So whose brilliant idea was it to hold the census on the day after the clocks change? I got up at five in the morning, body clock time, to go to work, and now I am supposed to fill in this vast form. Or rather, the householder is supposed to do so. I'm not sure which of us that is. It seems a rather archaic concept. We own the property jointly, and most of our bills are paid by direct debit. Maybe it should be the one who contributes more in cash terms towards paying household bills and expenses? Or maybe the one who contributes more to domestic organisation? The honours there seem evenly split. I am responsible for arranging the cats' medical appointments, finding someone to look after the menagerie when we go away, booking builders and decorators, and the Christmas card list. Problems with telecoms, and anything to do with the central heating, fuel oil, the TV and Sky box, or drains are strictly not my department. We have another five weeks to argue about it before the enforcers come knocking at the door.
It's going to be difficult matching the details of our house to the options given in the questions about accommodation. The living area is split level and open plan, so I'm not sure if the downstairs bit counts as part of the same room, a different room, or part of the hall (in which case it doesn't count). If we were trying to sell the house the estate agent would call it two rooms, so we'd better go with that. The number of rooms built or converted for use as bedrooms is baffling. How do you know that a room was built as a bedroom? My mother's house has a ground-floor room that was allegedly built as a dining room, but since it won't hold a table, six chairs and six people it gets used as a study. Is somebody who needs a home office and buys a property with sufficient rooms to accommodate one supposed to impute intentions to the original builder? My partner says bedrooms are upstairs, but what about bungalows and flats? Our previous house was also split level, and two of the bedrooms there were downstairs. I don't understand why they want to know the number of bedrooms anyway, unless somebody is contemplating a George Monbiot billeting system (Our records show that you have bedrooms surplus to your household's requirements. Here is your new lodger). Asking about the floor area would make much more sense, except that we don't use that in the UK, unlike the Continent, and most people wouldn't know how to work it out. The local authority already knows roughly how big the properties in the district are, because they have been banded for council tax.
I'm not sure what to put for the central heating. We have a two log burning stoves and an open fireplace, so wood is a significant part of our heating mix. But apart from the warm air that rises by convection from the sitting room to the upstairs corridor, none of them heat multiple rooms, so according to the form they don't count as central heating. But if we had a stove with doors on both sides, mounted in a chimney between two rooms, like my brother-in-law has, then I suppose that would count as central heating. Or if we had a wood-chip boiler. But in the country many more people rely largely on stoves and fireplaces than have wood-chip boilers.
The DVLA already knows the number of cars or vans registered at this address. I suppose the number of vehicles not owned by us but available for our use might be of some use, but I'm not sure exactly what. Some people can't drive, choose not to drive, or live in the centre of a city with good public transport and dire parking. Living round here if you don't have a vehicle you would be struggling badly. Counting vehicles without knowing the context doesn't seem to get you very far.
Individual question 2 seems likely to upset some people, as it asks What is your sex [tick box] male [tick box] female. I wonder if the Office for National Statistics ran that one past the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community?
I don't see why my religion is any business of the State, though question 20 is voluntary. The options don't seem very nuanced. I am the child of a lapsed Anglican and a devout atheist, was baptised but not confirmed, attended a convent school at one time, am not a practicing member of any religion but do think about it. My religion should probably be described as Protestant agnostic. If I tick No religion I might be lumped in with the aggressive shouty atheists like Richard Dawkins, or the droning Humanists that go on about the iniquity of Thought for the Day, and I wouldn't like that. I could put Jedi, but I think that joke might be so ten years ago, and I'm not a great Star Wars fan. If it's worrying being aggregated with other forms of non-believer then goodness knows how different forms of believer feel about it (Catholic or Protestant? Sunni or Shia? Hey, whose counting?).
I suppose my job title is Plant Centre Assistant, though we don't go in for job titles much. As to briefly describing what I do, Sell plants should cover it. I don't see why the census needs to know the name and address of my employer, though. The tax man already does. I thought the census was supposed to be used at an aggregate level for planning services and infrastructure. Asking how far from my home my work is might be quite useful, but they don't ask that.
I hope it's the last one.
Addendum The householder turns out to be the person who volunteered to fill out the form on-line, partly to see if it worked (not me). I have decided my National identity is English, because of the Midlothian question. The householder forgot to include their A levels, so how they got into university is a mystery.
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