WorkinWords Comments and occasional rants on agribusiness and other topics – mainly New Zealand

I have been volunteering for Age Concern Wellington Region and was asked to comment on the negative connotations associated with the use of the collective noun “Elderly” when referring to senior citizens, older people etc. My opinion is set out below.

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There is an ongoing debate about describing older people as a group. The trouble is that finding a word to refer to a very heterogeneous collection of citizens over the age of 65 years.

As soon as you start you run into the problem that just about any generic word can or could cause offense to either a single person or a sub-group of the population you seek to define. Ageism rears its head, along with all the other collective nouns in common use, but there are those who claim that the senior generation is not regarded as important as the other sectors of society.

When it comes to a crunch it is the collective word or words used that can cause many of the problems. The issue is that the word aims to define a group of people comprising some 15% of the population, aged between 65 and over 100. It includes any number of people with different abilities, interests, and levels of experience, living in a multitude of different circumstances – well off, to getting along as best they can.

Other groups like kids are more easily defined as they are lumped into smaller well-understood cohorts of pre-school, primary or secondary aged groups, without generally offending anyone.

But defining over 65-year-olds in a single group is a problem. It may be that the word chosen becomes over-used or associated with (real or imagined) negative aspects of the group and thus becomes unfashionable or unwanted. The current out of favour word is “elderly”. Does this phenomenon go in cycles?

That brings up my memory of a skit by stand-up comic Stan Freberg back in 1957 (I had to do a Google search to find the date). He was interrupted by a censor from the ‘citizens radio committee’ who objected when Freberg began to sing “Old Man River”.

The censor claimed, “The word “old” has a connotation that some of the more elderly people find distasteful. I would suggest you make the substitution.”  So, Freberg changed it to “Elderly Man River”. The song went on with frequent interruptions from the censor. What goes around, comes around.

Now “elderly is out of favour and there is a whole lot of substitutes including ‘older people’, ‘seniors’ and the rather unfortunate ‘older adults’ which is a confusion, in its own right.

My question is whether it is the older generation who is worried about this or those who face the prospect of being stereotyped by an ageist collective name? I would hate to raise the issue of political correctness.

Admittedly, there are reasons some negative connotations such as the perceived cost to society due to superannuation and health charges, and there are seniors requiring support because they are isolated, disabled, become frail, or have mental issues. But this should not be regarded as being any different from other sections of society, — education, social welfare, unemployment, police, or corrections. It is all part of the cost of living in New Zealand.

And it might be said that getting to be older means these people have been through the mill, paid taxes, brought up kids in a proper manner (mostly) and probably done some pro bono work on the way.

Just like those other sections, there are organisations established to provide support and care for the less active older members of society. Age Concern Wellington Region provides a Visitor Service, Companion Walking Service, Pop-up Hubs for Seniors, Steady As You Go fitness and balance classes, as well as Staying Safe driving workshops and Tea & Tech classes to assist seniors in their daily lives.

Many of these organisations rely on the voluntary services of seniors who have experience and wisdom gained from a lifetime of getting on with it. So seniors could be regarded as contributing to, as well as depending on society and life in Aotearoa New Zealand.

From a personal point of view, I don’t really care what generic name I am saddled with. There is a view that ‘elderly’ is an offensive moniker for us oldies, silver tops, old farts, ancients, sages, or if you are an Aussie silver top campervan addict- SADs (See Australia and Die).

If you have been around as long as me and most of my mates you have been blamed, shamed, occasionally framed, and renamed. Basically, it is not something I lie awake at night worrying about.

I am of the opinion (and you can get opinionated when you have reached a certain age) that most of the venerable, revered, occasionally forgetful people do not give a tinker’s curse as to what the rest of humanity calls them. We have been there, seen and done that, bought the T shirt, acquired the cap, and possibly even kept a written record or diary retry about it.

There is more to life than worrying about a collective noun.

One of the real “delights” of being treasurer of an organisation in this digital age is fending off the impertinent intrusions of scammers attempting to relieve the unwary of the organisation’s funds.

Fortunately I have not been inundated with such offensive behaviour, until recently.

The approach takes the form of an email headed “Quick One” or “Payment” from the President of the organisation – in this case the NZ Guild of Agricultural Journalists – and “signed” with their name. It’s all very polite, the salutation addresses me by name, is reasonably formal with good English and no spelling mistakes, as follows:

“Hello Mich,

I need you to set up a bank transfer for a payment ,let me know if you can handle this right away so I can send you the bank details and can you please confirm to me the recent available account balance? Waiting for your reply.

Thanks,
(President’s name)

So far, so good apart from misspelling my name and a misplaced comma.

But, the President has never asked for any funds in the past; we don’t conduct business in Australia on any regular basis; a payment of that amount is somewhat out of the ordinary; and as a reasonably well managed organisation we would need a tad more documentation than a barefaced request such as this. There is no mention of what the funds are for, nor is there any explanation of the need for urgency.

To see how far this would go I asked for details and immediately received this:

“Hello Mick,

Amount….$4,250,Its for financing an urgent project and the account will reimburse next
week Thursday unfailingly.please kindly send the swift copy after the payment.”

When I did not respond for a couple of hours it was followed by this

“This is the account information below,kindly to me the swift copy after you have made the payment,for Board record keeping and also i can send it to the beneficiary for proof of payment.

Bounyadeth Viora, Bank West, Account number: 0224484, Bsb: 302969, Bank Swift Code: bkwaau6p, Bank Address: 179/180 Macquarie st Liverpool nsw 2170

waiting to hear from you”

This reply was a little bit sloppy – the word spacing and capitalisation deteriorated, and the account holder’s name looked a bit dodgy (maybe he/she was getting over-excited by the prospect of easy money). The bank details checked out, but I suspect the account would disappear, along with the funds, if any payment were made. The kicker comes when you look at the reply email address – an innocuous looking, and probably untraceable impersonation in the form <ChiefExeOfficer1@mail2visionary.com>

The President of the Guild was astounded to learn that she had allegedly asked me to transfer funds to Australia, especially with no explanation. So the ChiefExeOfficer1 was advised to “Fuck off”. Sadly there was no response to this gentlemanly instruction.

What brasses me off is that despite being told to stop bothering me in basic Anglo-Saxon terms, as above, he or she waited a couple of weeks and decided to have another go with a slightly different message, again “signed” in the name of our president but with a different return email address.

“I need you to initiate a bank transfer or cash deposit in amount of $9,780 AUD for me today. Let me know if you are available, so I can forward the beneficiary details.” <presidentp@mail-me.com>.

The expletives were not deleted from my response. But the problem is that they cannot take a hint and I am now getting requests on a weekly basis – only the email addresses are changed to fool the naive. I have tried the approach by listing fabulous amounts of money available in various currencies including bitcoins, but the irony is lost on them. They keep asking for more.

As if this isn’t bad enough I have also been harassed by dodgy share-broker calls. In the last couple of months I have been on the receiving end of serial cell phone calls from a London number, only to be greeted by a very Asian sounding person trying to flog shares in international companies. Do they think i am Warren Buffet? At least they quickly mumble the name of the company they represent. But they get the short shrift as well.

I guess you just have to become suspicious, cynical and very tight fisted.