As a census manager in Central Manchester in 2001 the major problem was
complete lack of preparation for dealing with the quite large numbers
who are not literate in English. This difficulty is clearly not going
to be less in 2011, and I would need good evidence before I believed
that this did not also affect other surveys. Given the lack of response
we found I have little faith in any figures relating to migration or
deprivation or ethnicity. I am not sure that a national identity card
system will help with this problem. A fair proportion of those who did
not respond to the census are not citizens of the UK (and therefore,
presumably not entitled to identity cards), some are not here legally
and some have good reason for fearing authorities - quite apart from
those who simply did not understand the bumf that came through their door.
Martin Rathfelder
Director
Socialist Health Association
22 Blair Road
Manchester
M16 8NS
0870 013 0065
www.sochealth.co.uk
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Humphrey Southall wrote:
> At 10:14 01/11/2007, you wrote:
>> > There is already close to an expectation that 2011 will be the last
>> census
>>
>> I'm shocked to hear this. What about all the historical data that
>> censuses
>> (eventually) make available to future generations? Do the millions of
>> family historians out there know about these plans?
>>
>> Sue
> The idea there will be a new system of population recording post-2011
> has been quite widely circulated via ONS discussion papers, although
> they maybe are not as blunt as I have been.
>
> If the population registers become publicly accessible after 100
> years, I do not think the family historians have much to worry about.
> Similar data is very heavily used, for example, in Sweden. NB with
> such a system you can still have a kind of census every ten years, but
> it is a statistical analysis of a snapshot of the register.
>
> What are maybe more of an issue for Radstats are:
>
> (1) The plan is of course linked to "identity cards", although far too
> much of the discussion focuses on the cards themselves which are
> arguably not even an essential part of the scheme: it is now entirely
> possible to provide every policeman, immigration officer, etc with
> mobile terminals linked to the central database, so they can
> immediately check name and address information you give, see a photo
> from the database, and maybe check biometrics. The key point is that
> there would be a new legal obligation to register changes of address.
>
> (2) All this assumes that people have just one "home address" which is
> a location they sleep pretty much every every night except when on
> holiday. This seems to be less and less true. One of my own hopes
> for 2011 is that it will explore residence patterns in new detail,
> although I fear it will have lots of rather wooly questions about
> "identity". Something else that is not widely accepted but needs to
> be is that on most issues the big government sample surveys are not
> just much cheaper than the census, and so can happen more frequently,
> but more accurate: the justification for the census is that it
> provides really detailed breakdowns, especially geographically.
>
> There is another meeting of the 2011 advisory panels next week, and it
> would be useful to have other people's comments on what questions
> should be in it. My sense is that the income question is a lost
> cause, although I think it was included in the big test in May.
>
> Humphrey Southall
>
> ====================================
> Humphrey Southall
> Reader in Geography/Director,
> Great Britain Historical GIS Project
> Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth
> Buckingham Building, Lion Terrace, Portsmouth PO1 3HE
>
> GIS Project Office: (023) 9284 2500
> Home office: (020) 8853 0396
> Mobile: 0796 808 5454
>
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>
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