THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

CLASSIC VERSION:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances 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 BRITISH VERSION:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying supplies for the winter.  The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances 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 is 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 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 while others have such 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 a Rastafarian cultural festival from Grimsby with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome".

Ken Livingston 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, the home is confiscated by Camden Council.  The ant moves to France and sets up a successful agribiz company, funded by Britain via the EU.

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 lives 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 commission of enquiry that will cost £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 - despair arising from social inequity.

The abandoned house is now 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 operation and terrorise the local community.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Sounds about right.

Regards

Mark Adams