Jefferson quote on good government

The Grasshopper and the Ant

Two versions, Old & New...

OLD 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 the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has stored no food nor built a shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself.

Now for the MODERN Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the  winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving… The BBC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.  Britain is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?  Kermit the Frog appears on News Night with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green ...' “Occupy the Anthill” stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film a group from the Labour Party singing, "We shall overcome."

The Archbishop of Cantaloup has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper while he condemns the ant's insensitivity.  Ed Milliband (Very Old Labour) jumps on the photo opportunity and also condemns the ant, but blames David Cameron, George Osborne and Margaret Thatcher for the grasshopper's plight.

Nichola Sturgeon (Seriously Nasty Party and leader of the Scottish Assembly) says this could never happen in Scotland, and it won't happen again in England if Ed will let her make the rules... even though she's ineligible to sit in Parliament!

Nigel Farage (United Kingdom Insect Party) says this is the type of opportunity that opportunist migrant bugs will seize upon and that we should really be spraying the Channel Tunnel with bug spray.

Polly Toynbee and Vanessa Redgrave exclaim in an interview on BBC News that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant-hill mansion  to make him pay his fair share.

Finally the EU intervenes and drafts the Economic Equity For Grasshopper's Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs while constructing his ant-hill and, having nothing left to pay fines and taxes, his home is confiscated and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading buddies holding a party and finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which as you recall just happens to be the ant's old house,  crumbles around them because the lack of maintenance.

The ant disappears into the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead from obesity and his new found chum, Kermit the Frog, can’t even be bothered to attend the funeral. The Ant-hill, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of eastern European spiders who terrorize the once prosperous neighbourhood. The entire Nation collapses bringing down the rest of the free world with it because Grasshoppers and Spiders are not entrepreneurs… they are just opportunists.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be very careful how you vote (and you can never trust a singing frog).

(Thanks to my friend David from the UK.)