 I tweeted about this early this morning, but my novel Game Night is now available on the Kindle for a time-limited launch price of 99c in the US and 70p in the UK. Here’s where you can find it:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Night-ebook…
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Night-ebook…
As part of his I’ve done a press release, reproduced below. Please feel free to grab any or all of it if you want to post something up on a blog, on Facebook, or on a forum.
PRESS RELEASE
Game Night, Jonny Nexus’s 2007 ENnie-nominated novel of roleplaying gods, is now available on Amazon’s Kindle platform, with versions available both for standard Kindles as well as the Kindle apps for PC, iPhone, iPad and Android. To celebrate this event, it will initially be sold at a bargain launch rate of just 99 cents in the US (Amazon.com) and 70 pence in the UK (Amazon.co.uk).
As well as achieving the prestigious ENnie nomination, Game Night was widely lauded in reviews. Cartoonist and writer John Kovalic said:
“A Pratchet-esque debut novel of gods, roleplaying, and game-night kerfuffles … Buy Game Night. It’s a fun, fresh, irreverent read that’ll ring true to any gamer even if, unlike the protagonists, you happen not to be a god.”
And on RPGNet, RPG writer and reviewer Steve Darlington declared:
“The best novel ever written about gaming. One of the funniest novels ever written about anything.”
The novel’s author, Jonny Nexus, says: “Launching Game Night on the Kindle is a big thrill for me. The paper version of Game Night got a better response than I’d ever hoped for. People really enjoyed it, both gamers and non-gamers. It really seemed to strike a chord, and I can’t wait for a whole new group of people to read it.”
Game Night on the Kindle can be found on Amazon at:
US: http://www.amazon.com/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Night-ebook/dp/B0057JPZSG
204 words
ABOUT JONNY NEXUS
Jonny Nexus lives in Brighton with his wife, their dog, and an array of chew toys that the dog invariably leaves on the top-most step but one.
He is the editor, co-founder, and chief-writer of the cult gaming webzine Critical Miss. He wrote The Slayer’s Guide to Games Masters for leading roleplaying publisher Mongoose Publishing, as well as writing a monthly column for their magazine Signs & Portents.
His debut novel Game Night, published by Magnum Opus Press in 2007, was shortlisted for a Gen Con EN World Award (an “Ennie”). This August, Mongoose Publishing will publish “The NeXus Files”, a compilation of Jonny’s Signs & Portents articles. And a short story of his (“On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service”) will be appearing in a forthcoming anthology from new publisher Stone Skin Press.
There’s something that annoys me about the behaviour of some (not all!) of the anti-copyright rent-a-mob found in many corners of the Internet that I can best explain through analogy.
Imagine you have a man who thinks that motorways (freeways) should have no speed limit, as used to be the case in the UK until 1965, and is still the case in Germany. And imagine that he then goes for a drive up the M1 at 85 mph per hour, 15 mph above the speed limit, and gets fined by the police.
I would expect his reaction to be something like:
“I accept that I broke the law. The limit is 70 and I was doing 85. But it’s a stupid law. The road was empty, the weather was good, my car is well-maintained and designed to drive fast, and I’m a skilled and careful driver. I don’t believe I was putting anyone in any danger.”
But I wouldn’t expect him to say something like:
“I don’t understand why the police stopped me and fined me. I don’t see how they can argue that I was breaking any law. They said I was breaking the “speed limit” but surely the speed limit is the limit within which your speed is safe, and that is dependent on the weather conditions, the traffic conditions, the nature of the car, and the skill of the driver? Given those, I don’t think I was exceeding the limit, and the fact that they still fined me shows that this is a corrupt system!”
To which, of course, the answer is: “No, the limit is 70 mph and you were doing 85!”
The point is that there is a very big distinction between what you think the law should be, and what the law is, and if you think a law is wrong or unfair it ill-serves your cause to totally blur the two. Now I know that copyright law is confusing, with many grey areas – but some people still manage to stand way beyond the grey and yet still argue that black is white or white black. If something is illegal and you don’t think it should be then complain about its illegality. Don’t instead try to argue that it’s legal, when it isn’t.
I came across a classic example of this yesterday, when reading some comments about the takedown of http://peanutweeter.com. This was a site that took Peanuts cartoons (minus the speech bubbles) and put in tweets that the author had come across (for humorous effect). Unfortunately/inevitably the lawyers for the Iconix Brand Group who own the Peanuts estate found out about it and sent in a DCMA takedown notice.
