UK Census 2011

[MrZigster]

Nosey bastards is what I think.

Loved this from The Independent's letters page March 11th though.

Receipt of my census form has left me both angry and delighted. I am angry that the law is forcing me to give personal information to a unit of Lockheed Martin, an armaments corporation that profits from death and destruction. I am delighted that Question 20 provides me with exactly the right number of spaces to tell them that my religion is Stop Selling Arms.

Philip Gilligan, Littleborough, Greater Manchester

[jump]

I intended to fill mine out but it's now coaster on my coffee table.

Where's all the Jedi religion hype from last time gone?

[bunique]

As someone who works in a local authority and really relies on Census data, please don't put joke answers on your census form, it makes service planning a right ballache

[philipsteak]

I intended to fill mine out but it's now coaster on my coffee table.

Where's all the Jedi religion hype from last time gone?

[harderfaster]

Given the gvt's recent balls ups with respect to data protection, I'm a little concerned. To be fair though, it's no more information than hackers could get from several different sources anyway. But it just seems to be handing it to them on a plate...

[MrZigster]

I'm not sure if it's meant to be a jokey answer though.

I edited the original quote a bit because the guy was actually asking for "me & all other religionists" to enter "Stop Selling Arms", but thought that any mention of the R word 'round 'ere and threads soon seem to get hijacked and go off topic.

If you feel you need to be counted as a +1 for whatever religion, or are afraid of being fined £1000 for giving false information, I notice that Q17(?) is one of those "space intentionally left blank" things. You could write "Stop Selling Arms" there.

But if you give false information, how will they track you down? Eh? Eh?

I wish there was enough space to write "Of all the companies to give a national census contract to, surely one of the biggest arms companies on the planet is a bit spooky and big brother smelling, even if they do have the best technology".

As for what happened to all the Jedi hype? I often enter data into a government database. Jedi is now an option in the drop down menu for religion, though that could just be the programmers humour though.

Edited March 16, 2011 by MrZigster

[bunique]

I've had this discussion with someone recently - the contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin 2 and a half years ago. I can't help thinking the time for protest was then, not now.

[jump]

Given the gvt's recent balls ups with respect to data protection, I'm a little concerned. To be fair though, it's no more information than hackers could get from several different sources anyway. But it just seems to be handing it to them on a plate...

[nightcrawler13]

i put my religion down as Pirate

[bunique]

[t8yman]

I put jedi down last time. atheist is going in there this time. If I can even be arsed to return it

Edited March 17, 2011 by t8yman

[Snufflebutt]

As someone who works in a local authority and really relies on Census data, please don't put joke answers on your census form, it makes service planning a right ballache

[bunique]

Assessing demand for services? We're currently relying on ONS population estimates based on the last census to work out how many children there are in our LA and using that information to plan services with increasingly dwindling resources. It's very frustrating.

[t8yman]

I honesty can't think for the life of me what use knowing my religion is to a local authority. I'd also say there's a number of people who don't even know what their religion can be classed as - (agnostic? atheist? humanist?)

Edited March 17, 2011 by t8yman

[bunique]

[Snufflebutt]

Assessing demand for services? We're currently relying on ONS population estimates based on the last census to work out how many children there are in our LA and using that information to plan services with increasingly dwindling resources. It's very frustrating.

[Paul ™]

If I can even be arsed to return it

[llcoolphil]

knowing how many children there are is very different from knowing what religion someone is. being religious is a glorified hobby - but there isnt questions on how many people for example, play golf.

I'm not against the census and I'm not religious. I'm just strugging to see how knowing how someone spends their sunday mornings can be of benefit to anyone. I think the 'write no religion instead of jedi' misses the point. If I was religious, I might put jedi anyway because its none of anyones business what my religion is.

[eFestivals]

If 75% of respondents say they are christian, it legitimises spending public money on faith based projects such as schools. If only 5% claim to have a faith, spending becomes more secular. If ypu dont think people with imaginary friends should be running services, dont tell them you're a jedi or a pirate

That would be fine if the same "legitimises spending public money" also applied for no-religion - it does not.

