GUESS WHO IS READING YOUR CENSUS? by Christopher Draper

YOU are legally compelled to complete a census form this Sunday 21 March 2021. According to the form and advice booklet this information gathering is conducted by the “Office for National Statistics” but it’s been privatised with the 2021 contract run by “LEIDOS” (HQ Reston, Virginia, USA). LEIDOS is listed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as the 19th biggest arms and military services company in the world.

LEIDOS Who?

In 2019 the military IT and support service contracts operated by LEIDOS were worth $5.3bn. Last year LEIDOS spent $1.65bn of their profits acquiring Dynetics - a military hardware company. Dynetics is a developer of “future defence technologies” for the US military, including long-range hypersonic missiles, ground-based laser weapons and the Gunsmoke battlefield intelligence microsatellite.

Assisting Warmongers

If you don’t accurately complete your census form you can be fined £1,000 and given a criminal record but some peace-loving hippy types aren’t keen to assist LEIDOS in maximising their profits and have devised an imaginative response.

Completing the census online saves LEIDOS the time and trouble of processing the paper alternative. The more LEIDOS is able to use machines to open, scan, read and record information from paper census forms the more profit it makes on the contract. The more you frustrate this process, the more LEIDOS have to employ and pay people to manually record information, cutting into its profits and minimising its ability to develop ever more deadly weapons of war.

Unfortunate Errors

Courageous individuals might simply refuse to complete any census form and suffer the legal consequences but many more might wish to minimise LEIDOS profits whilst complying with the law. Of course, even those of us anxious to complete the form with the utmost accuracy might inadvertently make mistakes and regrettably such errors might cost LEIDOS time and money to rectify, for example you might;

a) Phone 0800-328-2021 and demand a paper form “as I can’t cope with this modern technology”.

b) Perhaps you might inadvertently enter some answers upside down making the information unreadable by machine.

c) Or fail to properly locate answers in the boxes provided.

d) You might even correct a serious error by stapling an amended version onto the form.

e) Perhaps a page might accidentally get torn and you clumsily mismatch the writing as you sellotape it together again

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f) If like me, you’re addicted to doodling you might casually fill in some of the white gaps in the bar-codes that make each page uniquely identifiable to electronic scanners.

g) Finally, when you put your completed form into the census envelope be careful that you don’t get it back-to-front because if the return address isn’t clearly visible in the little window you might cause unnecessary delay and expense.

h) NB Under no circumstances should you indicate on the outside of the envelope that;

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IS PAYING LEIDOS – AN AMERICAN MILITARY CONTRACTOR £65.1m TO PROCESS THESE CENSUS FORMS!

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