Many of the responses stated that this was an abuse of copyright law, in that PeanutTweeter should have been protected by two aspects of the “Fair Use” provision:
a) Because it’s parody.
b) Because it’s non-commercial.
Now I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that neither of these apply.
Firstly, I’d say it’s not a parody. A parody is something that takes the piss out of the thing it is copying. While that might perhaps be true of Garfield Minus Garfield, I can’t see that it’s true here. It’s not taking the piss out of the Peanuts cartoons. It’s simply using the Peanuts cartoons as a building block of a new piece of art. That makes it a derivative work, and derivative works need the permission of both artists to make a copy. (If I take a painting you painted and digitally manipulate it in Photoshop, the resulting piece is part mine and part yours, and not 100% mine).
And secondly, it doesn’t matter how often people say “but they’re not making any money”, because that’s pretty much based on a myth. If you don’t have the right to copy something then you don’t have the right. Whether or not you intend to sell it is irrelevant. In fact, I believe that making copyright only apply to commercial copying is one of the things that Cory Doctorow et al want to change about copyright law.
Copyright is a hugely complex and emotive subject. I don’t myself fully agree with either copyright law as currently written nor how it is currently applied. And I very much enjoy things like Darth and Droids which are, strictly speaking, in breach of copyright. But I think the debate would be much more productive if people would distinguish between what is and what they think should be.
And at that point, having probably alienated half the Internet, I’ll shut up. :)
There are many things that annoy me, but one of them is when people tell lies to children. I don’t mean actual, “Of course Uncle Gary isn’t your daddy!” type lies. I’m talking about lazy, false, over- simplified and dumbed-down answers given in response to a child’s curiosity about the world. I think children are often cleverer than we give them credit for, and I think they deserve to have the adults who care for and raise them attempt to explain the world as fully, and as accurately, as they can.
I witnessed a grotesque failure to do this just last weekend. My wife and I had gone for a ride on the Swanage railway, a preserved steam-railway in Dorset. While waiting for the passenger train to take us into Swanage, we saw a short freight train draw up, pulled by this locomotive:
As you can see, it’s a medium-sized engine that is technically described as a 2-6-4, meaning that it has two small, un-powered wheels at the front, six large driving wheels in the middle, and then four small un-powered wheels at the back. We got talking to the guys who were driving it, and found out that they were on a “drive a steam train” experience that had been a gift from the sister and brother-in- law of one of them.
A few minutes later the passenger train pulled up. This was a much bigger, grander affair, a 4-6-2 with a separate tender, and was of the sort that would once have pulled main-line trains. Unlike the smaller freight engine, this one had a nameplate on its side: “Eddystone”.
We travelled into Swanage, spent some time there sheltering from the rain in a rather nice dog-friendly cafe, and then got on the train to head back. A little way down the carriage from us were a man and a woman and their small daughter. A few minutes after the train set off, I heard the man utter the following line to his daughter:
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
Consider that line for a moment.
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
Here he is, with a young mind before him just waiting to be filled with facts and understanding, and that’s what he comes up with.
“This is a real-life Thomas train.”
I leaned forward and whispered, perhaps just a tad too loudly, at my wife. “That’s not right!” She shot me a warning glance but I wasn’t to be halted. “It’s not a Thomas train at all. Thomas was a tank engine. That’s why they call him Thomas the Tank Engine. This is more like a Gordon, or a James or something!”
You tell me. Does this 4-6-2 tender locomotive:
…look anything whatsoever like this 0-6-0 tank locomative:
I think not!
A few minutes later the train stopped, and I heard the man telling his daughter that, “…the train has to stop until the red light turns green.”
Don’t even get me started on that.
I’m very pleased to announce that after getting various issues out of the way, my ENnie nominated fantasy humour novel Game Night will be arriving on the Kindle within a couple of weeks. It will be available not only for the standard Kindle, but for Kindle on Android, iPhone and iPad also.
 A ten-thousand-year quest is about to be completed. Prophecies will be fulfilled, ancient riddles answered, legendary evils bested, and the nature of the universe revealed. All that’s needed is a band of mighty heroes to do the completing.
