A friend who works for the census...
... has told me that partially completing and returning it is the best way of being non-compliant, whilst avoiding prosecution. They have instructions to visit (possibly daily) 'soft refusers' - people who make excuses for not doing it, and to refer 'to be prosecuted' people who simply refuse, on ideological or political grounds, to fill it in at all. But my friend thinks that no action is planned for partially completed forms.
posted by Gill at
21:29
13 Comments:
Thank your friend for me please :)
IIRC, last time we left it so long that we were asked to "just fill in the basics" and that was accepted.
I will, Mieke :)
Anonymous yep, it sounds like they just need *something* from each household.
My friend also said they're looking for an 80% completion rate from each area, so if you happen to live in an area with a high completion rate overall, you probably won't get bothered by them.
She also said (I forgot to put this in the main post) that they're only contracted until the end of May, so although you might get daily visits as a 'soft refuser' until then, they should stop after that. Their instructions are then to 'guess' the info for your form, based on the info you've given them in conversation prior to that.
Excellent. I'm happy to do that!
I forgot something else! There are valid, acceptable reasons for non-completion. I can't remember them all, but I know bereavement was one of them.
Can probably find out the rest if anyone needs to know.
Bereavement? Of, say, a mother-in-law?
How long ago can this bereavement be?
LOL Ian, I don't think mothers-in-law came in for a mention per se..., assuming you were thinking in general terms...! ;-)
Dave, I don't know. I imagine a person is as bereaved as they say they are, for as long as they need to be. No idea though. Want me to request more details?
i'm mourning our liberty
P.s. Word verification is "fines"! very funny UK PLC !
Urgh! How does it do that?
I'm mourning our liberty too, although I suspect it might have been dead (or dying) for an awful long time.
But as in Soviet Russia, we have our families, our friends and our networks. And now the Internet, for as long as it's ours to use.
Maybe true, intrinsic liberty never does die, actually. Maybe it just goes underground for certain periods of time.
Thanks Gill, I'm wondering if you could check out with your friend what their attitude is to people who make it difficult whilst filling it out partially? Such as blocking out all the barcodes so that the machine can't read it and writing answers outside boxes. Writing information about Lockheed Martin over the spaces etc.?
Hi Nettle, we did talk a little bit about that, and I think my friend's opinion was that if the form is still readable it would be processed as normal, but if it was not readable, the person might be asked to fill out another form.
I'll check again and get back to you.
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