23 Cartoons from 2023

 As we march through the 21st century every December I post my highlight reels of mostly topical cartoons from the year and this year we need 23 so buckle up...

1. Happy New Year

During the dying embers of 2022 I drew this end of year cartoon showing the baton being passed onto the baby drinking Prime 2023.  Being passed on by the weary 2022 was Covid and war both of which continued to cast a shadow over this year although Covid-19 was more in the inquiry rather than pandemic phase.  War galloped ahead of its fellow horsemen of the Apocalypse to drag more countries into its terrible grip.  I'm sure when I draw this again for 2023/24 the hope will be in the same ... please make 2024 more peaceful than 2023.

2. Valentines Day

My first cartoon of 2023 to make it into print and a Valentine's pun I was quite proud of.  The cost of living crisis keeps making everything more expensive, but on the upside it is a source of gags.

3. Thor day week

Talking of puns I tried to keep the pun ball rolling with this cartoon from the reject bin.  In general I'm in favour of an N-1 working week where N is the current number of days I'm working. 

4. Aesop's Cables

And yet I continued to try and do puns to little effect but I was quite proud of this effort at a time when every local junction was dug up and controlled with inefficient four way temporary lights.

5. Voter ID of Dorian Gray

The government was legislating to get UK voters to produce photographic voter ID at local and general elections in order to deal with "voter fraud" which is an insignificant problem compared with ensuring the general population are actually able to vote and have a recognised form of photo ID other than just a driving license or passport.  The proscribed list came out heavily weighted towards and old age pensioners were allowed to wield their bus passes, but students weren't which tended to favour parties that have older voters (Conservative) vs those who attract younger voters (not the Conservatives).

6. SNP Auditors

In the spring there was a series of stories about the SNP struggles to find a replacement auditor after the previous auditors quit.  The rumours then became a police probe into the SNP that would eventually lead to Nicola Sturgeon and her husband being questioned by the police and allegations around the purchase of a luxury .motor home.  Normally Scottish politics doesn't make that much of splash around the UK press but various SNP in trouble stories did for a time register in the headlines and still rumbles on at a less dramatic level.

7. Pillow Talk

One gag that wasn't topical but got published in Private Eye in May was this one about Pillow Talk.

8. Coronation

The "budget" coronation for the already King Charles was on 6 May 2023 when some folk in the country got excited for the pagentry, Penny Mordaunt wielding a massive sword and some employers (not mine) issuing bonus bank holidays.  I drew cartoons about the stone of destiny and this one from an a pothole's perspective of a street party (also didn't happen here).

9. Slow Marching

The crackdown on "noisy" or "disruptive" protests by a government not fond of scrutiny led to protestors having to adapt their tactics and so there was much talk of slow marching as an alternative to just blocking a road and how the police handled it.  So now the police can enforce some sort of minimum speed limit on people holding banners which lead to this cartoon.

10. Helicopter PM

Rishi Sunak our Prime Minister and executive emperor seemed to never want to take public transport when he could use expensive and environmentally dubious helicopter transport.  Also there was video of legions of police officers having to jog alongs his presidential motorcade when he did use the car,  This led to him being rightly mocked by cartoonists including this one who does have a pet dog.

11. It's a witch-hunt

In June there was a spate of Tory MP's resigning (by being appointed to ridiculous posts like Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead) trigger by-elections, except Nadine Dorries who said she would resign but then dragged it out for months.  One of the most high profile resignations was former prime minister Boris Johnson who was being investigated for misleading parliament but interpreted this as a witch-hunt, political hit-job and revenge for Brexit.  It was the same sort of language former US president Donald Trump was using the other side of the pond as the charges stacked up against him in various states.  All political careers end in failure but not all are accepted graciously and indeed this may not be the end for either of them particularly with the 2024 US Presidential election looming. 

12. New York New York

This year I visited New York for the first time which was frenetic and tall.  Just before I visited at the end of June Canadian wildfires and the direction of wind had turned the air quality in New York from disappointing to deadly and lead to various media pictures of an apolocalpytic orange-tinged Manhattan.  This is the rejected cartoon I drew about it.

