A SQUIRRELS TALE
REST OF THE WORLD VERSION:
The squirrel works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building and improving 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 squirrel is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
THE END
THE U.K. VERSION:
The squirrel 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 squirrel is warm and well fed.
A social worker finds the shivering grasshopper, calls a press conference
and demands to know why the squirrel should be allowed to be warm and
well fed while others less fortunate, like the grasshopper, are cold and
starving.
The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper;
with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a
table laden with food.
The British press inform people that they should be ashamed that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so, while others have plenty.
The Labour Party, Greenpeace, Animal Rights and The Grasshopper Council of GB demonstrate in front of the squirrel's house.
The BBC, interrupting a cultural festival special from Notting Hill with
breaking news, broadcasts a multi cultural choir singing "We Shall Overcome".
Ken Livingstone rants in an interview with Trevor McDonald that the
squirrel got rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate
tax hike on the squirrel to make him pay his "fair share" and increases the charge for squirrels to enter inner London.
In response to pressure from the media, the Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The squirrel's taxes are reassessed.
He is taken to court and fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as builders
for the work he was doing on his home and an additional fine for Contempt when he told the court the grasshopper did not want to work.
The grasshopper is provided with a council house, financial aid to furnish
it and an account with a local taxi firm to ensure he can be socially mobile. The squirrel's food is seized and re distributed to the more needy
members of society, in this case the grasshopper.
Without enough money to buy more food, to pay the fine and his newly
imposed retroactive taxes, the squirrel has to downsize and start building
a new home.
The local authority takes over his old home and utilises it as a temporary
home for asylum seeking cats who had hijacked a plane to get to Britain as they had to share their country of origin with mice. On arrival they tried to blow up the airport because of Britain's apparent love of dogs.
The cats had been arrested for the international offence of hijacking and
attempted bombing but were immediately released because the police fed
them pilchards instead of salmon whilst in custody.
Initial moves to then return them to their own country were abandoned
because it was feared they would face death by the mice. The cats devise
and start a scam to obtain money from people's credit cards.
A Panorama special shows the grasshopper finishing up the last of the
squirrel's food, though spring is still months away, while the council house he is in, crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain
the house.
He is shown to be taking drugs. Inadequate government funding is blamed for the grasshopper's drug 'illness'.
The cats seek recompense in the British courts for their treatment since
arrival in UK.
The grasshopper gets arrested for stabbing an old dog during a burglary to get money for his drugs habit. He is imprisoned but released immediately because he has been in custody for a few weeks.
He is placed in the care of the probation service to monitor and supervise
him. Within a few weeks he has killed a guinea pig in a botched robbery.
A commission of enquiry, that will eventually cost £10,000,000 and state
the obvious, is set up.
Additional money is put into funding a drug rehabilitation scheme for
grasshoppers and legal aid for lawyers representing asylum seekers is
increased.
The asylum-seeking cats are praised by the government for enriching
Britain's multicultural diversity and dogs are criticised by the government
for failing to befriend the cats.
The grasshopper dies of a drug overdose. The usual sections of the press
blame it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity and his traumatic experience of
prison.
They call for the resignation of a minister.
The cats are paid a million pounds each because their rights were infringed when the government failed to inform them there were mice in the United Kingdom.
The squirrel, the dogs and the victims of the hijacking, the bombing, the
burglaries and robberies have to pay an additional percentage on their
credit cards to cover losses, their taxes are increased to pay for law and
order and they are told that they will have to work beyond 65 because of a shortfall in government funds.
THE END
A SQUIRRELS TALE
A SQUIRRELS TALE
She's my idea of beauty and thats what I ride.
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VTRgirl
- Posts: 2281
- Joined: Mon May 16, 2005 3:22 pm
- Location: Sunny Queensland, Great Southern Land
I "sloppily" adapted this for Australia & emailed it to my brother, a lawyer who lives to defend indigenous rights & those of refugees, etc. We tend to disagree on these kind of matters somewhat... Here's his reply:
Well, you were probably expecting a response from me, so here it is...
Firstly, this is obviously from England (where the nazi movement is quite strong) and has been sloppily adapted for Australia (probably by someone like Gordon Gordon out of Ben Elton's 'Stark', which you must read if you haven't already).
Secondly, it neglects to mention that for many generations Squirrel Government Legislation deemed all grasshoppers wards of the state from birth (regardless of how loving and capable their parents were). Grasshoppers were put on special grasshopper reserves, not allowed off the reserves without a permit, not allowed proper health care, not allowed a healthy diet, not allowed an education beyond about grade two, and not adequately policed (comparing police numbers on grasshopper reserves with police numbers in squirrel towns of similar sizes). They were forced to go to work at about age 14 (with no choice about where they would work), paid a third to a half of what squirrels earned for the same work, had most of that stolen from them, and had the remainder 'looked after' by the Squirrel Government which only allowed them to access it if they could demonstrate to the squirrels' satisfaction that they really needed it. They were not allowed to marry without the approval of the Squirrel Government. On the other side of the fence, many squirrels actually got established in life with the help of their parents, who, while far from perfect, at least gave them a stable home, encouraged them to get an education, and often lent them money to help them buy a first home or car. No grasshopper was ever able to provide that assistance to their children.
