Who’s filling your blanks?

As the draft of the 2011 U.K. census enters its finalization, critics are already calling it the most cumbersome and invasive in the nation’s history. Of particular concern is a question requiring form-fillers to list the name, age, sex and race of anyone who spent the night in their home on census night. It may well be a new method for keeping tabs on Parliament members, but it’s coming across to critics more as governmental confirmation of the opinion that Brits are a creepy lot of panty-sniffing Peeping Toms.

Like the fetid Corpse Flower, the U.K. census springs up once every 10 years, each time longer and each time more intrusive. Tory Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Nick Hurd complained that the census as it is being drafted shows Labour’s continued contempt for “the privacy of law-abiding citizens” and accused the government of bedroom snooping.

“Just because the government has the legal powers to ask these questions does not give the state the licence to ask anything they want,” Hurd said.

Speaking for the other side, Cabinet Office Minister Angela Smith says the Office for National Statistics “carried out extensive consultations to ensure the questions are justified.”

by SCOTT SAXON