13. Holiday Destinations

This cartoon I did get into Private Eye about trying to pick a destination that wasn't affected by wildfires as North America and the Mediterranean  were battling an earlier and fiercer wildfire season.  As terrible as it was for those who lived in these area the media only ramped up the coverage when UK tourists were being evacuated from beaches in Rhodes or elsewhere and having their yearly summer holidays nearly turned into nightmares. 

14. Actor's Strike

This cartoon which appeared in Private Eye was about the SAG-AFRTRA actor's strike which followed that paralyzed Hollywood production from July to it's resolution in November.  There was also a writer's strike about pay, conditions and the use of AI from the Writer's Guild that proceeded and overlapped this.

15. The Twits

Elon Musk managed to kill Twitter at the end of July changing its name to X because a long time ago he'd bought the domain X.com.  The whole year has been a trial for Twitter users as first the platform became less reliable, then the launch of a paid tier meant that the free tier had to be nerfed, and finally Elon Musk did his best to bring back various banned baddies under the guise of free speech while using his platform to weigh in on all sort of issues driving away sponsors in the process.  Earlier in July fellow tech-bro billionaire Mark Zuckerberg launched a Twitter rival Threads which was popular for a while and led to this illustration of the proposed cage fight between them which never materialised.  The whole social media fragmented further as ex-Twitter founder Jack Dorsey threw Blue Sky into the mix if you had an invite and now I have to cross post to about 5 different platforms if I can be bothered.

16. Moon Landings

On 23rd-August the Indian Space Research Organisation landed Chandrayaan-3 a lunar lander/rover near the south pole the fourth country to land on the moon and the first to land near the south pole .  The budget of this mission was a fraction of what other countries have spent to try and land a rover on the moon and indeed only the previous week Russian's attempt to beat the Indians to the south pole crashed into the lunar surface.  This new space race to the moon inspired this cartoon which appeared in Private Eye.

17. RAAC and Ruin

Just before the English schools were due to return the government decided based on "new" information it had received that it had to close a number of them due to the presence of dodgy concrete known as RAAC or Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete.

No sooner had education secretary Gillian Keegan failed to quell concerns than it escalated and it appeared RAAC was in hospitals, prisons and anywhere else where buildings had been cheaply constructed and not replaced.  The government had to appear like this wasn't something it had been warned about for a while and it was willing to do whatever it took to solve it hence Jeremy Hunt found cash down the back of the sofa to solve it.

18. English Autumn

Here is a cartoon on a common theme that I drew at the end of Autumn which Private Eye liked but didn't use for a couple of months due to the glut of river pollution toons that appeared this year.  As a visual metaphor for the rancid mess of a government of 13 years that has allow the corruption of this basic resource for profit was too appealing to cartoonists.  It would be nice however if this wasn't still a cartooning topic in 2024 because the government finally introduced tough enough regulation and fines that private companies didn't feel they could dump raw sewage in rivers with impunity.

19. Long Term Decisions

Tory Party Conference season was seen as yet another chance for a reboot of Rishi Sunak's premiership after a disastrous summer of stories of crumbling concrete in schools etc, resignations and resulting by-election losses.  With no sense of irony Rishi Sunak set out to unveil a series of pledges to try and pull up his poll numbers while claiming they were tough but necessary long term decisions for the country.  An example was trying to up North Sea oil drilling and postponing the ban on petrol/diesel cars while still claiming we were on track with environmental targets in a "pragmatic" way.

20 Planet Earth 3

Apart from Barbie/Oppenheimer one of the cultural events of the year was another Planet Earth season featuring David Attenborough and capturing spectacular wildlife in high definition.  As well as drawing along with the weekly episodes I also got this cartoon into the Eye which lead to some feedback of people telling me their toddler found it hilarious, and another telling me why film sharks are called Bruce.  Apparently "Bruce" was the nickname of the shark in Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" franchise which was then referenced in Finding Nemo where the shark was also called Bruce.  The Planet Earth 3 series was not exclusively about sharks but they did make quite a few appearances.

21 Liz Truss Plot

This is perhaps my favourite cartoon I got published this year based on the famous engraving of the Gunpowder Plot by Crispijn de Posse the Elder (on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London).  Around bonfire night everyone tries to tie current events into the gunpowder plot and Liz Truss and her supporters rather than hiding were plotting with their own take on how the government should be run (because they did so well last time).  I got to redraw the etching in a fun cartoon style.