Thirdly, it misrepresents the sorry saga of the cat refugees. They came on boats to escape certain mice. Many squirrels ridiculed this, even at exactly the same time as they were claiming the Mousiban and Saddam Mousain regimes, from which most of the cats were fleeing, were evil and had to be eliminated in the name of justice. They bombed the crap out of the country Saddam Mousain was from, killing hundreds of thousands of mice who had actually been quite nice to cats. It was just a coincidence, the squirrels said, that Saddam Mousain's country was a major supplier of special nut cracking equipment - that had nothing to do with it. (Although the first tasks given to the invading squirrel soldiers, who were primarily from poor squirrel families, not the ones who were comfortable through the winter and putting extensions on their houses, was to secure the nut cracking equipment facilities; the water supply infrastructure and the mouspitals were left to rot.) But that's all another story. The incumbent Australian Squirrel Government played on irrational squirrel fears by sending the army's crack Special Squirrel Service squad onto a ship that had rescued some cats, preventing it from entering Australian waters and making the ship's captain a hero all around the world, including in many squirrel countries that accept far more cats as refugees (both in raw numbers and per capita) than Australia. The Government also claimed that the cats threw their kittens overboard and were therefore not the kind of animals we wanted to have in Australia. The Navy tried to tell the Govt that this hadn't happened, but the Government wouldn't listen and kept up with its story. The Squirrel Government also knew about another boat, called the SIEV X, bringing refugee cats to Australia but pretended it didn't know, and directed the Squirrel Rescue Service to do nothing when it was thought the boat was in trouble. It is believed that several hundred cats, who were also escaping from the Mousiban and Saddam Mousain regimes, drowned.
The Government then spent hundreds of millions of dollars taking the cats to an island (except the ones other countries like New Squirreland accepted immediately) and kept them there for years before finally they were pretty much all accepted as genuine refugees.
The story does get it right though about the cats not being warned that there were mice in Australia. John Mousard, Mouser Reith and Phillip Mousock of the Australian Squirrel Government, and an American company that was given the contract to operate Cat Refugee Detention Centres, were particularly responsible for dishonesty and the atrocious treatment of cats, many of whom ended up with mental health problems after having been locked up for so long.
And that's just a start....
Well, you were probably expecting a response from me, so here it is...
Firstly, this is obviously from England (where the nazi movement is quite strong) and has been sloppily adapted for Australia (probably by someone like Gordon Gordon out of Ben Elton's 'Stark', which you must read if you haven't already).
Secondly, it neglects to mention that for many generations Squirrel Government Legislation deemed all grasshoppers wards of the state from birth (regardless of how loving and capable their parents were). Grasshoppers were put on special grasshopper reserves, not allowed off the reserves without a permit, not allowed proper health care, not allowed a healthy diet, not allowed an education beyond about grade two, and not adequately policed (comparing police numbers on grasshopper reserves with police numbers in squirrel towns of similar sizes). They were forced to go to work at about age 14 (with no choice about where they would work), paid a third to a half of what squirrels earned for the same work, had most of that stolen from them, and had the remainder 'looked after' by the Squirrel Government which only allowed them to access it if they could demonstrate to the squirrels' satisfaction that they really needed it. They were not allowed to marry without the approval of the Squirrel Government. On the other side of the fence, many squirrels actually got established in life with the help of their parents, who, while far from perfect, at least gave them a stable home, encouraged them to get an education, and often lent them money to help them buy a first home or car. No grasshopper was ever able to provide that assistance to their children.
Thirdly, it misrepresents the sorry saga of the cat refugees. They came on boats to escape certain mice. Many squirrels ridiculed this, even at exactly the same time as they were claiming the Mousiban and Saddam Mousain regimes, from which most of the cats were fleeing, were evil and had to be eliminated in the name of justice. They bombed the crap out of the country Saddam Mousain was from, killing hundreds of thousands of mice who had actually been quite nice to cats. It was just a coincidence, the squirrels said, that Saddam Mousain's country was a major supplier of special nut cracking equipment - that had nothing to do with it. (Although the first tasks given to the invading squirrel soldiers, who were primarily from poor squirrel families, not the ones who were comfortable through the winter and putting extensions on their houses, was to secure the nut cracking equipment facilities; the water supply infrastructure and the mouspitals were left to rot.) But that's all another story. The incumbent Australian Squirrel Government played on irrational squirrel fears by sending the army's crack Special Squirrel Service squad onto a ship that had rescued some cats, preventing it from entering Australian waters and making the ship's captain a hero all around the world, including in many squirrel countries that accept far more cats as refugees (both in raw numbers and per capita) than Australia. The Government also claimed that the cats threw their kittens overboard and were therefore not the kind of animals we wanted to have in Australia. The Navy tried to tell the Govt that this hadn't happened, but the Government wouldn't listen and kept up with its story. The Squirrel Government also knew about another boat, called the SIEV X, bringing refugee cats to Australia but pretended it didn't know, and directed the Squirrel Rescue Service to do nothing when it was thought the boat was in trouble. It is believed that several hundred cats, who were also escaping from the Mousiban and Saddam Mousain regimes, drowned.
The Government then spent hundreds of millions of dollars taking the cats to an island (except the ones other countries like New Squirreland accepted immediately) and kept them there for years before finally they were pretty much all accepted as genuine refugees.
The story does get it right though about the cats not being warned that there were mice in Australia. John Mousard, Mouser Reith and Phillip Mousock of the Australian Squirrel Government, and an American company that was given the contract to operate Cat Refugee Detention Centres, were particularly responsible for dishonesty and the atrocious treatment of cats, many of whom ended up with mental health problems after having been locked up for so long.
And that's just a start....
If you ate yourself would you become twice as big or simply disappear?
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VTRgirl
- Posts: 2281
- Joined: Mon May 16, 2005 3:22 pm
- Location: Sunny Queensland, Great Southern Land
I'm very glad to say he's not interested in making a fortune, Jaglifter ;). He & I differ a LOT on this kind of thing, but he's a fantastic fella & uses his qualification to right what he sees as wrongs in the world. I'm really proud of him.
I, on the other hand, prefer to stay blissfully ignorant on such things.
I, on the other hand, prefer to stay blissfully ignorant on such things.
If you ate yourself would you become twice as big or simply disappear?