Here's a question which has been troubling me. It's about the census (which we know I'm a big fan of). Every household has to fill in a form, yes? Otherwise you get fined £1000 (in theory). But how do they know whether you've filled in all the people?
Like, what was to stop me from just listing myself and not adding Sister Smile? I didn't obviously, because that would be Lying On A Form, and I Do Not Do That, out of Principle. But I could have done that. Sister Smile would not have cared (she thought the form was voluntary anyway). Would that mean that as far as the government is concerned, she had vanished? Would they notice? What if I had a pet and added them? I could make up information for them. Would anyone notice that a new person had appeared?
I think what confuses me is that I have never really understood why the government doesn't know who lives where. I mean, quite a number of government departments send me letters, about things like tax, and my car, and rates. Any they gave me my birth certificate. Twice, in fact, because I lost the original one.
I suspect it is all some sort of thing whereby people are not happy with the government knowing this information, because that would involve joining the dots from one agency to another, and that would be very Big Brother and so on. Anyway, if they did that, I would not have got to fill in the Census form, so I'm not saying I mind. I'm just saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment