On 06/03/2021 16:31, GB wrote:
On 06/03/2021 13:37, alan_m wrote:

Through the post today I received a request to fill out the census form
with the threat if I didn't I would get a fine of up to £1,000

It looks as if Professor Sir Ian Diamond thinks everyone has internet
access,

Go to www.census.gov.uk and select "start census"

If you want a paper form go to the same URL!



It's well worth filling in the census form accurately. Provision of
local services is based on it.

You forgot the winking smiley...

To the extent local services are provided, of course.

Well, it might have been true 150 years ago when most people were born,
lived, married, had their children, and died without moving from the
place they were born. Today it's completely different and most people
move around many times throughout their lives, often hundreds of miles,
or abroad, and back again. A census every ten years is a pointlessly
expensive exercise in obtaining and analysing out-of-date information.
If its local services that information is intended to provide it could
be obtained more accurately and quickly through county and district
councils, and many other sources of information, such as GP surgery
registration info (anonymised, of course). There is. of course, a vast
amount of information already online for the majority of the population,
which is far more up-to-date than any census will ever be.

So, despite previous UK governments saying they were going to stop the
census (was it before the previous one or the one before that?), here we
are again. It can only be for yet another form of official snooping -
and isn't the UK already known around the world as one of the most
snooping democracies around?

Countries do not need to perform a census on their whole population
every ten years. The Netherlands have not had a census for 50 years; the
Scandinavian countries base their data on registers and sampling. Other
countries also base their data requirements on, for example, a 10%
sample every year or two.

--

Jeff