M0nica
An individual's information on a census form is going nowhere. There are strict rules over confidentiality and always has been. When have you read a story of the census details of an individual coming out into the public sphere? This information will not be given or seen by anyone before 2121, if then.
I appreciate your concern, when you end up leaving employment under circumstances you have not chosen at a time you would not have chosen, it is bruising. But you are not alone and it is happening to people more and more these days.
I left work under a voluntary redundancy scheme, not because I wanted to, but I realised that my profession had become redundant and if I didn't jump when asked and when I could benefit from the soft landing from the severance parachute, once the scheme ended, I would just be pushed out of the door without a parachute.
As for 'thats life' well wherever there is a cut off date someone will be just the right side of it, someone else just on the wrong side. someone will be half a centimetre to join the police force, someone will just creep through. One 5 year old will just get through the low height door to get into a child's entertainment, the next will be too tall.
Life is full of these 'that's life' moments we just squeak into or squeak out of something. We win some, we lose some. but - that's life.
I did read of a case of information given for a census being used outside the census some decades ago. It made the newspapers.
A man put on his census form that he ran his business from his home.
Two days later he got a letter from the council demanding that he pay business rates on his home.
He complained. It turned out that the man who was collecting and collating the census returns as a short term extra job, was a local government officer (lots of them were) and in fact worked in the rates departmentof the council.
The man lost his appointment as a census official because he had broken the agreement that what he learned doing the census work was confidential.
As for height for rides, I have seen adverts for these where it states in the asterisked bit that height restrictions apply, but does not say what the restriction is and whether it is a minimum or a maximum.
I remember calling at a motorway service area where there was a bouncy castlec attraction for a fee and there was what lloked like a hastily prepared notice scrawled on what lloked like part of an old box that said "Children only". So perhaps something had happened and they didn't want it happening again!
Yes, there are such thresholds. It does not make them right though. With modern computers there need not be cliffedge thresholds, there could be gentle slopes. It just needs a bit of care o be taken when rules are devised.
