fined.The whole thing was too vast a shambolic mess for them to sort out, and people had moved on by the time they got to their forms anyway.
Because there is, obviously, a point to it in that the census provides information that's useful in the forward planning of statutory public services.
But now you've got folk on here plotting ways (legal, if possible, but any will do!) to evade the thing.
Am I criticizing that? Not in the slightest: the change in attitude is entirely justified, and is solely attributable to the collapse of the public's trust for politicians and governments. The process began with arrogant government under Thatcher and has been completed by arrogant AND mendacious government in the New Labour years. Not to mention the corrupt/cynical nest-feathering by parliamentarians of both major parties which continues to come to light.
The result is that large numbers of ordinary Brits no longer trust the government's motives or integrity, and therefore withdraw their goodwill and readiness to co-operate.
The politicians are clearly aware of the truth of that, and do some ritual hand-wringing, and wittering about the need for "re-engagement". The give-away, when you listen carefully, is how often they see that in terms of us needing to re-engage with them, rather than them with us. Which suggests that, in their own minds, they see the fault lying with us, not with them.
Striking back by a withdrawal of co-operation is a reasonable enough response. But nothing will really change until we can change the political culture back to one where they work for us and are responsive to us, instead of the one we've currently fallen into, where we're responsive to them, are expected to jump to their tune, and are swingeingly penalized if we don't.
And that, I suggest, means voting next year for anyone but the two major parties, whose politicians both share responsibility for the state we're now in, and for the public disillusion reflewcted in this thread. If we don't use that one, but really significant, bit of power that we have left, we'll only have ourselves to blame if all we get under the next government is more of the same.
Principles aren't even in the picture. The politicians are part of a corporatocracy and the public are just seen as a resource to be exploited.
I am not telling people what to vote only that we will never change anything for the better voting for these 4.
Uncharted waters I know but anything must be better than what we have now.
We will only have ourselves to blame if any of these get into to power
I actually started voting for them back in the '80s, well before they'd got to their present level of support nationally, because I moved to a place where they were doing their "pavement politics" at local government level, and it was genuinely different from anything I'd seen before in the previous thirty years or so during which I'd been old enough to take an interest - though previously always a detached and non-committed one! - in the political process.
After a year or two, I took the plunge and joined the party, and became a bit of a local activist, which did mean that I got to know quite a few local councillors, and later - because the party did well in my area - some local MPs.
Now and again, I've come across the odd political bastard in the Lib Dems, arguably up to the standard of political bastardy that we've seen in the other parties in recent times. But, on the other hand, after an agonizing process in which they bent over backwards to be fair, they did throw the worst one that I encountered out of the party - and quite right too. Had they not, I'd have been reconsidering my membership and support.
To me they still seem different enough to be worth supporting, and so I'll still be giving them my vote next time - for the same reason that I originally joined them, because I think it truly is better to light a candle than just curse the darkness.
In the 19th and early 20th century there were far more personal and intrusive questions included in the Census.
It appears a lot of people are getting over excited and unecessarily rebellious about something which has been around since 1841. Those who suggest "sleepovers" in public parks, fields, and going abroad etc, are not coming up with novel or new ideas - it was all tried a long time ago in the 19th century by people who were probably a lot more courageous than today's rebels - but by and large the Census was reasonably accurate, and they are now greatly valued by genealogists.
Calm down everybody and stop blaming everything on the current government - I am no Labour supporter, but I recognise that the Census has been around much longer than the Labour Party has - in fact I think I am right in saying that it was a Tory government which first introduced the Census.
The corporatocracy does not exist, big business doesn't care about profits, it cares about you.
The recession is not an indicator that more wealth has shifted to the power elites, it is just one of those things that happens some time like rainbows.
We are not at war because war is profitable for the corporatocracy we are at war because there are some very bad men in other countries that hate us because they are jealous of our exciting lives and our many freedoms.
Religion is not a tool of mind control it is there because god is kind and wants the world to be a lovely place.
Evolution is rubbish, fossils are just fakes made by the makers of Jurrasic Park to make their movie more successful.
We should let the bankers have their bonuses because they do such a good job and their work is so important. We, the public, only make society work, they have to take care of the money and thats a very important job which only special people are allowed to do.
I'm going to fill in the census and give them my bank card, PIN number, DNA genetic make-up, and a CAT scan of my brain. Then i'm going to tell them everything about myself and my thoughts so that they can use the information to make a better world for everybody.
I'm just going to tick that last box and then put the whole thing back in the post, in a plain, unaddressed envelope, because I couldn't read the instructions.
My sole objection is that the data is not anonymous. A census is both sensible and clearly useful for the purpose of planning. But that purpose does not need my name attached to the data. Once our identities are attached the government (and now every town hall worker) knows far more about us as individuals than they conceivably need. Information *is* power. 'They' have too much power already, 'we' individuals have less and less.
@mh656: There are many ways in which the data could be kept anonymous, if the true intention was only to gain statistical data. The electoral voting process is an (imperfect) one example of how this could be done.
The damage to our historical rights to privacy have become ever greater, thanks to database technology (and yes, I am a professional database developer). The UK urgently needs to get very serious about protection of indivdual data which, these days, receives mere lip service.
The promise of keeping census data secret for many years was essential in the days when no-one would otherwise have filled in the form. Now that this 'secret' information will be available to hundreds of thousands of public service workers plus contractors, any such promise is now of course just a joke. Forty years ago, leaking census data would involve a fleet of trucks to carry the paper. Now it needs a USB stick. We all know that government is simply not able to keep the data secret.
Nothing has changed in the last 40 years to persuade me to complete the form - exactly the oppposite. I will again take the risk of a court appearance and refuse.
New Labour New Danger. How we scoffed then...
Also: "Householders will be required for the first time to give the sex and date of birth of any visitor staying that night. " This is cobblers - from 1851 the age and sex of visitors was given on the census, as well as disability.
AND someone found the Hackney 1831 census in a cupboard, which you can now get hold of on cd-rom.
And... "Householders will also be asked to state how many bedrooms are in their home, information that could affect the size of council tax bills" Well, the 1911 census made you state the number of rooms in your house (excluding sculleries), so this is hardly an innovation. Besides which, the council tax bandings are based on house values from several years ago, so it's not very accurate.
That all said... I do object to spending loads of time filling out humungous things like this! Though to be honest I think this is all a lot of worrying claptrap. Did they fine the Suffragetes who refused to fill in the 1911 census (as in, "if I can't vote, how can I be considered competent enough to fill in this daft form")? If you don't want to fill in a section, don't fill it in.
And surely the only reason there are 8 options for single/married/separated/widowed is to appease the homophobic a-holes who won't let same-sex partners refer to themselves as married without using inverted commas.
At least there isn't a question on this about whether or not you have an outdoor toilet. I assume the central heating question has replaced this, and to be honest, it's a pertinent question: it's actually quite surprising that there are people without central heating in Britain. Brrrr!