In Reply to: Re: What rubbish ! posted by jackie on April 20, 2006 at 23:12:54:

When did you last visit the Falls or Shankill Roads ? Culturally divided they may be but monocultural they are not !

"that we live in a post-Catholic country where the majority of those who put Catholic down on the census as their religion will be nominal Catholics (look it up), while those who put down Muslim will not be so nominal"

A lot of assumptions and stereotypes there but assuming for a moment what you say is true then it only goes to prove how pointless the religion question is since you seem to reckon that most people describing themselves as roman catholic are telling porkies !

Anyway you still havent put foward a single convincing reason why the government needs to know anybodys religion or "ethnic/cultural background" (whatever that is). Or why anyone should blindly accept the assurances that this information is being held securely and wont be misused by either the current government or any future government (the nature of which you or I cannot possibly forsee) And it hasnt even crossed your mind that having such intrusive and pointless questions might actually reduce the likelihood of some people filling the damn thing out at all thus making the whole exercise counter productive. Indeed you cannot even see the inherent contradition in "anonymous" data which includes ones name and address and dismiss anyone who points the contradictions out as paranoid ?