Unfortunately for the locals, some of the gods have taken a personal interest in the chronicle of these heroes’ adventures. Now they are each guiding one of the characters towards the conclusion of their epic journey. That is, when they’re not squabbling, backstabbing each other, blowing things up by accident, refusing to play by the rules, and turning the AllFather’s creation into a mess of petty arguments, fantasy cliché, gratuitous combat and unnecessary dice-rolls.
If you thought your games group couldn’t be any worse, Game Night shows just how bad things can get when a bunch of unruly deities decide they want to play. And may the heavens help us all.
“The best novel ever written about gaming. One of the funniest novels ever written about anything.” —RPGNet review (rating 5/5) by Steve Darlington
But wait, there’s more!
Sorry, appear to be channelling the inner QVC I wasn’t aware I had.
But there is more. While I’m not necessarily aiming for world domination, it’s important to me that Game Night does well. Not just on a personal level, but because I need something to show agents and publishers that, contrary to what they might think, there is actually a market for humour fantasy/SF, and that just maybe I’m someone who can write it. So far, it’s done okay in terms of sales (probably around 1800 copies sold so far), and very well in terms of how well people liked it. But it seems I need more if I want it to be something that causes agents to sniff at my door.
So the second bit of news is that Game Night will launch on the Kindle at a special launch price of 99 cents (and a similar amount in the UK). Yes, that’s $0.99. This isn’t what I think my novel is worth – I think it’s worth a lot more. But it is an amount that I’m hoping will provoke curiosity, interest, and those all-import re-tweets.
At some point the price will go up to what I think the novel is worth (I haven’t yet determined what that is, but I know it’s more than the price of a small bottle of cola). So if you’ve got access to a Kindle device or app, and you haven’t yet read Game Night then I’d suggest you buy it when you can.
Actually, you know what? I’d just ask you to buy it.
And if you have another device, I will be trying to get Game Night out in other formats just as soon as I get this out of the way.
That writing involves frustratingly long lead times between you completing a book and it being published is a reasonably well known fact. That there can sometimes be a long lead time between you completing a book and it being announced, it perhaps less well-known. But it’s even more frustrating.
So it’s with great pleasure that I can finally now talk about the thing I spent a chunk of last summer working on, “The NeXus Files”, which is being published by Mongoose Publishing this summer. Here’s the blurb:
In May 2003, Jonny Nexus embarked on a journey that would take him from the ruins of post-WWIII Poland to the shores of long-gone realms, and from the faded grandeur of 1920s Venice to the twice-sunned deserts of alien worlds. During this journey he would view fabulous sights, witness epoch-shattering events, and meet beings of both might and majesty – many of whom he then proceeded to kill. He engaged millennia old vampires in hand-to-hand combat armed only with petrol bombs and a ready wit. He uncovered secrets of ages past; he forgot secrets of ages past. He robbed from those that had money, and kept it. Across a score of glittering worlds he entirely failed to write himself into either myth or legend.
But he did have fun.
And somewhere along the way he even found time to die.
Several times.
For thirty months, Jonny Nexus recorded the thoughts aroused by, and the lessons learned from, his twice-weekly roleplaying habit in a column he wrote for Mongoose Publishing’s Signs & Portents magazine. Part travelogue, part guide, part manual, and part manifesto, these are those columns.
It all started around eighteen months ago when Mongoose contacted me to ask if I would be interested in working with them on a reprint / compilation of the “Jonny Nexus Experience” column I used to write for their magazine Signs & Portents. I was pretty happy with the pieces I’d written, and loved the idea of them being available in one nice neat package with my name on it. So I said yes. But we didn’t want it to simply be a reprint, so we agreed that we would try to add some extra content. What we ended up with was this:
- An introduction (introductory essay really), giving a bit of context to the creation of the columns, together with a tutorial about roleplaying intended to make it a bit more accessible to non-roleplayers.
- All 30 columns that I wrote, together with new, additional “explanitory” notes for each (a sort of “director’s commentary”).
- Two bonus columns, one of which completes the story of my Sunday/Tuesday/Monday group’s Orient Express Cthulhu campaign.
So far, there isn’t much information out there about it. The best I found was this link on FRP Games, where it’s available for pre-order. But as I get more information, I’ll mention it here.
I’m pretty chuffed to have it coming out. Hope everyone likes it.
Last Thursday, at a loud and chaotic Euston station, I received a phone call from my wife to tell me that our friend Joanne Pullan had died the previous evening. Jo had been found collapsed in a park by a bystander, after suffering an asthma attack while walking to the shops. She was taken to Lewisham General Hospital, but was declared dead there.
