by Stephen Gray
Hello Children, they call me: The Little Guy.
I am a politician. I work in a big house on the hill.
My house is called Parliament. That is a big word, isn’t it. I don’t like big words.
Child: What is parly-mental?
The Little Guy: The word is Parliament but it’s too big for you to say. Let’s call the house Mental.
Child: I like that word better.
The Little Guy: Lots of people work in the Mental house. Sometimes we call each other names. We are not nice at times. Here comes Carolyn. She uses bad words and says she hates our neighbours. That lady over there is Francie. She also called our neighbour a bad name. Here comes Herb; he is an expert on the word "statesman."
Child: I don’t like it when people swear or spread hate or make fools of their good neighbours; I’m glad I don’t live next to them.
The Little Guy: Here comes Andy, he heads a committee to see if a man can marry a man.
Child: That sounds stupid to me. Don’t they know only a woman can marry a man? Is that all the silly work they have to do in the Mental house?
The Little Guy: Here comes my friend John. John likes to call banks and ask for help for his favourite hockey team. John is a nice man. That man over there is Denis he calls me his "spiritual father." Oh, here comes Joe; he will be leaving us soon. Joe has worked in the house a long time. We will miss Joe when he leaves. But he will have a huge pension and it will be indexed.
Child: What is indexed?
The Little Guy: It means every year that the cost of living goes up you get more money.
Child: What if it goes down?
The Little Guy: You get to keep the money anyway. Politicians like being indexed.
Child: I want to be a politician!!
The Little Guy: You are a clever child. What age are you? You are five!!! You should be in parliament. Here come Chuck and Deb, they used to be friends with Joe. They liked Joe so much that they used to sit together in the house. They move around lots. Now they are sitting with Stephen. What’s that you say? You don’t trust people who ditch their friends. Here comes Stephen now. He is a fiscal person. He is new to our Mental house.
Child: What is a fiscal person?
The Little Guy: A fiscal person is concerned about how money is spent. Stephen is a quiet man. Stephen doesn’t like to talk about abortion.
Child: What is abortion?
The Little Guy: When some people don’t want their unborn baby they have it killed.
Child: That makes me sad to hear that.
The Little Guy: Don’t be sad; we don’t call it killing, we call it "choice" and "social peace." Yes, that does sound better doesn’t it. That person walking by himself is Svend. He gets offended very easy. One day he had a tantrum. He took the sign off a nice man on the hill and threw it away. Svend is not mean spirited or hateful though.
Child: Then why did he do such a hateful thing and throw the sign away?
The Little Guy:Because he believes in free-_expression for himself. Here comes Bill. Bill is in foreign affairs.
Child: What is foreign affairs?
The Little Guy: I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Bill. Those two nice people are Allan and Ann, they spent a lot of money on gun registry. It has cost $1 billion dollars.
Child: What is a billion?
The Little Guy: A billion is a thousand million.
Child: Could I count that on my fingers?
The Litte Guy: No, you could never count that on your fingers or your Mummy’s fingers or your Daddy’s fingers. That is a lot of money. Even I cannot count it, it is so much. You could buy millions and millions of lollipops with that money and ice cream as well.
Child: But where did the Billion Dollars of money go?
The Little Guy: I don’t really know, but it went somewhere.
Child: Where is somewhere?
The Little Guy: Somewhere is a place over the rainbow.
Child: I heard there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps that’s where the Billion Dollars of money is!!
The Little Guy: That lady over there with the flag is Sheila; she has a lot of expenses.
Child: What are expenses?
The Little Guy: Expenses are money that people spend on themselves and others while doing business or doing nothing. You save all the receipts and ask somebody else to pay for them.
Child: I like that.
The Little Guy: Yes that is a good system. Sheila had $180,000 in expenses and $80,000 of that was for "other."
Child: What is other?
The Little Guy: OTHER is a BIG secret that only you know. Here comes Alexa she will be packing her bags soon and leaving the house. Then we will say Alexa doesn’t work here anymore. Alexa is a socialist.
Child: What is a socialist?
The Little Guy: A socialist is somebody who makes plans with and spends other peoples’ money. What is that you say? You are going to hide your Piggy bank so the Socialists can’t find it. Oh here comes Paul; for a long time he was my friend, now he wants my job. Why does he want my job? I don’t know. I gave him the best job in the house and let him play with all the money. I thought he was happy. It must be true that money can’t buy happiness.
Child: Why did you let Paul play with all the money?
The Little Guy: Because Paul is a smart man. He owns a shipping company and registers some of his ships in another country.
Child: Why is that?
The Little Guy: It’s because the company won’t have to pay some taxes in this country and it gets to keep more money. Yes, Paul is a clever man. Could your Dad do that thing called registering in another country? Of course not. That is only allowed for special people. Perhaps someday if your Dad comes to work for me I could get him some patronage.
Child: What is patronage?
The Little Guy: Patronage is when you give your friends good jobs and pay them with taxpayers’ money.
Child: What is taxpayers’ money?
The Little Guy: Taxpayers’ money is like having a big bank. All the people are forced to put some of their money there. Then my friends and I spend their money.
Child: What if you spend all the money?
The Little Guy: The money can never run out as long as there are people called taxpayers.
Child: What is a taxpayer?
The Little Guy: They are the people who put an X in a little box at election time next to our names so as we can come to this Mental house on the hill and take their money from them.
Child: Isn’t that stealing?
The Little Guy: No, we call that democracy.
Child: That sounds silly to me.
The Little Guy: That’s because you’re only five.
Child: You know, I don’t want to work in the Mental house on the hill when I grow up. My Daddy said it’s a nuthouse!
Stephen Gray
graysinfo@telus.net website http://www.oocities.org/graysinfo
April 7, 2003.
Some info on the Author: Stephen Gray is a writer and researcher on various topics. He published a newsletter for 11 years exposing the misuse of trade union time and money.