9:00am Sunday 7th March 2010
Dear Editor
A few days ago my mother received a letter from the Office of National Statistics. It addressed her as a business or organisation and informed her that she was legally required to answer the letter and failing to do so would incur penalties. This was its very first statement.
It then demanded to know at very short notice how many vacancies she would have on February 5th. The language was consistently peremptory and demanding.
My mother is 87-year-old and partially sighted. She had one part time employee, her carer.
It was very fortunate that I happened to be visiting her and that at her request I opened the letter. Such very formal threatening letters can seem extremely frightening to an elderly person and this fear is exacerbated if they have to spell words out one at a time using a magnifying glass. Her first impression would have been that she was being threatened with prosecution.
One wonders to what use these statistics are being put and if they are indeed worth the money that we pay to the civil servants who compile them. Would it not be better to re-deploy such people to something that would be useful to society such as running a sub-post office where they could help the elderly rather than harass them with ridiculous questions.
Rev C. L. Gillham
Crosslyn House,
Spittal.
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