Matt Buck’s Hack Cartoons Diary

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.

I was sorry to have to miss the Duchamp in Herne Bay Cartoon Events today. Read all about it at the Procartoonists.org/blog. I should add you can give yourself a chance of winning a signed Ralph Steadman cartoon by tweeting #DuchampHB today between 1 and 5pm.

The drawing above, a hat tip to Kasia Kowlaska, Kowalska whose name I unforgivably twice spelled incorrectly.

Winchester Cathedral has received a heritage lottery grant towards its upkeep and also to investigate mortuary chests believed to hold the remains of six saxon monarchs. Read all about it in the Hampshire Chronicle.

Former Oil Executive and new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby plans to bring the Church of England into competition with the burgeoning short term borrowing industry.

The context for this eye catching event is the legacy of private debt in the UK – this has been typically estimated to be five times as big as the public debt which preoccupies the chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne.

The problem of credit and debt appears to be being passed away from the banks which cannot, it appears, be entirely trusted with attending to our personal and business borrowing needs.

Interestingly, Archbishop Welby also recently had a role as a member of the Parliamentary commission into banking standards.

Updated 26th July: By 7pm on the day the Archbishop went public with his thoughts (following the interview with Total Politics Magazine) The Financial Times discovered that The Church of England has investment in a third-party who fund Wonga.com.

The inevitable ‘public embarrassment’ interview was conducted on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning. You can read some of the listeners responses here.

 

© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons

The Prime Minister has launched an eye-catching initiative with which he can be personally associated for the summer holidays. You can read about what is understood of the details, here. Regrettably, he appears to be suggesting a clumsy technical solution to a complex social and economic issue – distributed pornography – which exists on a  global stage.

The cartoon, above, references the ongoing and many investigations into the revelations following the exposure of Jimmy Savile as a paedophile.