[nilesfunnies] Fw: The Ant & The Grasshopper

The Ant & The Grasshopper
THE CLASSIC 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 has no food or
shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE END

THE BRITISH 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 with a table
laden with food.

Britons are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor
grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The Labour Party, Greenpeace and The Grasshopper Council of GB demonstrate
in front of the ant's house. The BBC, interrupting a Jamaican cultural
festival special from Notting Hill with breaking news, broadcasts them
singing "We Shall Overcome"

Ken Livingstone rants in an interview with Trevor McDonald that the ant
has gotten 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 to polls, 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 both the fine and his newly imposed
retroactive taxes, the government repossesses his home.

The ant moves to Spain, and starts a successful wine-exporting company.

A Panorama special later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the
last of the ant's food, though Spring is still months away, while the
council 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, Trevor Phillips is appointed to
head a commission of enquiry that will cost £10,000,000.

The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Daily Mirror 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 plantation and terrorise the community.

THE END

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