The football World Cup is upon us once more! Joy!
With the World Cup in Brazil now imminent, what better time to read up on the huge and not well understood country. My hat tipped to author Mark Hillary, not least for commissioning me to do the cover image.
My hat tipped to Simon Parker for good use of a metaphor after today’s Queen’s Speech announcing the last program of legislation to be carried through parliament before the general election.
The legacy of the global financial crash helped do for Gordon Brown (see above) and you can’t see it having done much for his successor either.
Brobdingnag? Doff your headgear to Jonathan Swift.
I have some artwork in an upcoming London gallery exhibition on the arts of pastiche, parody and piracy. The show opening June 20th at The Cob Gallery in London will be packed with great art from the members of procartoonists.org with which I have been proud to have been associated for many years.
Above, is an image about non-creation that did not, sadly, make the cut for show. (And immediately apologises to the memory of Michelangelo who once painted the roof of a chapel.)
The cartoon was drawn back in 2005 as a part of an exchange to South Africa in which I was involved – my subject was prevention of the spread of HIV through use of condoms.
The elections for the European parliament are complete and they have been notable for the rise of non-mainstream parties, particularly from the right of the spectrum. In the UK this has delivered the United Kingdom Independence Party as the largest single party from the traditionally low national voter turnout.
The cartoon references ‘Very well alone’ by the New Zealand cartoonist David Low and which was drawn in 1940 at the fall of France to the Nazis.
I’ve chosen to reinterpret it with a more modern icon of Britain and a soundbite beloved of the Prime Minister who infamously took the UK into a political alliance with some openly neo-fascist parties back in 2009. James Clive-Matthews wrote about that and more here.
Edited: Jerry Hayes, the former Conservative MP for the marginal seat of Harlow in Essex, makes some good observations here about the general scene after the voting.
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Jeremy Paxman listening to Nigel Farage on 19th May 2014. Paxman has recently announced his intent to leave the BBC late night current events show.
The arguably over-exposed leader of UKIP made another appearance on BBC Question Time last evening. I painted him while he repeated himself.
Back in 2009 I wrote a piece about the changes coming to the way we made satire and what I thought it would mean for political conversation. The effects are, unhappily, starting to become obvious with just a year to the UK’s general election after the Coalition government and its fixed-term parliament.
Labour have a go
The Lib Dems have a go back
Watch this space for news of the Tories and UKIP. There will be a lot more of it.
Updated: 29th July 2014
The Tories have indeed had a go as well.
And please do feel free to tell me whether any of it left a lasting impression.