Are you a gay ? Her Majesty wants to know.

[jumbler]

Do you guys have to add any additional information to link it back to yourselves?? Like a Social Security Number??

It’s pretty anonymous here. It’s not cross-checked against any other sources. Yes, you have to fill out a form if you live in a household. But seeing as you have the option to do it online (I’ve already done it), as long as your answers seem convincing enough, it’d be hard to prove you’d filled it out incorrectly.

You could complete details for just a single person. Or change the names or whatever. The collector is only going to call if you haven’t filled anything in, or sent it back.

[Parsifal]

I can imagine that a lot of right wing American politicians would love to ignore the census like that, but there's no legal way in the US to get around it except attempting to ignore information by not putting it into the set of questions for the census.  It's part of US law that a census must be taken with no option not to do it totally, though.

Right wingers aren't looking to ignore the census (in the U.S.).  Rather, they want to find ways to under-count blue states (e.g. by not counting illegals) so as to divert federal funds away from those states.

Do you guys have to add any additional information to link it back to yourselves?? Like a Social Security Number??

No, don't have to include the SS number.
I don't recall how anonymous the census is.  As I recall, they do know if you didn't return it though.  Can anyone answer more authoritatively about that?

[jumbler]

Do you guys have to add any additional information to link it back to yourselves?? Like a Social Security Number??

No, don't have to include the SS number.
I don't recall how anonymous the census is.  As I recall, they do know if you didn't return it though.  Can anyone answer more authoritatively about that?

If you don’t complete your census form, it’ll come up on a report. The collector will have to visit your home to either collect the form, give you a new one if you’ve lost it, or mark you off if you can provide a reasonable excuse (“it’s in the post”, “just done it online today”).

I didn’t end with any persistent refusals - meaning people who need to be targeted for further action. As I recall, only a very small number (less than 50) were fined across the whole UK. This was despite a huge amount of attention being paid to Lockheed Martin (contracted to provide the scanning and digitising technology).

However, the Census Coverage Survey is optional. We were asked to help out in another town one day, because the response rate was low. We soon discovered why - some double glazing guys had beaten us to it. So nobody wanted to open up.

[adidas]

A Census 2021 letter arrived in the post today...

[ladsnet]

GAY!

[jdcyl]

Inclusion of this census question is vital for establishing who is The Only Gay in the Village.

[Jwb52z]

Daffyd will fight you on that!

[jumbler]

So... I decided to enter the response code from the letter I was sent, and lo and behold... I was able to fill out the form all over again. Didn’t register the fact I’d completed it online at all.

So if everyone does it online and by post, you could double the population of the country overnight.

[ladsnet]

Another world beating success for HMG

[loverboy260]

So... I decided to enter the response code from the letter I was sent, and lo and behold... I was able to fill out the form all over again. Didn’t register the fact I’d completed it online at all.

So if everyone does it online and by post, you could double the population of the country overnight.

not sure if you are just joking - but anything like this its best to be accurate otherwise its a waste of OUR TAX PAYER money

[jumbler]

I jest, of course. But if you look at funding allocations and so on, it’s pretty obvious the Census makes bugger all difference to how much funding councils get. Or other public services.

---

It just provides the Government with a handy dataset.

[Jwb52z]

American government agencies may not be connected/interconnected enough or share enough information among and between the various parts, but they do actually, usually, catch when someone has done something too many times. Data analysts, who are actually one of the groups of people in the US government who do real work and don't just golf or schmooze like politicians, will notice things like that while looking for other things.

[adidas]

Census Day today!

Don't forget to complete - only took me 13 mins...!

[ladsnet]

Done mine.

But I'm sorry... in this day and age... what a waste of money.

Virtually all of it is/should be stuff the government already knows.
Whether I was born in the UK. Who I work for. Whether I hold a passport..
There was about 5 questions that they probably wouldn't know from existing data.. am I a poof... how do I travel to work...
and for that it must have cost millions.

[adidas]

I completely agree with you.
I was expecting lots of questions, there was hardly anything to be honest, I'm sure there were more questions of relevance in previous attempts...

[jumbler]

Virtually all of it is/should be stuff the government already knows.
Whether I was born in the UK. Who I work for. Whether I hold a passport..
There was about 5 questions that they probably wouldn't know from existing data.. am I a poof... how do I travel to work...
and for that it must have cost millions.

Actually, no. None of it. Because each department is different/has different IT/a silo mentality.

Partly due to the DPA/GDPR too, I’m sure, but there are very few interfaces between government departments and agencies (and even local government). None of them talk to each other, apart from DWP/HMRC. And possibly parts of the Home Office and Police/DVLA.

It’s very easy to fox the system too, for example, changing the spelling of your names/address or DOB slightly. These systems are not bright, do not use fuzzy logic, and would need a human operator to make sense of the data.

One of the reasons ID cards were suggested was to stop this sort of thing happening. To only make it possible to use one ID at a time. But of course many MP’s wouldn’t be able to sleep at night with that sort of thing, so they voted to abolish it.

It still does sort of exist - for foreigners, and residence permits. But they’re still not linked up. To get a proper idea of who lives where, you’d need to link councils with DWP/HMRC (they already are a little bit for Housing Benefit), and one of the credit reference agencies.

If you think that’s a nightmare, Duncan Campbell covered it in the 80s.

[Jwb52z]

Done mine.

But I'm sorry... in this day and age... what a waste of money.

Virtually all of it is/should be stuff the government already knows.
Whether I was born in the UK. Who I work for. Whether I hold a passport..
There was about 5 questions that they probably wouldn't know from existing data.. am I a poof... how do I travel to work...
and for that it must have cost millions.

It would be lovely, I think, if it worked that way with the US census also, but there are too many people who freak out about "privacy" and "freedom" and go bat crap crazy when anyone finds out anything they didn't directly personally say in the US.

[Tiuri]

they didn't directly personally say

These days, judging by Trump, even saying something on the record, on camera, is meaningless. To a certain extent, politicians have always been guilty of that, but he's certainly an extreme example.

[loverboy260]

i dont know how they dont KNOW who lives at the address we have an electrol roll - yet we still have to tell them how many ppl live, their names ages etc.. come on..

[Parsifal]

Which of the following best describes your sexual orientation?
This question is voluntary
[ ] Straight or Heterosexual
[ ] Gay or Lesbian
[ ] Bisexual
[ ] Other sexual orientation
(Write in sexual orientation)

They should be able to determine which of the first three without a census question just by seeing what porn you watch (assuming they know your gender).
Everybody watches ... and they watch you.
(the fourth choice, I don't know)