Censimilia

The defence contractor Lockheed Martin is now tasked with organising the 2011 UK census. This has understandably provoked a knee-jerk response against the whole process in a part of the populace. This is a chronic case of throwing the baby out with the bath water: however objectionable sub-contracting yet another governmental function may be, however repellent it is that it's farmed out to merchants of death (a tobacco company would. for example, be a more ethical choice), censuses do actually need to be carried out. Without a record of the structure of the country, allocating public funds for essential services becomes a matter of guesswork and leaves further room for regionalised nepotism besides that. It's infantile to suppose that the fact that it involves an American corporation somehow makes us more vulnerable - as if any corporation actually belongs to any single country any more, as opposed to being just a vehicle driven by its pool of shareholders' interests - and doubly so to shoot ourselves in the feet by boycotting the process. It's as indefensible as refusing to vote: opting out does not give you power, it just means, instead of having a voice which may seem so faint it's drowned out, you really exert no influence at all.
I still wouldn't recommend working for them, though. Let the census fail through service inefficiency, not through the public being unhelpful. And when we reach the age of porcine aviation, we might yet get a system that doesn't feel dirty for having to participate in.