OT: Many a true word spoken in jest

THE SQUIRREL AND THE GRASSHOPPER

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 UK 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; which 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 demonstrates 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.

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

Reply to
John Rumm
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Trouble is, there's more grasshoppers than squirrels, and they've all got the vote.

Andy.

Reply to
Andy

so true, and its played out over and over... you'd think folk would learn.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

You'd think folk would refrain from adding detritus -in the form of posts recycled from the early days of the internet to newsgroups already cluttered with children, fools and spammers.

In the early days one newb after another would find some forum to post the same old same old. That was before before people got tired of passing spam gethering chain e-mails around.

Before some people got tired that is. There's always at least one retard, isn't there?

Klean the Kountry. Kill all the Anglo Saxons that won't go back to Germany.

Reply to
Weatherlawyer

Don't be so hard on yourself. Keep on trying, you never know, one day you may actually post something of use to someone.

Reply to
John Rumm

racist? lazy-gittist maybe. Did I miss something? Looked to me like a moan about those that do sod all and want to use others.

naa, people have always done that in every ng, and I dont expect it to change. And as ever, some people mind, some dont, so people put OT in the title for the benefit etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I dont recall the OP saying all asylum seekers were of a particular personality type. I dont see owt wrong with facing the fact that like any selection of people, there are going to be all types among them, just the same as there are in any section of British society. Tis human nature.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

You seem to have missed out the bit where Mr Ant changed his surname to Squirrel in a desperate attempt to escape the overpowering prejudice in society against insects, particularly ones the work together on a communal basis.

H
Reply to
HLAH

Return Britain to the Sabre Toothed Tiger and the Woolly Mammoth. Huamns Out!

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

To edit their replies so that the entire original post isn't repeated.

Reply to
Nobody

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