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Thread 5135

Thread ID: 5135 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-02-21

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Avalanche [OP]

2003-02-21 03:50 | User Profile

"It’s a good gift for me,” Kunja Bihari Mahato told reporters in Bankura, north-west of Calcutta, “and I am very happy. Now I can dump my rusty and ramshackle old bicycle which was bought by my father forty years ago, and ride this smart new bicycle instead. A little snip is a small price to pay for such a splendid machine.”

Mahato, a farm hand and father of four children, was one of twenty-four men who had just taken part in a local government scheme entitled “Undergo vasectomy and pedal away on a deluxe new bicycle with silver bell and cycle clips.” Despite objections from some politicians, a district administration official defended the scheme, saying “it will be difficult to raise the majority of Indians above the poverty level if we do not curb population growth now, so we are taking decisive action. Last winter, when we first offered vasectomies to the local population, we offered a free goldfish bowl with every snip, but got a poor response, with very few men coming to our camps. So this year, we came up with the attractive idea of offering a new £20 bicycle and accessories in return for the operation, and it clicked. They are queueing up for vasectomies and bicycles, and we expect that many hundreds of men will have taken advantage of the offer by the time the winter is over.”

(Ananova, 23/1/03)

Dan Dare

2003-02-21 06:46 | User Profile

Ava:

**...new £20 bicycle... **

I hereby charge that you have wilfully, and with malice aforethought, exhumed and broadcast the discredited white-man's propaganda to the effect that it would a 'good thing' if the natives could be constrained from multiplying quite so freely.

What you overlooked, and as everyone with any time getting their knees brown knows, the pound sterling ceased to be legal tender in 1947. Pice, annas and rupees are what we true Hindus revere. (maybe Yankee dollars too if we can swing an H1-B)

This is an obvious provocation. Where is rban when we need him?!?

Avalanche

2003-02-21 18:18 | User Profile

We don't seem to need him in this thread -- you do an excellent imitation!! :D