In law there is a requirement for public money to be spent promoting religions to children, and I'm not sure if things have now changed but it was the case that every child had to have a number of religions promoted to them at taxpayer expense.

If that was an 'educational tradition' then I'd have less of an issue with it (still an issue, but less of one), but it's not even that. It's a nutty idea that's been cooked up sometime within the last 20-ish years at some point - and yet the religious like to pretend that their fairies at the bottom of the garden are being more persecuted now than they've ever been.

[t8yman]

at the risk of turning the thread into another god bashing thread, are people aware that RS, or RE (depending on where you are) is a compulsory subject for schoolkids doing their options? I was stunned when I went to the options "briefing" at my daughters school a coupla months ago when I found that RE was compulsory alongside maths, english, PSE, and a few others. what a f**king waste of a learning opportunity.

saying "atheist" on your census is a good way of registering religion's irrelevance in todays society.

[eFestivals]

at the risk of turning the thread into another god bashing thread, are people aware that RS, or RE (depending on where you are) is a compulsory subject for schoolkids doing their options? I was stunned when I went to the options "briefing" at my daughters school a coupla months ago when I found that RE was compulsory alongside maths, english, PSE, and a few others. what a f**king waste of a learning opportunity.

saying "atheist" on your census is a good way of registering religion's irrelevance in todays society.

yep - that's precisely what I was referring to. :angry:

So, it makes a mockery of phil's comment about how the question about religion "legitimises spending public money on faith based projects", because it's already full legitimised in law thru the national curriculum, and there's no reverse side to it - there is no spending on no-faith projects, there are only things where faith and no-faith is not a part of that thing (which is something very different).

When I went to school back in 'the dark ages' () there was at least the option for parents to withdraw their kids from any or all religion-based instruction or learning - now it's enshrined in law that all kids have to be indoctrinated about it whether they want it or not.

And the result - with my kid at least - is that he's ended up accepting it as somehow right (while not believing it himself), because "if there wasn't anything to it then it wouldn't be taught in school". He refuses to consider dismissing it on the same basis that he (and everyone else) dismisses other things in life, precisely because of that legally enshrined basis.

[Gre]

there is no spending on no-faith projects, there are only things where faith and no-faith is not a part of that thing (which is something very different).

[eFestivals]

Seriously though, laws are subject to change (supposedly) with the will of the people. If enough people say that they are atheist, that adds weight to the argument to stop assigning the money to that purpose.

sounds great in principle - but seeing as compulsory religious indoctrination at school came about without 'the will of the people' - it was one of that religious nutter Blair's little pet ideas, if I'm remembering rightly - then it gets to show thaqt se4nse doesn't necessarily come into these things.

On the other hand, our RE lessons were more to do with learning about the other cultures of the world - once we got to high school (mid 90s) I don't recall Christianity being taught at all - at a school in an area where the population was 99+% white/British/Christian/you know what I mean. I don't really see anything wrong with that, other than perhaps the title Religious Education.

It is (or at least was) stipulated that RE teaching at Primary (if not Secondary) level had to spend at least 50% of the time teaching people about Christianity - which is outrageous.

As a primarily Christian country where the establishment has a solid Christian base, then it can be sensibly assumed that anyone who had an interest in Christianity already had knowledge of it and would pick up further knowledge of it via their interest in it, while those who had no interest had no need to know more about it because Christianity's impact on them would be almost non-existent (outside of religious nutters knocking on their door trying to convert them ). Despite all of that 'not wanting to know' people still come to knows, because so much about it is ingrained within our society.

I've less issue with less familiar - so non-Christian - religions being explained to kids as cultural education, and even don't mind the same amount of time being allocated to Christianity, as long as there's regular reminders around it all that just about every religion rejects the possibility of truth within each of the others (and exposing the 'tolerance myth' by doing so), and that many people reject the idea of truth in aqny of them.

But to allocate 50% exclusively to Christianity isn't education, it's indoctrination. And then people wonder why an increasing number of today's kids compared to the past reject scientific discovery in favour of fairy stories. :angry:

[rexclark]

i put my religion down as Pirate

[bunique]

Afaik parents can still withdraw their children from RE