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Author Topic: Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)  (Read 9646 times)

FELINEGUITARS

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« on: January 08, 2007, 11:40:46 PM »
The tale of 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 BRITISH 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;
               with cuts to a video of the squirrel in his comfortable warm home with a
               table laden with food.
 
               The British press informs 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 demonstrate 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 has gotten 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
               attempt 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 peoples 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. They call for the resignation of a minister.
 
               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_______________
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MDV

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2007, 11:51:00 PM »
Its just a slight impression I get, but you are slightly anti welfare? Just a tad? Maybe?

sambo

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2007, 11:55:14 PM »
bloody marvellous!

sambo

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2007, 12:09:27 AM »
Quote from: MDV
Its just a slight impression I get, but you are slightly anti welfare? Just a tad? Maybe?


 :lol:

FELINEGUITARS

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #4 on: January 09, 2007, 12:19:42 AM »
Quote from: MDV
Its just a slight impression I get, but you are slightly anti welfare? Just a tad? Maybe?


no .........just

anti-compensation culture
anti-giving rights to those who dont earn them or participate in society
anti-give it to every waif and stray from abroad but deny it to those who have paid into the system
anti-political correctness where it defys common sense and rights of the common man
anti-politicians playing the human rights game where it rewards the guilty and punishes the victims
anti-rewarding the criminal and recompensing for serving justice according to the laws of the land.

I could go on ....but you get the picture
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MDV

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2007, 12:34:35 AM »
OK.

If you read all the 'anti's in that as 'Aunty' its pretty funny! Try it!

dave_mc

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2007, 12:36:10 AM »
Quote from: MDV
Its just a slight impression I get, but you are slightly anti welfare? Just a tad? Maybe?


:lol:

FELINEGUITARS

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2007, 01:15:19 AM »
Yeah - my Aunty is anti all that as well.

I am not against welfare for those retired, unable to work or who find themselves out of work , but again I take issue with those who:

claims welfare and wont work,
claims welfare but doesn't want to work or be a part of society,
claims welfare and then works on the black economy- not declaring their work or earnings,
claims welfare and goes stealing or other illegal activity
come to this country just to get a free ride,

and those who allow it to happen!!

OK - starting to sound right wing when in fact I am just over 40 and starting to sound like my dad.

The item was supposed to be amusing but with some valid points- ENJOY!!
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Twinfan

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2007, 08:51:45 AM »
Absolutely top post!

hunter

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2007, 12:43:24 PM »
Hm, I think all this is is anti public opinion, as the public demands the news the media give to them, and politicians need to go conform with the public opinion that's created based on that demand. In the example case, the broad public buys mostly the newspaper with the grashopper story.

So, we here are part of public opinion too, but the target group is comparably small.

Which means, if we want to change society, we need to advertise the BKP forum and products, so we can have more influence on the public opinion with our forum posts.

 :roll:
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dave_mc

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #10 on: January 09, 2007, 07:53:30 PM »
Quote from: FELINEGUITARS
Yeah - my Aunty is anti all that as well.

I am not against welfare for those retired, unable to work or who find themselves out of work , but again I take issue with those who:

claims welfare and wont work,
claims welfare but doesn't want to work or be a part of society,
claims welfare and then works on the black economy- not declaring their work or earnings,
claims welfare and goes stealing or other illegal activity
come to this country just to get a free ride,

and those who allow it to happen!!

OK - starting to sound right wing when in fact I am just over 40 and starting to sound like my dad.

The item was supposed to be amusing but with some valid points- ENJOY!!


I don't think anyone has a problem with that. Problem I find is that when you add in extra checks on people, it just ends up hurting those who deserve it, while those conniving enough to want to play the system find a way around it anyway.

I mean, when I was an undergraduate student, I was entitled to free eye tests and dental tests, but you had so many darn forms to fill out it was easier to just pay the £8 (or whatever it was), unless you were on the breadline.

MDV

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #11 on: January 09, 2007, 08:23:46 PM »
Feline, on the whole I agree.

However, I've been a on benefits (dole for a few months after uni) and I think you give 'the system' too little credit. It is geared quite militantly into forcing people into work if they dont seem to be trying or able to find a job. But if someone wants to actively avoid that, or make money by other means, it gets much harder to control that, because thats arseholes doing what they do: being arseholes. Government policy cant, and shouldnt, include arsehole correction, because it opens the floodgates for all sorts of infringments on our rights.

The things you mention are wrong and a pain in the arse (particularly aunty politicians playing the human rights game where it rewards the guilty and punishes the victims, she gets my goat), but the issues are always more complicated to fix than you and I think, and are often better than they appear to be in the papers, too (its in most journalists interests to sensationalise problems to sell their wares, after all)

P.S. The tale was pretty funny.

FELINEGUITARS

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #12 on: January 09, 2007, 08:35:13 PM »
Hey Dave, Hunter and MDV

Good points, and the situation is never black and white.
Being on the dole is grim and it seems that the genuine cases suffer more than the dodgy ones sadly.

I also think that the media over-egg the reporting to sell papers or get viewing figures. I do actually hate the media at times because I kno I am being wound up or played for a sucker

I just wish that more people would feel the sense of responsibility to decency that it takes to make society work . I see stuff that makes me think that it is all slipping off the rails.

Funnily enough I overheard a conversation a teenage (chav) girl was having on the tram (we have those in Croydon) - apparently on her way to meet friends and be involved in a fight . She was concerned that she didnt have the right clothes to fight in although she did happen to have a knuckleduster with her so that was ok - could she borrow a pair of trainers? She didnt care that she might get beat up and have to go to hostpital - she was gonna stand by her girl (homie). She cant have been more than 14- worrying what its all coming down to.

Anyway - was meant as a bit of humour with some thought provocation

Didnt mean to sound like I was turning into my Dad!!
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dave_mc

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #13 on: January 09, 2007, 09:53:40 PM »
i agree, more or less, with both mark and jonathan's posts.

:drink:

cjpmmd

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Squirrel & the grasshopper (contains social satire)
« Reply #14 on: January 10, 2007, 02:55:05 AM »
Quote
anti-give it to every waif and stray from abroad


Wow!  That must be one busy Aunty!  Sort of a carnal goodwill ambassador.

cjpm