• Be very careful who you vote for in 2008

Here’s two versions of an old parable. See also my posts here, here and here, which are on related themes.

Be sure to scroll past the pictures.

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 no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

Moral of the story:

Be responsible for yourself!

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Modern 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 shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

TV1, TV3 and Maori TV 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. New Zealand 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 Good Morning with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Sue Bradford stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Gordon Copeland then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Michael Cullen exclaims in an interview with John Campbell that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share as the ant is too much of a “Rich Prick.”

Finally, the Labour Party drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Winston gets his old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of judges that Helen appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighbourhood.

The moral of the story:

Be very careful how you vote in 2008!!

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