The census is not the sort of thing that crops up in casual conversation very often, if at all.
For a start, the gathering of the census only happens once every decade.
And, usually, it goes ahead very successfully, without any issues at all, so people barely notice that it has occurred.
Except, this time, the SNP managed to make a total shambles of the whole process - and it’s going to cost Scotland for many years to come.
Unlike every other occasion, the latest census was not a UK-wide effort. The SNP refused to take part.
They decided it was better to split from the usual way of doing things, so they were not involved in the usual UK-wide census collection alongside England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It seems the SNP chose to do so out of their never-ending desire to be different from the rest of the UK, even if different actually means worse outcomes.
Arrogance also seems to have played a part. The SNP believed they were so superior that they could do the census better on their own.
But they failed miserably. The results have been predictably embarrassing and costly to Scottish taxpayers.
New figures released this week say that the SNP’s census will cost Scottish taxpayers £140 million.
That’s more than double the cost of the last census in 2011.
The SNP’s census has cost £25 per person to deliver. In England and Wales, it only cost them £8 per person.
They spent a fortune, far more than elsewhere, yet they somehow got worse results.
The SNP got fewer responses than the rest of the UK, so they had to delay the census deadline repeatedly. They missed their own target return rates and fell far short of the return rates achieved south of the border.
It was such a mess that Audit Scotland had to step in to urge the National Records of Scotland (NRS) to investigate why Scotland’s census underperformed compared to the rest of the UK. We are still waiting on the results of that NRS report, which they say should be completed this year.
All of this happened purely because of the SNP’s reluctance to work with the rest of the UK - only for that ridiculous decision to be compounded by their sheer incompetence.
The nationalists have cost taxpayers vast sums to achieve poor results - but it doesn’t end here. The impact of this mistake will keep on costing Scotland for many years to come.
It may not be something that gets passionately discussed around the dinner table but it’s really important to get the census right.
Without a reliable and accurate census, the government is left in the dark about its citizens.
It’s not able to properly plan to account for which areas need more teachers or entire new schools to be built.
It doesn’t have the data to know which roads will need more investment.
It can’t be sure where people are moving to and from.
In short - no other survey provides the depth and detail of information that the census does.
That data is vitally important to plan future public services.
Estimates show that every £1 spent on a census can return around £5 in economic benefit.
By getting it wrong, the SNP have reduced the benefit of holding a census and exposed the Scottish Government to all sorts of problems in the future.
Until the next census in a decade’s time, it looks like government services won’t be planned as accurately as they were in the past.
So not only have they wasted £140 million of taxpayers’ money already, the bill for this SNP blunder is going to keep going up.
We may never know just how costly this mistake has been for Scotland, since it won’t be easy to measure the price of not building a big enough school, failing to deliver enough GPs or not investing in the right roads.
But the people who suffer in local communities across Scotland will know the cost. It will hinder their everyday lives for many years. Once again, they will be forced to bear the brunt of mistakes by the SNP Government.
