Old Father Time has passed on the following to the GF... He does not know the original author, but acknowledges his work (though it has been slightly edited)...

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 NU-Labour 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 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 END

[File under: Diary]