 At the time, then, I could scarcely comprehend the words my wife was saying. As I type these words, now, nearly a week later, it’s still no easier to accept that she’s gone. To lose anyone is hard; but to lose someone whose entire second half of their life was yet to be lived, is harder, doubly so when it’s to a cause that seems both trivial and preventable.
(Of course, it’s not trivial, as Jo’s death so tragically demonstrates. Asthma kills. If any good can come of her passing then it will be from people reading these words, and the many others that will be written about her, and treating asthma with more fear, and respect, than they had previously done so.)
My wife and I are going to miss Jo tremendously, not because she was perfect, but because of the ways in which she wasn’t. How could I describe Jo? There are as many ways to describe her as there are days in the year, but the words that come to mind now are that she was often mad and frequently exasperating, but always fun, engaging, warm and compassionate. Some people live life with its accelerator mashed down hard against the foot-well, careering through corners in a manner likely to cause a certain degree of consternation in those friends and family following on behind. Jo was one of those people.
 Jo was my wife’s friend before she became mine. They met in the early part of the last decade when they both worked for the League against Cruel Sports and having become firm friends (my wife described Jo as her “vegan sister”), they stayed in close contact as their professional lives moved on.
After working for Leonard Cheshire Disability and Médecins Sans Frontières, Jo ended up at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where she worked in fund-raising. Unlike my wife, I never worked with Jo, but I know she was very highly thought of, with her charm, intelligence, diligence and professionalism being the perfect tools for persuading people to donate generously to the organisations she represented.
 Animal welfare was a cause close to Jo’s heart, as her choice of employers indicates. If someone close to her had an elderly cat that needed rescuing, it would usually end up with Jo. And she was a devoted step-mum to our own little four-pawed bundle of canine joy.
But when I think of Jo and animals, it’s her dog, Claude, who I think of. Claude was Jo’s closest companion for all of the years in which I knew her, and she doted on him. He might have had four paws and a flat nose, but he was very much her little baby, and this showed in the dedication she displayed when facing the health problems with which he suffered over the last years of his life.
 Claude suffered not only from diabetes, but a number of other ailments. Keeping him on four paws was neither a cheap nor easy undertaking. He required twice daily injections of insulin, made harder by the fact that he also suffered from – as one vet put it – “small dog syndrome”. Add to this pills, inhalers and operations to restore his eyesight, and you had a monthly bill of significant proportions. But it was a bill that Jo never hesitated to pay. When Claude finally reached the end of his time on this world a few months ago, Jo was devastated. But sad as his passing was, it at least means he’s not faced with a life without his mummy.
Jo had an eye for taste and style apparent even to someone such as myself, universally acknowledged as something of a style desert. She always looked good, even on those occasions where she was convinced she didn’t. And each of her homes were not so much decorated as designed. Where the rest of us might think in terms of what colour to paint the walls, Jo would see a room as one big art, craft and design project.
This didn’t involve lots of money When it came to decorating a home, Jo could make a budget stretch further than anyone I know, although being Jo, that budget would still be slightly larger than the sum of money she had available. She had an eye not only for a bargain, but for a bargain that with a bit of work, a sand, a repaint, or a replacement cover, could be transformed into something fabulous. She was a demon ebayer, buying and selling, although I fear half the things she was selling were things she had previously bought. My wife would often return from a visit to Jo’s with a story of finding a new sofa or bed or floor, justified by the previous one being slightly too big, or too small, or just the wrong shade of whatever. (The story’s telling would usually end with an exasperated cry of, “But there was nothing wrong with the old sofa/bed/floor/curtains/rug/house!”)
 I met Jo before I met my wife, at a London Vegans event, which she’d attended with Paivi, a mutual friend of hers and Jules. It was entirely down to those two that I met my wife. Thinking I might be right for their friend, they arranged for us to meet at a small party hosted by Paivi. It all came from that: dating, moving in, getting married.
I couldn’t say that I own Jo everything, but I owe her and Paivi my wife and soulmate, and if that isn’t everything then it’s not far off it. Initially, Jo was my wife’s friend and I was her friend’s other half. But gradually, imperceptibly, and with what I’d like to think was the ease that marks all true friendships, Jo became my friend too, and I’m pretty sure I became hers.
