The ant and the grasshopper
CLASSIC VERSION (the way it should be):
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool,
and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is
warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he
dies out in the cold.
THE END
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THE BRITISH VERSION (the terrifyingly TRUE version):
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool,
and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is
warm and well fed.
The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why
the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less
fortunate, like him, are cold and starving.
The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with
cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home in Hampstead with a
table laden with food. The British are stunned that in a country of such
wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have
plenty.
The Liberal Party, the Respect Party, the Transvestites With Starving Babies
Party and the Coalition Against Poverty, demonstrate in front of the ant's
house. The BBC, interrupting an Rastafarian cultural festival special from
Grimsby with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall
Overcome."
Ken Livingstone laments in an interview with Panorama that the ant has got
rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on
the ant to make him pay his "fair share". In response, the Labour Government
drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act,
retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant's taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire
grasshoppers as helpers.
Without enough money to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive
taxes, his home is confiscated by Camden Council .
The ant moves to France, and starts a successful agricultural company
[funded by the EU... actually funded by the UK taxpayer to the tune of £6bn
per year].
The BBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the
ant's food, though Spring is still months away, while the government house
he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around
him because he hasn't bothered to maintain it.
Inadequate government funding is blamed, Diane Abbot is appointed to head a
commission of enquiry that will cost the taxpayer £10m.
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Guardian blames it on
the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair
arising from social inequity.
The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by
the government for enriching Britain's multicultural diversity, who
promptly set up a marijuana growing operations and terrorize the community.
THE END
The ant and the grass hopper
The ant and the grass hopper
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
