How can the cost have doubled in just 10 years? This helps explain why the national debt has doubled in the last 10 years. Pretty scary to think we are now in debt to the tune of £59,000 per head in Britain.
Then there's the bad couple of million - allegedly... I think it's going to be yet another expensive waste of time, which seems to be the MO at the moment. I certainly don't feel under any particular obligation to comply and I'm sure there are plenty that simply won't.
Why change something when it does not need it? How is it going to be improved? Some bright-spark coming-up with another stupid idea. Have they not got more important things to think about? Can i have a easy job like these muppets to think of these things? They are paid a vast amount of coin for this, & more importantly ( WE PAY) them! Nobs.
Picture the scene 100+ years from now; a keen researcher is searching the records..."where the hell was my 'n' times great-grandfather Idler in 2021?" Yes, I now regret claiming to be a "4 foot circus clown" in the 1971 census. Whatever the Gov choose to do with this census information, I see it as a fascinating historical document that might just be of interest to someone in the future. When you think about it, the Census process should be getting cheaper, as people used to travel from door-to-door collecting the details from each residence. Computers have made everything more expensive, but also more interesting.
Read an article yesterday (which I now can't find) that said a large part of increasing expense in the US (from where this 'is there a better/cheaper way to get the info?' seems to spring from) is down to widespread resistance to giving any information to anybody, which then requires a visit by human census-gatherers - on average several visits. Labour was cheap in 1841, & isn't so any more.
I wonder what the real labour cost was in 1841. I assume most people couldn't read or write at that time, so those 'census takers' filling in the info, not only needed basic literacy skills, but probably had to know (or make up*) the spelling of peoples names. If I'm right then census takers were a select bunch of educated people that could (presumably) have spent their day doing something more profitable. On the other hand, the Victorian period was a time of great disparity; most people were dirt poor, some were doing OK, while others had so much wealth they didn't know what to do with it. *I wonder how they knew our surname was Davis and not Davies?
Possibly not a valid comparison/analysis. Back in 1841 literacy and numeracy was much much lower and a great many people would be incapable of completing a census form themselves. Back then labour may have been cheap but literate labour was scarce and in real terms we were a much poorer nation - the state had fewer resources - but the census had to be doe the way that it was - there was no other way of doing it.
Even the rich were in many ways poorer than today. Even a great house was often draughty and cold and certainly poorly lit. A middle class man probably owned no more than three shirts - one to wear, one in the wash and one for best. It wasn't until mass produced cotton clothing and machine knitted woolens took off that people owned the clothes that most today would deem essential rather than luxurious. Before the railways no matter how rich you were it still took well over a day to travel from London to Manchester even if you could afford strings of horses and travel non stop for 24 hours. There was so much we take for granted today that no money could buy then.
pointless doing a census when the figures will be million plus out anyway moving on old costs here Wages and Prices | A Family Story
To put the 1m in context, it represents about 1.5% of the population. So it should give Govt a good idea of what is what.
I'm not surprised it'll be expensive. How much would you want to knock on a caravan door or wander into the less-frequented areas of even our smaller cities? Then there's the cost of all the translators! As for my own reluctance, I'm an evolutionary deadend, so that probably colours my judgement a bit. Of course, I prefer to turn that on its head and consider myself a pinnacle of evolution!
Still expensive to send people out now. And the number required seems to be on the rise as so many of us evade being logged. Found the article again. US stuff, but presumably similar issues. https://www.nap.edu/read/4805/chapter/5
And the state is better able to afford it now. In any case it was bloody expensive then as given the lack of transportation and communications overseeing officers had to be sent out to live in local hostelries for weeks