 That Jules and I are going to miss her terribly is a truth so obvious it scarcely needs saying, but some truths deserve to be spoken, and this is one of them. Jo was not a person to pass though a person’s life unnoticed. She occupied a place in my wife’s life and she occupied a place in mine, and in her passing she leaves a Jo shaped hole in both of those lives.
We’re going to miss her terribly, and while time will blur the edges of that hole it will always remain, a gap in what could have been, and a missing part of what should have been. Jo might have gone before we were blessed with the children she so wanted us to have, but if time does bless us with those children they’ll grow up knowing about their Auntie Joanne. We will never forget her.
Jules and I were apart when we heard the news, she with her mother in Yorkshire, and myself travelling to Eastercon (the British National Science Fiction convention). My first thought was that I should abandon Eastercon and head to Kings Cross to get myself on a train to Leeds. But Jules told me to stay at Euston and head for the convention. Eastercon was where I needed to be if I wanted to meet with agents, writers and the people who will hopefully end up buying my books. She reminded me that Jo had always been one of my writing career’s biggest supporters, always urging me to stay confident, always declaring her conviction that I would one day make it big. She told me to go, that it was what Jo would have wanted.
 I was originally going to stay at Eastercon until Tuesday morning, and then head straight to work, finally meeting up with my wife on the Tuesday evening. But we altered our plans so that Jules picked me up from the convention on the Monday afternoon and we drove home together.
That evening, really for no reason other than wanting something to take her mind off things, Jules got onto the web in search of the new kitchen table she’s been unsuccessfully searching for over the last couple of months. She found something on Gumtree that looked perfect, and having texted the owner and received a reply, we found ourselves driving over there to take a look at it.
On the way, Jules asked me if I thought we were doing the right thing. We didn’t actually need a new table, and this perhaps wasn’t the best time for us to be making decisions. Maybe we should check around a bit more, she said, and see what else was out there, or perhaps just stick with the one we had?
I only needed a moment to consider what she’d said, because the answer was clear. What better way was there to remember Jo than for us to make an impulse purchase of a table we didn’t actually need?
After all, it was exactly what she would have done.
I received today an email from one of the Illustrious (Eastercon 2011) organisers saying that my name has been given to her as an author attending the con, and asking if I would like to attend any or all of their three author signing sessions.
Here’s the reply I’ve just sent to her:
Hi Meg,
Thanks very much for this. I would be interested in doing a signing, but given the crushing disappointment to my ego a signing usually involves, I think it would be best to restrict it to just the one session.
If possible, could I have the final session on Monday at noon? That gives me the maximum possible time to get to know people in the bar on the previous evenings and then silently guilt trip them into buying my book if they’re unwise enough to walk past the signing table and catch my eye. (I’m not joking. That was how I made my one and only sale last year at Odyssey. Poor Rob. I think he was only trying to get to the art show.)
Thanks,
Jonny
What do you think? Too self-depreciating? Or just honest and realistic?
Next weekend I’ll be at the NEC Birmingham for this year’s Eastercon, Illustrious 2011. This will be my fourth Eastercon, having previously attended Orbital 2008, LX 2009 and Odyssey 2010, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Last year I had a really great time, so much so that I wrote it up in a long, but hopefully interesting con report.
Like the Olympics, Eastercon (which is the British national SF convention) is held not at a fixed location by one set of organisers, but is instead hosted by different committees from different regions who bid for the privilege. This year, it’s heading to the Midlands, to the same Hilton Birmingham Metropole where Jules and I attended Discworld 2010 last August.
It’s probably a bit late to be booking hotel rooms, but if you’re in the Birmingham area you can join on the door, either for a day or for the whole four-day weekend. Click here for rates.
If you want to catch up with me, then the best way to do so is to drop me a message on Twitter, to @jonnynexus. Alternatively, I’m one of the two co-hosts of a vegan / vegetarian meetup happening on Friday night at 10:30pm in the Churchill room. It doesn’t matter if you’re aren’t of the veggie persuasion: if you’re around, feel free to drop by and say hi.
Looking forward to seeing any of you who are attending. See you there!
On the way home last night, a few stops from Brighton, my train was invaded by a bunch of good-natured fans of Brighton and Hove Albion, our local football team, also known as the Seagulls. The fans, who were heading for an evening match at the Withdean stadium, had reason to be good-natured: they stood last night on the threshold of promotion to the Championship, the second-tier of English football. A few hours later, after a see-sawing 4-3 victory against Dagenham & Redbridge, they sealed promotion, and look set to follow that by clinching the League Two title.
