Matt Buck’s Hack Cartoons Diary

Party politics and the UN weapons inspectors get in the way of the Prime Minister’s plan to bomb bits of Syria during its civil war.

A bullet-shaped President of Syria. Like father, like son.

Users of the ‘Basics’ (or Food) Bank in Winchester have doubled during the past year. Read all about it the Hampshire Chronicle.

There are suspicions of intimidation by the authorities as the partner of the journalist Glenn Greenwald is detained for nine hours under a little used law at Heathrow airport. Greenwald is lately notorious as the chosen conduit for the US security services whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The cartoon speech bubble references the old line from the McCarthyite Communist witch-hunt hearings of the late 1940s and 1950s – Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of North America?

My colleague in cartooning, Ann Telnaes, sums up some of the concerns the detention has provoked well here.

Winchester City Council hold a £2m collection of art. The artist in me wonders if there isn’t some scope for negotiation this year…
Read all about it in the Hampshire Chronicle.

A caricature of Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from the Opinions of Tobias Grubbe.

Tian Tian at Edinburgh zoo may be pregnant. It’s also August and therefore the often cited silly season.

Read about the art of myth-peddling on the process of gas fracking in the county at the Hampshire Chronicle.

Apologies to David Kemp, whose excellent sculpture of a Hampshire Hog inspired the cartoon. The animal lives outside County Hall in central Winchester .

Updated 10th October 2013: Industrial production using Fracking is at least five years away a public meeting has been told.

Updated 20th August 2015: New licences for exploration are granted by the government. The i newspaper has a robust view of the situation here.

Mark Carney, the new Canadian Governor of the Bank of England, made his debut in society today.

The most impressive thing I heard, listening as I was on the radio, was his presentation of tone and voice. He sounded empathetic.

This is an essential skill for any politician or, indeed, central banker nowadays. The voice reminded me of Horlicks – and thus, the speedy sketchbook caricature above. My acknowledgments to the malted milk drink brand.