One of the political comics right now during the mid-term election season has a guy saying he never thought he'd wish for the good old days of drug ads as there are so many horrific political attack ads on now!

I liked the way the medical ads were neatly juxtaposed with fast food ads. It had a nice symmetry about it.

We're still about 12 months away (probably) from a Federal election, but I'm looking forward to the horror ads from the incumbent party predicting boils breaking out on our cattle, plagues of frogs and hailstorms and Osama bin Laden having his way with our daughters if the Labor Party is elected. (OK, LizF, no need to leap in and agree!)

Back in the late '80s (I think) the Australian government ran an AIDS education campaign with explicit TV ads that probably gave a lot of small children nightmares - one featured a group of terrified people cowering at the end of a giant bowling alley as a horrific figure of Death mowed them down one by one. THAT was a memorable ad.

There's only a week to go to the US midterm elections, isn't there? I'll be watching with interest.

Geez Neil Oz, I just had surgery so laughing at your posting is not helping my tummy!

Yes, a week from today. The recorded telephone polling and political ads are in full force. It's wearisome!

Well Neil the cane toads have been doing the worst in Queensland as the Premier, a Labour Party bloke, said the other day that the reason they were not going to have daylight saving in Queensland would be the increased incidence of skin cancer........UGH?
Now this Labour guy was a (*)*&%&^$$ lawyer before entering politics but even given that reason he should not show his stupidity to that degree. If the whole of Australia elects fellows like that in the next election I reckon that the rest of us will stage our own rebellion and ask both the Solomon Islanders and the Fijians how to set up a coup.

Liz, I'm glad you've acknowledged that (unlike his dozy Tory opponeent) the Labor Party leader actually has seen the inside of a university. And yes, as we're not Poms it's "Labor", not "Labour". Not that it matters.

Neil, the leader of Q'ld's Liberal Party is Bruce Flegg, a medical doctor who obviously has seen the inside of a university. I think you're thinking of Lance Springborg, who was leader of National Party, now replaced with Jeff Seeney after recent state election.

I guess this train wreck of a thread is as good a place as any to ask this question, the answer to which I have been seeking for some time: WHY is it Labor and not Labour? Just "not being Poms" can't be enough of a reason, can it? You labour in the fields, don't you? But the party is the Australian Labor Party.

Any light that you can shed on this mystery will be gratefully received.

-Steve

Steve, I could have phrased that better, I guess. What I meant to point out was that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is not a branch of the British Labour Party (in fact the ALP is the more senior of the two parties).

The Labor Party's website explains things this way:

"It was at the 1908 Interstate (federal) Conference that the name 'Australian Labour Party' was adopted. In its shortened form the Party was frequently referred to as both 'Labor' and 'Labour', however the former spelling was adopted from 1912 onwards, due to the influence of the American labor movement."

Myself, I'm not 100% convinced. The
-or ending was actually common in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century and was the standard in some newspapers and journals. The Australian Labor Party was born in 1891, 10 years before the then six colonies federated to become the Commonwealth of Australia, and my guess is that the spelling wouldn't have seemed out of place at the time.

The ALP was actually founded in Queensland, and the colony of Queensland elected the world's first (admittedly short-lived) labour government in 1899.

The usage of the spelling "Labor" has only been quite recent in Queensland when, perhaps it was Whitlam who eventually got thrown out, who changed over from the spelling of Labour mainly because the Labour Party in the UK was spelt Labour and they did not want to be seen as part of or attached to anything to do with the UK as they were staunch Republicans and against the continuance of a Monachy and of a Queen of Australia. I am sure that within 30 seconds Neil will be on this forum to tell me that I am talking pure cr.p but that is how the rest of us saw it. For some reason, known only to the boffins in the republican movement, changing the spelling of a word made them feel that they had attacked the entrenched Royalist views of those in Australia who are against change. For the Americans on this board though I must point out that Republicans in Australia are not of the same make up as Republicans in the US and it has only to do with the wish to rid Australia of its colonial past links with England. This also does not mean that if you are a labour supporter you are in favour ( note the same spelling of the suffix there) a Republic and the same goes for the other side of politics. However there are some of us who spell it how it is supposed to be spelt and that is that. As Neil would be the first to say, after me that is, I am a dreadful speller but I do remember how to spell labour.

Liz, where did you GET all that? In the absence of evidence to the contrary I'm happy to accept the ALP's account that the spelling was officially (and it goes without saying nationally) adopted in 1912. The idea that the alleged change in spelling had some link with republican sentiments is surely fantasy.

That aside, there's no automatic 'right' or 'wrong' way to spell a word, only accepted custom. The fact that the British favour 'labour' (a corruption of Norman French) and the Americans 'labor' (Latin) doesn't make either one 'correct' or 'incorrect'.

I think Mark Twain observed that (from memory) "There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The language has become a joint stock company, and we are the majority shareholders".

You are quite right Neil there was only the "Kings" English when you & Mark Twain were born ( though Queen Victoria reigned for most of Twain's life) & it was not until I was born that there was the Queen's English but I spent most of my time at school in Queensland where the spelling of the word Labour Party was the accepted spelling until at least I had left school. You may be absolutely right too and it could have been another Queensland Labour Party porky that the reason they changed it was due in part to them wishing to distance themselves from the "mother" country.

Further to my comments above here are the three perceived ideas of how and why the u was dropped in Labour. Be that as it may the old spelling was still used in Queensland until about 25 years ago:::::::::::::::::::::::
The Australian Labor Party and the Missing U
Of the numerous Labour parties throughout the world, only Australia's, the USA's and South Korea's are known as Labor parties, without the u.

