WHO AM I?

I have recently been through the trials and tribulations of tracing my ancestral roots. Many years ago my wife and me did the same for her side of the family. It turned an already spectacular holiday into something magical. We met people whom her father had grown up with, we visited the church where he received his first Communion, the river where he caught his first salmon, the house in which he grew up and the town where he spent the latter part of his teenage years.

Her father was still alive when we made the trip and he gave his full blessing for our fact-finding mission. It soon became apparent to us both that some of the stories her father had related to us about his home town and the escapades that he and his friends were party to, were in fact, not the embellished tales that we thought but truthful tales of triumph over hardship and a talent which was recognised at an early age but never taken to its true potential.

Most of all, we both came away with an understanding as to why my wife’s father would not go back to the land of his birth, the land which had shaped him and the people who had walked, talked and laughed with him in his youth. He did not want to lose the essence of that time before he left nor, did he want to see change in the town or the people. All had become treasured memories, like a pristine cake expertly covered in icing which becomes too precious to cut. 

Soon all of that will be lost. The government want to abolish the National Census a practice established over two hundred years ago because, ironical given today’s figures,  the powers that be of the time thought that the population was rising too quickly (16,000,000) and were afraid of a French-style revolution. One of the proposals is to replace it with information gathered from stores, banks, and estate agents. The official line  is that the census costs too much. (£500m)

That is the official reason and, given Osborne’s penchant for austerity measures one could believe that there is an element of truth in it. However, I think that it is obvious that a statement such as that can only be a lie. Or, at the very least, an economy of the truth. Given the surge in population in this country over the past ten years because of a deliberate policy of open borders by the insidious Labour Party and the equally insidious Coalition, is it any wonder that the government want to hide the true extent of this mismanagement of the UK population? 

The census is much more than a tool for chasing down your family roots.To quote from nidirect government services:

‘With statistics from the census, central and local government can allocate funds, decide future policy and plan important services such as:

• population - knowing how many people live in an area helps central government allocate funding - local government also uses this data to plan what is needed in their local areas
• health and disability - health services and policies are planned around the census data so that the necessary services are provided where they are needed
• housing - housing needs can be much better planned if we know what the demand is now and likely to be in the future
• employment - by establishing how many people work in different occupations and industries, census information can be used to help plan jobs and training policies
• ethnic groups - census information can be used to help allocate resources and monitor policies to ensure that all groups are treated equally
• transport - identifying how and where people travel to work and study will help us understand the pressures on our transport systems and improve planning for roads and public transport
• education - census information can be used to help plan for education resources, such as schools and teachers’

Call me a cynic but I just do not trust this government. They have already proved that they cannot guarantee the safety and security of our citizens. Gangs from Eastern Europe control large parts of our major cities, carrying out their illicit dealings with impunity. The Coalition have cut Front-Line services to the bone, meaning that the Emergency Services are stretched to the limit. The police can no longer police our streets effectively and data held on the public by government departments is being sold off to the highest bidder.

Is it any wonder then that they want to cut out the one quality assurance process which really works? 

If, as the government wants, computerised records of people, which are held by banks, petrol companies, major retail outlets and utility companies, are used then surely this is a breach not only of our Human Rights but, illegal under the Data Protection Act?

We will all be well and truly into the Orwellian nightmare whereby the government can track you from birth to death and all stops in between. It is, in my opinion, a step too far!

One of the arguments put forward by the government through the Office of National Statistics  (ONS), apart from the cost factor, was that because of mass immigration the census as we know it has become too complex and cumbersome. They argue that many immigrants simply do not fill in the census and / or, because we have a migratory population, it is increasingly difficult to pin people down at the time of the census. I would argue that everyone with a National Insurance number be required by Law to complete a census either hard copy or online every time one is due. I would also suggest that the Border Agency (or whatever it is called nowadays) be made to track down all immigrants, legal or otherwise and make them fill in a census form.

Hard work, difficult work but, a necessity if we are going to get a realistic figure to determine the true population of this country.

I do not ascribe to the theory that migrant workers should be exempt from a National Census, If they are living and working in this country then they are using this country’s resources. Because the local authority in which they are working is responsible for those resources it is only fair that they know exactly how many people are using them. Without that knowledge, how are they going to allocate money and resources through their local budgets sufficient to meet the needs of the local community?

No, the good old census is more than just a head count. It is a valuable tool and one which must not be lost to fiscal foolery. It is also a thorn in the side of the EU. In their ‘Federal Bubble’  there is no place for an accurate head count from within Member States. It causes them problems, it shows up their appalling lack of respect for Sovereign Territory. It also lays bare the calculated trafficking of cheap labour from country to country within the EU. I would suggest this to be a major cause of economic instability within the Union and one which was orchestrated by the faceless suits in Brussels and Strasbourg.

We must send a message to the Coalition detailing why the census must stay. It isn’t out of any sense of nostalgia that I suggest this, more from a position of anger and frustration at a government which uses the people it is supposed to protect as tools in a dodgy EU experiment.

I will be writing to my MP to demand that he do something about this mass auction of private data which will surely take place when the government calls time on the census. I would hope that many more will follow my lead and bombard the ONS and their MP’s with letters of complaint. 

I will also be reminding my MP that next year is crunch year for LibLabConDem and the following year could see the nail go into their collective coffins. For too long they have ignored a somewhat apathetic electorate but now that the apathy has reached many a wallet, people are waking up to the fact that they are being led by conmen and that a change is needed. A change which will come a lot sooner than the present incumbents of the HofC think!