Atropellamiento

I know I've been uncharacteristically quiet. I'm good, just had a really fucking exhausting and needling time at work last week, and I didn't really want to inflict that shit on you lot, because if I start ranting about last week I might actually have some sort of online freakdown, and lose it completely. And we don't need that, believe me. It would get fucking ugly. The week was topped off by having to spend the entire bastard weekend flat on my back in a Syndol induced haze, because I caught some bug that's been making the rounds, and therefore my immune system decided to kick the crap out of me in no uncertain terms. I still feel faintly shitty, but I am in a much, much better mood now, so a bit of residual wobble is bearable.

It's census time again here in the UK. Now, apart from the joy of finding out what percentage of the British population will lie their arses off*, and the moment when you come across the mysterious question encountered on every single government form in this country, the "this question is left intentionally blank" question**, what I really want to know is this; why, in a country which has been successfully carrying out a census every ten years for the last two hundred, and many times before that in the previous thousand, have our fuckwit-filled government, that coalition of cunts, employed Lockheed-Martin to print the fucking thing, run the call-centres and handle the data capture and processing? What. The. Fuck?

As far as I'm aware, there's an enormous government agency, the does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-bloody-tin Office For National Statistics, that exists to do all that stuff, and has been doing it perfectly well for fucking donkeys-years. And as far as I'm aware, Lockheed-Martin mainly specialise in the production of very exciting and futuristic ways to kill people, with either as much sturm und drang as they can muster or as stealthily as possible, like a jet propelled ninja, and not in collating statistical data or running call centres.

Maybe they do excel at call-centres too. That would make Lockheed truly evil. But seriously, I am confused, and everyone else I've spoken to is as well. Why have we paid 150 million quid to a defence contractor for this? Any thoughts?

*In 2001 we discovered that the 4th largest religion in the UK were the Jedis.

**Why? Why is it blank? Why is it there in the first place? Why is it called a question when it isn't a question, but a remarked upon intentional absence of one? Is it just there to fuck with people? Move along, nothing to see here...