22 Covid For Christmas

Submitted a couple of months before Christmas this cartoon ended up not being too far off the mark with a number of people I know missing Christmas or the lead up to Christmas with either Covid-19 or strangely resilient colds.  One worry of mine was I had calculated the number of days based on the issue closest to when I submitted this cartoon and the Eye ended up using it in a later issue (the bumper one with four toons) and would they have left the number of days or adjusted it but they nailed it.

23 Conflict Christmas

I'm normally a big fan of Christmas but a couple of things made this year a bit less festive.  On the personal front I took a nasty tumble a week or so before Christmas and thanks to to a jaw injury was on a softer diet of squishy sprouts and no crunchy potatoes.  Also since October 7th there had been a war between Hamas and Israel after a surprise attack into Israel claimed over a thousand Israeli lives and hostages taken,  The ongoing conflict and Israeli invasion/bombing has turned Gaza into a war zone with many civilian casualties and much of the population displaced.  How cartoonists respond to such events has been discussed much this year with some cartoons and comments deemed to have taken sides or be open to allegations of anti-semitism or islamophobia, while others of the "won't anyone think of the children" are dismissed as not having much to say other than war is terrible especially for kids.  

I don't have a regular editorial slot being mostly an on-spec cartoonist so I haven't had to draw anything specifically on this subject and this is about as close as I've come to comment which is firmly in the latter isn't war terrible for kids category.

Of all the things we pass into 2024 please let us have resolved the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine before I have to do another of these blog posts.

A happy 2024 to you all.

March of Robots 2023

 So March of Robots is an art challenge I've done a few times because who doesn't like drawing robots and these days of algorithms suppressing free to play content you need to put something out there.

My original stated aim was that I would do all 31 prompts but I'd limit the to no more 30 minutes work but while I managed all 31 sometimes I would get carried away such as this jungle scene for March 3rd.

Life as a human artist in 2023 is a bit frustrating not only are our tech overlords relentlessly fiddling with their platforms in ways that always seem to give you less visibility, generative art from AI is starting to appear on the platforms where those who type prompts in Stable Diffusion or the like are suddenly "artists" and hoover up the likes and praise from those who surf the content for pretty visuals without considering the effort that goes into creating that content.

Much of the AI chat in March was about ChatGPT-4 the AI language model still in Beta that can write your emails/homework/lazy derivative opinions in seconds.  Elon Musk and others were warning about the disadvantages of the unintended consequences of AI although the intended consequence of devaluing certain human tasks is also pretty horrific.  This entry from March 19 with apologies to the Simpsons and Matt Groening was probably my most popular post.

If you want to be generous to folk you would say we are still pretty enraptured by the novelty of this "free" tool not realizing that eventually it will be monetized by tech overlords so that those who provided the content the machines learned from and those who later leverage it will be lining the pockets of those who merely financed a cloud server farm with software.  In the meantime if you're relying on ChatGPT beware that it's usage is throttled which inspired this illustration from March 27th 

Back to Generative AI art vs human art.  On the Instagram explore page for the hashtag you can still easily spot the AI art that has gained traction even though the competition element of the challenge explicitly banned it.  Perhaps I'm a luddite for not embracing the inevitable rise of the machine learning. The Luddites are a good example of a professional craft who even with their campaigning still lost out to cheap mass produced cloth even though at the high end you might get someone to hand stitch your suit for the average Joe we're happy for robots to make mass produced consumer goods.

The established distinctive artists will still garner commissions and magazine slots but those starting out who rely on smaller commissions for caricatures, book covers etc. are going to struggle when a fast and "good enough" result can be delivered from a web site.

Who knows perhaps we'll leverage the technology is a good way to benefit society, but to do so we'll have to rein in some of the Mega Corps that are charging away with rapid AI development.  This cartoon from the 30th March sums up my mood.

