Can a pacifist fill out a census...
Lockheed Martin won the tender for the 2011 UK census and will be collecting 32 pages of information from every household in the UK, except for those willing to risk a £1,000 fine and a criminal record.
I don't identify as a pacifist, though I have deep misgivings about the influence and scale of multinationals who trade in military hardware. Lockheed Martin built the UK's Trident nuclear system, continue to make banned cluster bombs and have supplied much of the equipment being used to suppress dissent in the Middle East, including the most recent violence in Bahrain.
I understand that government is an exercise in compromise, of doing the best that is actually possible, but some compromises are more important than others. Count me out are running a campaign highlighting the problematic nature of this particular government contract.
Posts
8 comments:
Who used to enforce the census' in biblical times?
The bureau of stats will share your information with any body that desires a look at it anyway. Otherwise, what is it's purpose - except to assist governance in providing for the people in other ways.
Are you looking at this too deeply ie shoot the messenger?
... and here I was looking at this post for the witty tagline, something akin to "how many pacifists does it take to change a light bulb..." gag.
C'mon Byron. Put that substantial creative intellect of yours to work. Maybe a competition for the best answer to the title question?
(The prize? Thats easy: a free, unmarked copy of a 32 page census from Lockhead mailed to you anywhere in the world)
I often find myself sighing when I look at the money trails for so many of the products I use everyday. It is hard to completely identify a company with injustice and completely ignore their efforts at justice - even when that merely amounts to greenwashing. It makes life to damn complicated. In this case I am wondering how closely related the census taking operations are to the bomb making operations. Just because they are owned by the same company does not mean much these days. So how will a protest of one branch really influence another? Especially when it is passive like abstaining (or boycott)? What if instead you petitioned for everyone who filled the census form to write a carefully crafted sentence on the form decrying the production of arms and armaments. Possibly pointing out the irony of a company counting the lives of people on one hand while enabling the deaths of people on the other.
Frank - Good points. If you take a look at the website I linked to, they suggest a number of more creative responses than merely abstaining.
Geoff - Sorry to disappoint. What can I say? I wasn't feeling very insightful on Friday. This post was about as much as I could muster, a fairly useless expression of frustration at the impossibility of avoiding being part of the problem in all kinds of small and large ways.
Anonymous said...
The bureau of stats will share your information with any body that desires a look at it anyway. Otherwise, what is it's purpose - except to assist governance in providing for the people in other ways.
Don't know about elsewhere, but in Australia that's not true. The ABS don't share individual responses to their surveys, not even with other Government agencies.
Yes, thanks Tim. It is also true in the UK (as far as I can tell). Some initial fears that since LM is a US company, then under the Patriot Act, the US government would have access to all the personal information have been answered satisfactorily, to my mind (though I have strong suspicions that the future direction of government information gathering will become more intrusive if a given society becomes less stable, as I think is pretty likely over the coming decades).
I wasn't really sure what to make of the fact that LM is running this survey. Hence the post. I was neither advocating a boycott nor ruling it out. I'm still not sure. I'm aware that the Tories have suggesting canning the census altogether and cobbling the information together from a variety of sources, but I'm also aware of serious criticisms of such a move.
MWH: UK controls 20% of world arms trade.
Grist: CEO of Lockheed Martin given $1,000 fine for cutting down a swathe of protected trees.
Post a Comment