THE “CONFUSION” CENSUS

by Desmond Kelly. K.F.C. “the Star of eLanka”

What a mess!. Something that has been going on in Australia since “Adam was a boy”, in a perfectly legitimate manner, after all, any Country MUST have an idea on how many people are living in it, at any given time, something that has also been going on in Australia, without as much as a hitch, since 1962, anyway,(the year I arrived in Melbourne with my young family), suddenly took a “wrong turn” somewhere and after my daughter came in to see me on the 9th of August 2016 and helped me fill out the necessary details “On-Line”, (in the not too distant past, the ONLY line I knew anything about was the telephone-line, and, in old Ceylon, the railway-line) but NOW, after the “Intrusion of the Internet” (again, being a confirmed Word-Smith, the only “Nets” I was aware of were things like the “fishing-net”, from my Moratuwa days, & the “mosquito-net”, also from my “younger-days-“, when, if in Ceylon, you did’nt own a mosquito-net, the little buggers would not only sting you, they would carry you away), GET BACK to the bloody Census, mate!, “ok, ok, don:t get them tied in a knot”, my statistical details were systematically noted and forwarded to the A.B.S. successfully.

There has been a lot of “who-hah” going on recently regarding the NEED for the A.B.S. to get & HOLD our statistical details for 4 years, give or take a couple of months, before coming to us again for MORE details to be held for, let’s say, 10 years. All this time, they held your details for about 18-20 MONTHS before they “filed your file” for posterity & also for eternity, which is the same thing, if you are not a word-smith like me!

Being also a “Singer” & now the “Star of eLanka” which I are, I remember taking the beautiful song “Eternally” & , not being so good at my English at the time, I sang the wrong lyrics to the start of the beginning which went “I’ll be loving you, internally”, my audience laughed and I wondered why.! It HAS to be, because it was the “start of the beginning”!, does’nt it? .

My dear eLanka & Lanka-Times readers around the World, please go back to the start of the last paragraph Normally, I would spell “who-hah” as “hoo-ha”. I admit to being a little confused between the “Queen’s English” & “American English” Very recently, I was informed by another dear “Journalist” friend of mine that I had confused the “Opposition-Party”, now in Government as the “Labour Party”when it should have been the “Labor-Party”. This is another typical English versus American English dilemma and I offer this as my reason for my Miss-Spelling (she did’nt look too bad, either), Why oh why does our Opposition-Party want to use the American word “LABOR” when, as I understand it, we are supposed to speak the Queen’s English in “OZ” (Australian short-form for Australia).

Actually, “LABOUR” is a better description and I would sincerely hope that our Opposition-Leader could rectify this mistake because ” to labour ” simply means to work for the people skillfully, and yet, the word “labor” means exactly the same, with one important difference. It means “unskilled labor”. So, to make a long story short, LABOUR & LABOR (both noun & verb), just like COLOUR & COLOR (another similarity),
are correct. The only difference being the fact that one is Australian and the other, American, and folks, the “Opposition-Party” led by Mr.Bill Shorten LIVE in “OZ”.

Now, let us get back to the reason for this article. Because of what happened on the night of the 9th, the unfortunate A.B.S. & others who handle statistics are in big trouble. With all the “security” and, to make it just a little more confusing, “cyber-security” around at the moment, something of this nature should NEVER have occured. Anyway, the error was rectified without too much delay, I hope the A.B.S. will not “go away”, & , as “song-writer”, I put it this way :-

“The menses that was the census
Of the current fiscal year
Brought confusion & delusion
And a bit more cyber- fear
But now the fuss is over
You can safely fill your form
And leave it with tha A.B.S.
Or “on-line” it, & it’s “gone”!!

Desmond Kelly. K.F.C.- “The Star of eLanka”