to resent the census requiring details of employer from years ago

I can see where it may bring back a bad memory of time in a person's life. I am surprised that they asked for info from 30 years ago. Many people would not be able to answer it with accuracy if they had many jobs in a particular time period. Perhaps I misunderstood your post.

But like others say, it is captured information to be used regarding the job sectors in certain areas of the country, not ultimately a snapshot of you. You should not be ashamed of what you do to support yourself. If someone perhaps just finished a university degree but no job prospects other than a fast food restaurant might feel ashamed of that period in their life, but the information might be used to see the number of people in a certain area with high levels of education compared to salary levels. It may help to bring down the cost of higher education.

Please do not take the census too personally, and know that the information will ultimately be used to improve society.

As an aside, I firmly believe all children should receive free school meals.

You never know what is going on in a child’s home, and every child should be sure of at least one hot meal a day in term time.

Of all our public spending projects, this one would do much good for comparatively little outlay.

In the LA taught, no - one knew who had free meals or not.
Parents either paid online, or before class, each child paid their lunch money into a machine, using a personal PIN.
Even before this system was introduced, there were definitely no separate queues for children eligible for free meals.
It was done so discretely to preserve the child's dignity.
I speak as someone, who got free school meals at my posh convent school. I was humiliated every morning by a particular teacher. I never told my mother, I didn't want to upset her.

Elderlyperson, I also believe you are overthinking and whatever happened in you job, has affected your perception.

I'm presuming, then that, if you have descendants, you are worried about finding it embarrassing in 100 years time when they ask you why you did such a lowly job, ElderlyPerson.

Don't worry, it will not be the only census they will research.

Yes, but why should he feel awful? if nobody commented or said anything, what was there to feel awful about? If no one noticed or ever commentated and just took it in the same incurious way we would be about the age of someone in the clas. I vagauely remember their were children at school with me who had free meals, but I wasn't quite sure who, and it wasn't anything that figured in our conversation.

I think most of us were completely oblivious to each other's home circumstances, unless we lived near them and anyway we just took other children at face value.

A photograph can contain lots of information about the past. Your clothes what you look like, past events can be etched into your face.

The questions in the census may seem random to you but the government knows what information it requires for its planning processes and asks only the questions relevant to that requirement, that is also why some questions vary from census to census.

With due respect I really think you are making a very big mountain out of a very small molehill.

greenlady102

ElderlyPerson

greenlady102

oh good grief! You might as well say that the employer is shackled to me and has to bear the mortification of being linked to all the good stuff that I got up to after I retired.....including drinking alcohol.

But the employer is not so linked. It is just the human being who is the victim of this outrageous nastiness.

how can the link only go one way?

Because the employer need have no link to me, but I have to write its name and address on my census form every ten years or risk being fined a thousand pounds and maybe getting a criminal record, even though I have done nothing wrong and unfairly lost the job because I would not tell lies.

To be brief ElderlyPerson, YABU, you are overthinking, conflating all sorts of issues, bearing grudges for whatever reason and fretting about something which is PAST and not the massive issue you have blown it up to be.
Dinner queues, early retirement, redundancy, feeling humiliated, slaves given their owners names or you feeling “branded” - FHS - calm down and aim for some perspective.

muffinthemoo

Elderly did you move from a high status job to a lower status one, or was the final job itself in some way embarrassing to you?

Yes. I took the lower job so that I could try to support myself.

It did not work out, through no fault whatsoever of mine. Now I am forced to be locked to it. Had I not tried to support myself I would not be locked to it.

SueDonim

^I was just meaning that for all its claimed purposes, the census only records some things but misses others, so it can be highly misleading.^

The census isn’t meant to cover the entire panoply of anyone’s life. It’s a snap-shot of the nation on one day. A day in the life of, if you like.

My family and I were living in Nigeria when they had a census in about 2006/7. We were included in the census but it’ll be fairly obvious to anyone looking at it in the future that we are not Nigerians and given the area where we lived, they will be able to deduce why we happened to be there. It doesn’t mean we’ll be forever thought of as living in Nigeria.

I remember once that years ago, Andrew Faulds, an MP who had previously been an actor, raised an issue about a census question and he was laughed at, but the then Speaker stuck up for him.

The issue was that his sister was concerned about a census question.

It wanted to know where she was born and asked her, if born outside the United Kingdom, the present day name of the country where her place of birth was located.

She was born in British East Africa, where her father was a missionary. The census question was requiring her to answer 'Tanzania' and she was concerned about how this could be used to undermine here citizenship status.

On a separate issue, I have had forms that I have had to fill in which have asked my nationality and had the instruction 'If British, leave blank.' No way, I thought, not leaving it blank. So I wrote Full United Kingdom Citizen in the box. Never leave boxes blank.

Elderly did you move from a high status job to a lower status one, or was the final job itself in some way embarrassing to you?

M0nica

A census form is a photograph not a film. It photographs things as they are the day the census happens. All sorts of things happen in the intervening years that are not recorded in the census, job changes,several house moves, children are born and die and never appear in a census.

It is just a photograph.

But it is not just a photograph.

A photograph records just that instant.

A census wants to go back about some things and disregard other things.

A lot can depend on how something affects oneself.

For example, when I was at school, the tables in the dining room were the same people every day, originally randomly assigned, you were then there permanently, mixed years. We had to pay dinner money each week. One boy, several years older than me did not pay, he had free school meals. Nobody commented. I was one who paid, like most people. I never thought then, but maybe that boy felt awful about it. Maybe he wished that he could pay just like everybody else.

