Census

[woollyideas]

What do people think about the forthcoming census?

I've applied for a job with Capita and have my phone interview tomorrow. I was feeling quite pleased about this (being broke and in need of a few extra quid) but the more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to have doubts.

I was totally against ID cards and the proposed NHS patient summary care records - not to mention the retaining of data of people who had been arrested and not subsequently charged. I think I hadn't really given the census much thought until now, though - well, not outside the 'Who Do You Think You Are' context, ie. I'd only really considered its value as a fairly basic record of who lived where/types of occupation held, etc... I think, too, because the census has quite a long history it has become 'accepted'. But I've just had a look at some of the same questions and am beginning to think that some of them go beyond 'basic' and into intrusive and I'm getting cold feet about wanting to do this job (if I was offered the post after interview, of course.)

What do people think about the census? Useful or not? Intrusive or not? Is there any justification for it in this day and age considering the amount of information that is already held on people?

This discussion is descending into tautology.

I morally object to Lockheed being involved in our great country's census, yes? So IF I still resided in the UK I would boycott it, yes? This is not the deluded rambling of a conspiracy theorist as that Hatti type implied and was backed up sycophantically by others. (MN is often like this. A thread will take on a mono opinion which must be defended and all the naysayers vanish.)

I do not trust a multinational like them to not use the data they collate for ulterior motives. Just as I didn't/don't trust the Lockheed coopted interrogators to not use torture in Iraq and Guantanamo.

Now I'm gonna stop as they're prob reading our exchange and will be round to my house to rendition me! (THAT IS A JOKE I add for the benefit of certain posers who confuse snidiness as humour. Hello, Hatti!)

POSTERS I meant tee hee

glasnost - saying you don't like Lockheed is fine. Protesting by refusing to participate in the census is fine, but it IS Civil Disobedience rather that a consumer boycott as you are refusing to do something that legislation says you have to do. So the consequences are correspondingly harsher.

What I don't think is valid is trying to claim that Lockheed's participation in this process poses a threat when you can't/won't define what the threat is/why this is the best/easiest way to acheive this.

So - "I don't like them" - fine.

"They are up to no good because I disagree with some of the other things they do" - not fine.

I don't wanto go into the threats their participation in the process pose here. Suffice to say the shit's gonna hit the fan in a couple of years. Resources are scarcer and scarcer and pseudo democratic governments driven by oil/arms/banking interests like UK/US will need ever more insidious ways of controlling their populations and repressing dissent.

Enough already. MN isn't the right place to discuss certain topics anyway.

Glasnost - that's the problem - this nudge nudge wink wink can't say on here stuff makes you look like Claig.

WHAT can the US government DO if they get the Census data that they could not do otherwise, and why would they need to get it in this way?

Oh I love that! Being compared to claig.

Let's put it like this. Why on earth would a gargantuan mind bogglingly profitable multinational like them have ANY interest in earning relative peanuts from collating data on a census? PR job?

That is an accolade deserved by the very, very few.

Stop lurking claig and give an opinion.

To qualify it is a sine qua non that one must be an avid Daily Mail reader, able to see the wood for the trees and to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, qualities rare in a Guardian reader.

I refer you to that Oracle of Truth, the Daily Mail

[[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360987/Fears-UK-census-security-US-firm-processing-details-stole-Obamas-student-records.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360987/Fears-UK-census-security-US-firm-processing-details-stole-Obamas-student-records.html

Bloody hell Claig, are you like beetlejuice or something? You only got mentioned twice as well ;)

galsnost - I imagine they are monetizing capabilites they developed elsewhere - the same way that Amazon has become a Cloud Computing supplier.

How do you feel claig that the Guardian and the Mail are one in expressing concerns over companies involved the census?

Thanks for the enlightening link. Esecially the news that Amir Khan would never sleep with Katie Price.

To be fair to Amir, I wouldn't sleep with her either.

I am not surprised that the champion of freedom and liberty, the Daily Mail, has concerns. I am somewhat surprised that the progressive Guardian has similar concerns, however.

Henry Porter's articles appear in the Observer. Concerns such as these are common to all right (as in opposite of wrong not opposite of left, natch) thinking people irrespective of political allegiance.

Mel C DOES look minging in that jumpsuit though doesn't she?