Sometimes the story is something that never happened. And what never happened to me is that I neither filled in nor ever sent in my census form, whenever it was. They sent me a census form, so they do know where I live. I kept the form in case things ever turned nasty. I didn’t treat it as pure junk mail and bin it at once, but I never did anything about it. I vaguely remember them sending me a follow up letter saying something like: oh go on, please, if you haven’t … But I still didn’t, and since then: nothing. No threats, no men knocking on the door. My plan was never to actually defy the government and refuse to fill it in. I was never going to send letters to the local paper and insult local magistrates and refuse to pay the fine on principle. It was just to fill it in only when they really made me. “Oh you mean you really wanted me to fill it in? Why didn’t you say? Goodness. Silly me. Sorry, won’t happen again.” That was going to be my line. But it never came to that. Peculiar.
I think what pissed me off about the whole exercise was the slogan at the top, which went: “Count me in!” There was a little child’s hand sticking up, as if I was just begging to be included, and as if the thing was actually a spontaneous exercise in participatory democracy. It was as if the census was really a mass eruption, every ten years, of the popular desire to tell the government how many people one lives with and what one’s religion is, and how much money one earns. ” I can’t help myself, I simply have to tell them! Please, please, give me a form!” For some reason, I didn’t get swept up in this national emotional spasm. Instead, I said to myself: okay if you’re telling me it’s actually voluntary, then that means I don’t have to do it, right? It turns out I didn’t, and it was voluntary.
I don’t know what this proves. I think what it shows is that officially administered British life is now getting fuller and fuller of things that you must do, but which actually you don’t have to do.
I’ve noticed in radio debates recently that quite large swathes of the very law itself are now sliding into this must-do-but-don’t-actually-have-to-do Twilight Zone. Drugs for example. People are adamant that drugs (and you know the ones I mean, I’m not talking about aspirin) shouldn’t be “legalised”. But, on the other hand, they don’t think the police should actually do anything nasty to people who use drugs. It’s just that saying that you are allowed to use drugs would “send the wrong message”, or some such. When someone in a radio yack-in says that drugs should “remain illegal”, I press for clarification. What should happen to you if they catch you doing them? Oh, that’s not the point, the point is they’re very bad, very dangerous, they stick around in your body, blah blah blah. Yes, but should you be arrested, punished, fined, sent to prison? It’s not about that, blah blah blah. Isn’t it? Well no it really isn’t. That actually does now seem to be the law with drugs. Drugs are illegal, and you mustn’t do them. But, on the other hand, actually you can. Like I say, peculiar. This time it’s you-mustn’t-but-actually-you-can, which is the opposite of filling in your census form, but the principle, if you can call it that, is the same.
No links to this. I thought of this story all by myself.
