Forum Archive Index - May 2000

[Paul.Menneer@sealedair.com]

A WEE TALE ...

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

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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
he's 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 and TV3 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.  NZ is stunned by the
sharp contrast.
How can it be that, in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper
is allowed to suffer so?
Then a representative of the NAAGB (National Association of Green Bugs)
shows up on Nightline and charges the ant with "green bias," and makes
the case that the grasshopper is the victim of 30 million years of
greenism.  Kermit the Frog appears on Holmes with the grasshopper, and
everybody cries when he sings "It's Not Easy Being Green."
Jim and Helen Clarke make a special guest appearance on a hour long
Holmes Special to tell a concerned Paul Holmes that they will do
everything they can for the grasshopper who has been denied the
prosperity he deserves by those who benefited unfairly during the
National summers, or as Jim refers to it, the "Temperatures of the
90's."
Rod Donald and Sue Bradford exclaim in an interview with John Campbell
that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and calls
for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."
Finally, the Combined Trade Unions draft the "Economic Equity and
Anti-Greenism Act" retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
This is immediately rushed through the house under urgency together with
a bill deregulating the practice of advanced and general medicine,
prescription of drugs and general dentistry in favour of midwives.  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.  Sue Bradford and Helen Clarke lead an
all night vigil outside his home on the night before eviction chanting
"shame, shame, shame" throughout the night, (but in a culturally
sensitive manner).
Jim gets the Crown Law Office 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 mums
who can only hear cases on Thursdays between 1:30 and 3pm when there are
no talk shows scheduled.  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's in, which just happens to
be the ant's old house, crumbles around him since he doesn't know how to
maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.  And on the TV, which the
grasshopper bought by selling most of the ant's food, they are showing
Jim and Helen standing before a wildly applauding group of politicians
announcing that a new era of "fairness" has dawned in New Zealand.



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