Recently I saw somewhere that some school had a separate dinner queue for pupils who had free school meals. Totally wrong in my opinion. Nobody at a school should know who gets free school meals. It should be organised so that parents get a bill or pay by standing order and some pay nothing. Perhaps each child should not know whether he or she gets free school meals.

Ultimately it is only people who organise these things. THey could do a lot better. They should do a lot better.

ElderlyPerson

greenlady102

oh good grief! You might as well say that the employer is shackled to me and has to bear the mortification of being linked to all the good stuff that I got up to after I retired.....including drinking alcohol.

But the employer is not so linked. It is just the human being who is the victim of this outrageous nastiness.

how can the link only go one way?

I was just meaning that for all its claimed purposes, the census only records some things but misses others, so it can be highly misleading.

The census isn’t meant to cover the entire panoply of anyone’s life. It’s a snap-shot of the nation on one day. A day in the life of, if you like.

My family and I were living in Nigeria when they had a census in about 2006/7. We were included in the census but it’ll be fairly obvious to anyone looking at it in the future that we are not Nigerians and given the area where we lived, they will be able to deduce why we happened to be there. It doesn’t mean we’ll be forever thought of as living in Nigeria.

MawBe

I don’t get it - don’t you realise that you are a statistic - nobody cares - and words like “branded” or “humiliation” as opposed to your “high exalted status” do suggest serious, if irrelevant hang-ups somewhere.
Are you sure you aren’t Justin Welby- former Archbish now Big Issue seller?

I am not Justin Welby. I think he is still Archbishop of Canterbury.

I don't have a high exalted status.

A census form is a photograph not a film. It photographs things as they are the day the census happens. All sorts of things happen in the intervening years that are not recorded in the census, job changes,several house moves, children are born and die and never appear in a census.

It is just a photograph.

I always see humiliation as something we impose apon ourselves, not something other people impose on us.

Towards the end of my career I was interviewed for an internal post where the interviewe'rs whole purpose was to make me feel inadequate so he could then give the job to someone we both worked with. I put in a complaint about how the interview was conducted.

After HR had spoken to him he called me into his office and asked me whether I had been humiliated by the interview and my response was no, I hadn't, I had seen the interview as an attempt to humiliate me and it had failed. The only person who could humiliate me was myself. by agreeing to it.

So ElderlyPerson I do understand how humiliating some events can be, but you can unhumiliate yourself, by refusing to be humiliated. By now all those people involved in the event have moved on and completely forgotten about about the event. I very much doubt the senior manager involved in my little episode, would even remember me and I am sure all the others on the periphery of the event don't.

One of the joys of retirement is that you can rewrite the past. Remember the good things, if you ever discuss work with anyone, talk only about the good things and just forget about the difficult parts, we all have them and I am sure most of us revise the past.

Like some other posters I have no recollections of that question but I had the same job from which I retired for 15 years previous so perhaps it wasn’t on my online census

I wrote Jedi Knight on mine last time, perhaps you might do the same.

MawBe

^In the 1970s I had one job for several years between censuses and there is thus no census record of it^

Why on Earth should there be? Are your professional or academic achievements not enough in themselves?

I was just meaning that for all its claimed purposes, the census only records some things but misses others, so it can be highly misleading.

Maybe the consensus answer to the original AIBU question is 'yes' or is it polarised, or is it nuanced?

In the 1970s I had one job for several years between censuses and there is thus no census record of it

Why on Earth should there be? Are your professional or academic achievements not enough in themselves?

I don’t get it - don’t you realise that you are a statistic - nobody cares - and words like “branded” or “humiliation” as opposed to your “high exalted status” do suggest serious, if irrelevant hang-ups somewhere.
Are you sure you aren’t Justin Welby- former Archbish now Big Issue seller?

I hope that the information I gave might, in over 100 years times, give my descendants at least a little peek into my life.

Me too. I’ve been looking into my family history lately and also came across someone living on their own means, as well as an annuitant. Both from bog standard coal-mining families (like me), so I’d love to know where they got the funds from. Perhaps they made it up.

AcornFairy

When I filled in my 2021 census form the question ElderlyPerson homed in on just passed me by. But, as someone who has been researching their family history for more than 50 years, I hope that the information I gave might, in over 100 years times, give my descendants at least a little peek into my life. The census is only a snapshot in time but can be very enlightening. However, censuses can also be tantalising for family historians as so much can happen in 10 years and we are often left wondering why people moved to different parts of the country, why they changed their jobs, etc.

In the 1970s I had one job for several years between censuses and there is thus no census record of it.

Callistemon

You could have just written:
'Gentleman, living on own means'
Which one of my ancestors had written on an old census firm.

Yes I could. But I would have worried for months, even years, of the possible consequences of doing so. So I took the humiliation route. I wish that I had had the strength to fight, but I didn't, all I can do is let it out here in a safe environment.

When I filled in my 2021 census form the question ElderlyPerson homed in on just passed me by. But, as someone who has been researching their family history for more than 50 years, I hope that the information I gave might, in over 100 years times, give my descendants at least a little peek into my life. The census is only a snapshot in time but can be very enlightening. However, censuses can also be tantalising for family historians as so much can happen in 10 years and we are often left wondering why people moved to different parts of the country, why they changed their jobs, etc.