Matt Buck's Hack Cartoons

Commissioned cartoon on the sex lives of politicians - obviously it had to be Prescott. And he made a natural association with the famous poster of Skegness is SO bracing. It makes for a happy image I think.

Charles Clarke's 'savage' attack on the Prime Minister and his successor at the Home Office, John Reid. (Sigh)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5119934.stm

Two British soldiers dead in Afghanistan in area just down the road from maiwand which appears in an earlier post on this blog. We're in for a long and bloody involvement in Afghanistan all over again.

If anyone's interested in why this huge and poverty stricken country is so important, I'd like to recommend a book by a historian called Peter Hopkirk. It's genuinely illuminating and excellent about how and why we came to be involved in this part of the world.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568360223/102-3580208-4928122?v=glance&n=283155

Someone very kindly asked me to draw them a picture about the official Catholic church position on the use of condoms.

I have to confess, I love this sort of story, a very human ability to ignore the facts on the ground in favour of some strange set of principles. Anyhow, this is what I came up with.

Aside from (I hope) the fun of drawing the Pope fly-swatting condoms, there is of course, also the anger about the strictures that this policy imposes on devout catholics around the world. One of the more serious examples is in southern Africa, where HIV infection is endemic and little pieces of rubber are an effective way of preventing further infections.

That advert with all the old footie lags eating bacon sarnies and looking fat, made me think about the way posterity might view the people running the country. I'm quite fond of this one.

Well, it's another glorious victory in the war on terror - our apparently main adversary in Iraq has been oblitterated by two 500 pound bombs dropped from an F16 - or two.

Was I the only one who found it depressing, and not a little instructive that at no stage was it possible for anyone on foot to get to the man and therefore air power was the only way to do him in? Three years after the liberation and we are bombing still.

What does that tell us about the state of the countryside and how the US, British and Iraqi forces are having to move around it? Makes you think doesn't it?

Oh and the first Brit has just been killed in the massive deployment of troops in Southern Afghanistan. I think there will be a lot more of them. if you are interested in the persistence of history, here are a few links aboiut previous British expeditions to this part of the world.

Tellingly, a good few of them have ended in something close to disaster - and I can't see much reason why this one wil go very differently.

http://www.britishbattles.com/second-afghan-war/maiwand.htm

There's a memorial to the many men of the 66th regiment who were killed at Maiwand in Forbury gardens, Reading.

http://gallery.future-i.com/England/parks/pic:maiwand-lion/

Current holders of the title are Osama Bin Laden, President George Bush and our own PM Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. Sadly, their reign has been a lot longer than the short month the world cup will last - the effects are likely to be a lot longer lasting too.