The Census Campaign

Ooh look, two of my favourite things in the same place – the Census and Secularism.

The latest social attitudes survey suggests around 43% of people in Britain say they have no religion – in the 2001 Census this figure in England was recorded as being around 15%. Such a big difference is most likely attributed to non-religious Brits who were exposed to bits of the CofE when they grew up and when faced with a leading questions like ‘What is your religion?’ feel obliged to choose one.

Even taking all of the Jedi into consideration (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/rank/jedi.asp) – a whole 0.7% of the England and Wales population – the last Census almost certainly did not record successfully the true religious geography of the UK. With such figures used to bolster arguments for social maladies such as faith schools, this time we should all owe it to the country to be honest on March 27th…