But that’s not all: they will play next season not in their current Withdean stadium home, but in the £93 million, brand-new, out-of-town American Express Community Stadium at Falmer, situated on the A27 bypass, adjacent to Sussex and Brighton Universities. Now such a move generally leaves football fans with mixed feelings at best. Sure, a new stadium’s nice, but it means leaving behind history and tradition, and exchanging something with character for something possibly more souless.
I knew that Brighton fans were strongly in favour of the move, but I was still a bit surprised to hear the following snippet of conversation from the two fans sitting opposite me:
Fan 1: [Musing] Do you know… this will be the last evening game we ever go to at the Withdean.
Fan 2: [Emphatically] Good!
That might seem a strange reaction – until you read a little of Brighton and Hove’s recent history.
From their formation in 1902, the club played at the Goldstone Ground, opposite Hove Park.
Unfortunately, the then board sold that to developers in 1995, and after the club’s eviction in 1997, the site was transformed into this.
The club were forced to groundshare with Gillingham FC at their Priestfield stadium. This doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that Gillingham is 73 miles away from Brighton.
After two years in exile, the Seagulls were able to return to Brighton, as tenants at the council owned Withdean stadium. I think that perhaps the best that could be said of this was that it wasn’t 73 miles away.
It was an athletics stadium, complete with running track, had mostly temporary stands, and was even declared to be the third worst football ground in Britain by the Observer (interestingly enough, their previous temporary Priestfield home came in at number one).
And now they’re movin to this:
I’ve seen it several times as it’s being built, while taking the dog to nearby Stanmere park, and it looks absolutely stunning, both in its architecture and its location. I can’t wait to visit it once it opens.
I can see why the fans are so happy to be moving. I think they deserve it.
The UK is currently conducting its ten-yearly census. It includes an optional question about religion, but the question’s format has angered some humanists/atheists:
“Instead of asking, ‘Do you have a religion and if so, what is it?’, the question asks ‘What is your religion?’, a closed question that funnels people into giving a religious response, even if they don’t go to a church or a mosque, even if they don’t believe in God.”
The British Humanist Association have followed up these complaints by conducting surveys that have revealed that of those who claim to be Christian when asked the question on the census, 27% of those (when questioned further) said they did not believe that Jesus Christ was a real person who died, came back to life and was the son of God. A further 25% were unsure, meaning that only 47% of those who claim to be Christians actually hold Christian beliefs.
But why does this upset the humanists? What exactly is their beef? Why does it matter? Well this morning it occurred to me that you could create a good analogy using questions about support of football teams.
Imagine Newcastle city council decided to do their own mini-census, and included the following question:
Which football team do you support?
[ ] Newcastle United
[ ] Other, specify _____________
[ ] I don’t support a football team
Now I obviously don’t have figures to hand, but I suspect the answers would be something like this:
Newcastle United: 70%
Other: 10%
None: 20%
Why do I have such a high figure for Newcastle? Two reasons really:
1) There’s only one professional team in that city, and the people of the city strongly identify with it.
2) Most people will, when asked, volunteer a team that they support, even if they’re not all all into football. People tend to pick a team in childhood, or have one picked for them. Often, they will follow the team their parents followed. Even if they’re not at all into football, their default answer will be the local team from where they grew up.
Asking someone which football team they follow tells you very little about the actual popularity of football.
But imagine you asked the following questions?
Are you a football fan?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
If yes, which football team do you support?
[ ] Newcastle United
[ ] Other, specify _____________
I’m guessing now that the answers would be more like:
Yes: 40%
No: 60%
—
Newcastle United: 35%%
Other: 5%
Why does this matter?
Well imagine that the owners of Newcastle United decided that they needed a new stadium, and told the council to, say, loan them £30 million of council-tax payers money at preferential rates and help them out with planning permission.
Asked one way, they can say that the club has the support of a majority (70%) of the population.
Asked the other, they can only claim a minority of 35%.
The question you ask dictates the answers you’ll get, and the problem is that having gone to a lot of trouble to get those answers, people will then use them to try and prove various points. (If they weren’t going to do so, then why bother asking the questions?)
We have a census question that is designed not to measure religious belief, but religious/cultural affiliation. That’s fine, as long as people treat the answers as such, and don’t use them to try to prove points about the extent or otherwise of religious beliefs.
But they probably will.
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