On 12 Feb 2020 at 09:25:31 GMT, "Jeff Layman"
wrote:

On 12/02/20 08:28, Richard Conway wrote:
On 12/02/2020 08:12, Jeff Layman wrote:
On 12/02/20 07:13, Andy Burns wrote:
The next census might be the last?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51468919

Just like the previous one was supposed to be the last?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10584385

More wasted money on legalised snooping. Why don't they just pay Google
for the info?

Every ten years I have fun trying to (legally) make it as difficult as
possible for the coders/OCR equipment to read my census return.

Well assuming a team of people are being paid to manually enter any
tricky forms, that's even more money wasted then. Well done.

I do my best. But it is a drop in the ocean compared to the overall cost
of a census.

The Census Act 1920 was a short, but very well written piece of
legislation which makes it impossible to refuse to complete a census
request. Well, you /can/ refuse, but it leads to a conviction, fine, and
another request to complete the census form. Refuse that, and another
fine, etc (maybe eventually leading to even a "contempt of court"
conviction). It's obviously a really heinous crime in the eyes of the UK
Government.

Nearly all the information available from a census is obtainable form
other sources (the birth, marriage, and death register is a good start).
Some countries have realised this and don't require a general census
(see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_and_housing_censuses_by_country#Methods _of_conducting_population_census).

If those countries can do it, why can't we?

Because we don't have decent administrative registers. Denmark, for example,
appears to keep comprehensive local registers:

https://www.statbank.dk/statbank5a/default.asp?w=2133

What are you odds, do you think, of the average local authority doing the
same? ;-)

Of course, if you think a census is nothing much more or less than a snooping
exercise always used to oppress you and others . . .

Cheers, Rob