In the meantime even if it not pulling in the big bucks there is a joy in the creation of artwork not just the social media attention for the finished article.  So to finish off March here is another robot

Hourly Comic Day 2023

 Every Feb 1 is hourly comic day when comic creators torture themselves by attempting to post a comic for every hour they are awake.  My hack since I have a job is to post every 2-3 hours and even then this year it was a struggle.  Still now that Twitter has withdrawn the ability to make moments I have to preserve my 1st Feb 2023 on here for all posterity.

Postscript:

• I did figure out how to do the poo stick test the next day (but didn't draw a comic about it)
• The mindful challenge continued with mindfully unlocking a door but today the challenge is to listen to new music which I do like and I found a decent new debut artist
• The windows still work

Caricature Resolution 2023

 A new year is full of challenges the first of which was ISCA's Caricature Resolution which this year was alternating women and men featuring actors and the characters they had played in biopics which lead to some interesting discoveries.

For example day 9 was Temple Grandin an author and speaker on autism and animal behaviour including cows.  I listened to her TED talks on visual thinking and autism while I drew this caricature of her.

However the purpose of caricature resolution is to hone your caricature skills while being able to see how many other artists approach the same subject.  In a way it's daunting to compare your own efforts with masters of their craft but it was ever thus on social media.  It's sometimes easier when you at least have some familiarity with the subject like this one of Peter 

So sometimes you'd never heard of them, sometimes they were famous actors and occasionally you had to draw someone who you'd drawn before which gives you liberty to try a different approach.  This is Jazz age belle Clara Bow

In this case I feel my previous likeness was better but often with certain folk capturing their essence even if they are well known is elusive.  Denzel Washington was one who many artists thought was tricky and so I was pleased I managed something workable with him.

So who was my favorite - it was probably Ruth Bader Ginsburg of day 17 which without striving turned out better than I was expecting.

You can go onto Instagram and find all the awesome work on this challenge which proves there's always a higher standard to aspire to!

22 cartoons from 2022

 It’s the blogmanay end of year round-up of cartoons and caricatures and what a year it was with war, plague, royal successions and puzzle games.

1. Australian Open

It's easy to forget that at the start of 2022 we were still grappling with Covid lockdowns and rolling out the vaccines.  Christmas of 2021 was restricted but the big sporting events of this year were looking for ways to go ahead with spectators and so the first big sporting event of 2022 was the Australian Open.  To play in the Australian Open you had to be either vaccinated or have an exemption and World No.1 Novak Djokovic was keen to increase his grand slams wins.  Djokovic said he had a 'vaccine exemption' but was detained at the airport and put in quarantine while judges considered.  One judge released him but was overridden by the immigration minister, lost his appeal and was deported.

  While we detained he was in an immigration detention centre with 30 other asylum seekers while his supporters protested outside and the world media was focused on the outcome.  Nigel Farage contrarian anti-immigration ex-UKIP politician called for Djokovic to be allowed to play while also railing against small-boat immigration across the channel.  All this lead to the following cartoon that got published in Private Eye.

2. Wordle

One of the biggest stories of 2022 was the trending puzzle game Wordle developed by Welsh software developer Josh Wardle and subsequently bought by the New York Times after it had became a global sensation and it seemed like everyone on Twitter and your works Teams was sharing their Wordle scores.  The green and yellow squares of Wordle started appearing in cartoons and this is my attempt from the reject pile.

3. Putin and the Special Military Operation

After two years of pandemic we thought 2022 would be about the recovery and going on holiday but instead the biggest story was the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and whether it would lead to WW3 and nuclear devastation.  The conflict had started in 2014 with the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Russian backed paramilitaries trying to seize the Donbass.  In February there started to be reports of build ups along the borders and in Belorussia before on 24th February Putin announced a "special military invasion" and invaded.

  A large European war was for me a hard topic to produce topical cartoons on and those I produced for the reject pile were mostly based on UK worries about nuclear Armageddon as people really were worried about the escalation.  It was hard to put yourself in the shoes of Ukrainians leaving a modern life like we do suddenly pushed into a nightmare scenario and have something funny or poignant to say about it.  The closest I got was some political caricatures of the main protagonists like this one of Vladimir Putin as a butcher.

