US Arms Manufacturer Lockheed Martin has the contracy for the 2011 UK Census in March this year.
The US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin makes Trident nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and fighter jets and is involved in data processing for the CIA and FBI. It has provided private contract interrogators for the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Lockheed Martin has the UK Government contract to process the data for the 2011 census in March. (Observer, 20 February 2011)
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Lockheed Martin is in it for the money. A principled stance by you to boycott the census will not hurt them, could provide the British Government with a £1000 fine of your money and will make life harder for local authorities. Don’t let them make a profit from your census return but do help to provide the data your council needs for its Government grants. If you don’t send in your form, Lockheed Martin will still get its money and just make a higher profit for less work.
This year, for the first time, you can make your census return on line. Do not do this, for an on-line return is the cheapest and easiest option for Lockheed Martin to process.
PRIORITIES, to make processing your census form VERY EXPENSIVE for Lockheed Martin:
1. Obliterate completely ALL bar codes, serial numbers and other codes on your form. Don’t miss any!
2. Obstruct fast and cheap computer scanning of your form so that its information must be keyed in by hand, which is a vastly more expensive process. Do this by e.g. writing text upside down (i.e. turn the form upside down when you write); making corrections to written text and ticked boxes by crossing it all out, writing the information elsewhere on the page and then use arrows to point to the places where the information was meant to be. The computer cannot read upside down text and corrected entries of this type.