Official website of the BPP

(The old classic tale with a new twist...)

Two Different Versions! Two Different Morals!

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!

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.

The BBC, ITV and the Sunday People show up to provide the British population 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 makes a special trip to the UK and appears on Trisha with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green.'

Zac Dingle and a couple of other members of the cast of Emmerdale, proudly wearing their 'Hope not Hate' T-shirts, take a break from filming to condemn the racism of the ant.

The UAF declares the ant to be a nazi and a fascist responsible for gassing of 6 million butterflies and stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." The Archbishop of York then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron unite to declare in Parliament that the ant has got 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.

Finally, the Lib-Dems draft the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act which is passed without dissent and becomes law, 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 Green Czar.

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

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.