Even in Georgia, Sweden and Mauritius, there's a u in the respective countries' Labour parties.

It's always puzzled me why the u would be missing for the Australian Labor Party seeing as we still require royal assent for all our laws. A little Google research shows however that it was once the Australian Labour Party, although there seems to be three competing reasons proferred for the change to Labor, which are as follows:

there was influence by the American labor movement leading to the spelling change in 1912 (I'd personally like to know what kind of influence and why that would induce a change in spelling, but that's all the informaiton I could find on the ALP website);
Australia's lefties wanted to associate themselves more closely with the relatively more progressive USA rather than the more conservative English homeland back in the early days of the party, and the spelling of its name was a means to do this apparently;
Australian politician and member of the Labor caucus (although not a member of the Labor party as such because it didn't exist in his home state of Tasmania at the time, interestingly enough), King O'Malley, was an advocate for spelling reform and persuaded the party that Labor was a more "modern" spelling than Labour and the u got dropped.
April 4, 2006 in Après Moi, le Déluge, Of or Pertaining to Tongues | Permalink | Comments (

That's all about as clear as I expected it to be, i.e., not at all.

The "distinguish ourselves from the British Labour Party" makes the most sense to me. Arguments based on spelling reform or whatnot make somewhat less sense, as you haven't adopted ANY of the other American spellings that I'm aware of. Colour, centre, theatre, etc. Am I right?

Still, if one's national identity doesn't involve a few mysteries, what's the point, eh?

I will refrain from adding any more indications of where my sympathies lie on the Republican-Colonial spectrum for fear of alienating the providers of half of my next trip's travel tips!

Probably most wise fnarf999 although Neil has outed me as been about as right as Attilla the Hun ( his words I think or something like it). However he is a nice kind of South Paw.
Remember though that our politics does not really follow anything like the US or the UK type, at least I don't really think so.

Good to see you getting into this with a vengeance, Liz, even if it is a storm in a teacup.

As the official language of Sweden is Swedish, and Georgia Georgian, surely whether the spelling 'labour' or 'labor' was used in an English translation would depend on who was doing the translating. Actually, as far as I can see Sweden doesn't have a labour/labor party at all - the nearest they'd have, I think, would be the Social Democratic Party. Technically, to call itself a labor/labour party it would have to have formal links with the trade union movement.

Yes, a lot of ALP and trade union figures have felt stronger bonds with US than the UK, so that could have been an influencing factor. If you look around though you can still see old signs using spellings such as parlor, harbor and the like, so I still maintain that 'labor' would not have seemed out of place at the time. The fact that King O'Malley was American-born may or may not have influenced his spelling preferences.

Royal assent is a formality exercised in practice by the Governor-General. These days the G-G is always an Australian, but it took a Labor PM (Jim Scullin) to stand up to the blustering of King George V and have an Australian (Sir Isaac Isaacs) appointed for the first time. Reportedly the King found it outrageous that he had to negotiate with an Irish Catholic over the appointment of a Jewish lawyer as his representative. Scullin would have had no support from his conservative opponents - as always, they were bootlickers to a man.

Whatever, I doubt that the spelling of a political party's name has ever been the subject of legislation, so the question of royal assent is irrelevant. Has the government stepped in to tell Krispy Kreme to re-spell its donuts, or doughnuts?

This is starting to look like an excursion into a mad version of Trivial Pursuit.

Well, our American right-wingers were accustomed to saying they were to the right of Attila, until recently when it appears that some of them were being perfectly serious. I think that's going to start to change in a few days. And I'm noticing that the Tories in Britain are now to the left of the American Democrats, which makes it all very confusing. I myself am a typical bleeding heart pantywaist mollycoddling liberal. At least that's what it says on this card here.

Australian politics confuse me even further, not just on the question of whether it's a good idea to have power invested in a nice old lady eight thousand miles away or not. I don't really know which is "right" or "left" there. I did have the opportunity to examine your Pauline Hanson on TV when we were there, and it was very rewarding. She appeared to be calling for would-be immigrants to be examined for terroristic tendencies, which she was quite certain the majority of them have, by means of some sort of special handshake or something. We don't usually see political figures QUITE that odd, outside of Florida that is. But again, I don't know if Ms. Hanson would really fit on an American left-right continuum.

Some people in Australia who are on the left are really more right than left but then again those on the right can sometimes be left - particularly at the post. Those in the middle I feel don't really know where they stand so have a foot in each camp and then those who are ( so called ) Independent are not really that independent when it comes to some issues. To confuse the situation completely I will leave it to Neil to tell you about the factions within the Labour Party which consist of the right, centre right, centre left, far left and who know what else. Anyway Neil is far more erudite than I so the explanation from him will, no doubt, take any confusion away from those of us who are of the Pleb persuasion.

Steve, the Queen has no real power these days. I think the Royals are very conscious of the fate of the last king (Charles I) to try throwing his weight around.

One of the reasons Australia isn't yet a republic is the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality. On the other hand, in practice nothing much would change - the powers of the Governor-General, such as they are, would transfer to a largely ceremonial presidency.

The other reason the republic proposal was lost at referendum was that the monarchist side managed to confuse a lot of the punters with a cunning disinformation campaign targeted at the method proposed for selecting the president (i.e. election by a 2/3 majority of Parliament).

This stirred up a view that the president should be elected directly by the people. In fact a popular election model would politicise the office rather than the reverse, and place too much importance on it, but unless the voters can be educated that might be the price we have to pay to cut our last ties with the Monarchy.

Neil is a rebel Celt.

Well, if one Welsh and one Irish ancestor counts, Liz. They're all the Celts I can find in the family tree.