A hoax, but funny nonetheless:
I find the part about the Postal Service particularly funny.
It’s funny that they try to attribute it to democrats when the Republicans already ahve this plan in action, especially with high ranking government job. Bush has appointed all sorts of Individuals with No Abilities into high ranking postions.
There’s a Brit version been floating around the net for a while:
Here: without comment.
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 inform 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 squirrels 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 the 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 attempted 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 grasshoppers 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 GBP10,000,000 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, and so that existing government employes can continue to retire early on incredible pension terms…
The truth can be quite funny!
ah well you said “without comments” as a grass-root liberal I find that libel … how could I say that? reactionary? 
the purpose could have been served with a more subtle criticism.
Not as funny, but not a hoax either.
If you let e.g. the unions have a say in who a company can fire, you can make sure the layoffs create the least amount of social problems.
In effect they won’t let you fire the incompetent people, because they’d never get another job. So if you have to reduce staff, who are you left with?
I don’t know if that system is still in effect anywhere.
I quite intentionally did not make comment. Just saying “without comments” was probably sufficient to set the controversy ball rolling. I did not write the text, its messages are hardly subtle, and indeed, a lot of jugglers /unicyclists might fall easily into the grasshopper category. To some the text is reactionary, but remember that Newton said something akin to “reaction first requires action”. So to others it merely states obvious truths about things that are wrong with British Society and Government.
Nao
What is wrong, exactly, with providing a minimal subsistence to the least among us, even those self-described as unwilling, despite no mental or physical impediment, to participate productively? Relatively few people choose such an existence and the cost is minimal compared to, say, enacting tax cuts for the most wealthy or executing an unnecessary and destabilizing war.
Why is it that the idea of supporting a few slackers causes so much more outrage in the general public than the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, of thousands innocent civilians in Iraq?
Like the obvious truth that all asylum seekers are plane hijackers and credit card scammers. Sadly, I know quite a few people who believe that that is an obvious truth.
i applaud you, fair sir. well said.
The problem is that government does more than minimal for some… for it to work, it nees to be the bare minimum and then add in requirements on assisting these people to become self dependent.
What if they don’t want to be self dependent? That was part of my assumption.
Then they are probably mentally ill and therefore need assistance to become self dependent. 
We (The taxpayers, that is) Already DO “support” the “slackers”…it’s called WELFARE! 
We (The taxpayers, that is) Already DO “support” the “slackers”…it’s called WELFARE!
Welfare is not for slackers. It may be used by them, but that’s not, I believe, it’s intention.
But you haven’t really addressed the question.
The majority of people on welfare are under the age of 18. We can’t really expect children to work full time jobs to support themselves. Also the majority of people on welfare are on it for reletively short periods of time. The true purpose of the welfare system is to get people back on their feet and become self-dependent. The few people who abuse the system get shown as a representation of the entire group, and make it easier to become so uncompassionate for those truely in need.
It’s too easy to judge someone whose shoes you’ve never been in.
So educate them. Are they idiots? It is not obvious truth to most. I have met no-one who thinks that.
I have met many who think most asylum seekers are bogus. That might have been a better example to debate. Any asylum seeker should not be released into the population at large until their case has been considered and accepted. Any not claiming asylum immediately should be classed as illegal and deported rapidly. And any trying to avoid deportation, by destruction of papers and witholding of information, should be kept in an appropriate compound. Experts should then assess their language and therefore determine country of origin. It’s bloody silly to let so called “human rights” allow inappropriate use of the asylum system. We need an efficient system, to clog it up with failed asylum seekers who have not yet been kicked out is counterproductive. And get some decent border controls in place.
Nao ( an immigrant…legal )
Not idiots, just people who tend to form their opinions based on what they read in The Sun or The Mail. And yeah, what I said is probably an exaggeration, it’s probably more accurate to say that people think that ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘bogus asylum seeker’ mean the same thing. But the association with asylum seekers and crime is certainly made very quickly by some people (and some newspapers).
I read a US version of the above, only it included Kermit the Frog appearing on the Today Show to sing “It’s Not Easy Being Green” in honor of the grasshopper.
Jokes like these are designed by economic conservatives to invalidate the poor, in order to ease the consciences of privileged but decent folks. My sister, a successful accountant, has unfortunately fallen victim to this sort of propaganda. When I told her that I was sponsoring a child in Nicaragua, she said, “Frank! That’s bad. I heard all those organizations are all scams.” The organization I use is 50 years old and praised by charity watchdogs. Her response to that was, “Well…still. You never know.”
My sister is not an uncompassionate person at heart. If I asked for financial help, I’m positive she would grant it unconditionally. But when confronted with the faceless billions of poverty-stricken and hungry, it’s sometimes easier to make the excuse (to yourself more than anyone) that poverty is simply a question of work ethic and lifestyle choices. The self-convinced fallacy being that a universally-set amount of effort is all it takes for anyone to get ahead, and “If I can make it, they should be able to, too.”