4. Ukraine - Zelensky

The perceived wisdom at the time was given the huge material advantage that Russia had Ukrainian resistance would collapse after a few days and and they would roll into Kyiv and partition the country.  With hindsight there are lots of reasons why that didn't happen not least the terrible planning of the Russian invaders, but the other factor was the resistance of the Ukrainians lead by former comedian/TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy who when Kyiv was threatened defiantly stayed in place to reassure the populace.  This is less caricature and more of a portrait but it captures some of that defiance I hope.

5. Heating costs

The cost of energy was an ongoing theme throughout the year as gas and electricity bills soared to the point where governments had to intervene.   While Putin did use turning off the gas taps as a way of trying to stop Europe supporting Ukraine there were other structural issues in the market that meant consumers were faced with staggering bills leading to high inflation.  This cartoon from the reject pile was drawn at the start of the year but was relevant for most of it.

6. Wim Hof Freeze the Fear

Somewhat related to heating there was a strange cult-ish show called 'Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof' that featured a bearded Dutch motivational guru who liked being called alongside Holly Willoughby (who features again later) and Lee Mack jokes who took various B-list celebrities on a journey to overcome their fears through ice baths.  I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one using this in topical cartoons but this one wasn't published.

7. Crypto crash

In the world of technology AI was beginning it's takeover of all our jobs but crypto currency the other favourite of tech-bro grifters had several crashes including later in the year the collapse of trading platform FTX.  Maybe there will be other more successful uses for the blockchain rather than endless inventions of crypto coins but 2022 wasn't a great year for those who bet on it.  Here was a cartoon from the reject pile on the subject.

8. Flight delays

After several years of thwarted international travel due to Covid there was unleashed a pent up demand for foreign holidays which involved airline travel.  Unfortunately the aviation industry had spent most of the pandemic parked on taxiways and had shed lots of stuff in order to stay afloat so when demand suddenly ramped up and with extra Brexit and Covid checks for getting various places there were long queues at airports that made the news.  This cartoon I drew in June was in Private Eye.

9. Summer holidays

We were amongst those going abroad for a bit of sun but then Covid restrictions were easing and sometimes you had to wear masks and in other occasions you were in crowds for the first time when no-one was masking.  I drew this cartoon after our holiday in Spain and it appeared in Private Eye.

10. Cost of butter

When drawing topical cartoons you're often looking for the trending topic and a different angle on a long running subject like Covid, political turmoil or in this case the cost of living crisis.  Inflation was rampant all year and people started to notice it in their grocery shops especially when butter like Lurpak had security tags because it was suddenly so expensive.   This was my cartoon from the reject pile on the subject.

11. Social housing

With people struggling the cost of rents and the availability of affordable housing was also an issue especially when house builders seemed to always prioritise luxury housing.  Government would always say they had a plan, a target or new scheme for fixing it without evidence of very much changing.  Here is a cartoon I had in Private Eye in the summer on the issue.

12. Chess robot broke fingers

Sometimes you draw topical cartoons on subjects so niche you'd be surprised if they get taken.  In July in Moscow a chess playing robot broke the finger of a 7 year old child so I drew a cartoon on the subject that didn't end up anywhere.  Later in the year there was cheating controversy in chess when world No.1 Magnus Carlsen suggested one of his opponents a 19 year old American grandmaster was probably cheating leading to all sorts of analysis of his games and bizarre theories on what methods were used.

13. Boris Johnson resigns

It was not a normal year in UK Westminster politics.  The partygate scandal that broke the previous year continued through the first half of 2022 with Boris Johnson apologising several times and endless speculation on whether his premiership would survive.  One of the crux points was when the Sue Gray investigation was paused just at the point when it would be published so the police investigation could take precedence.  Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and others got fixed penalty notices, every PMQs became a chorus of call for Boris to do the honourable thing until a day of resignations finally put an end to the delusions that Bojo could carry on.  This is an illustration I did of him hanging on for dear life.

14. Leadership Contests

In recent times there have been more Tory Leadership contests than there have been election with two alone in this year where Sir Graham Brady is the pompous ringmaster as a large gang of wannabes is gradually whittled down to a finally two who tour the Conservative countryside promising whatever their audience wants them to hear and then electing the least realistic of the two as the next PM.

  After Boris Johnson was ousted Rishi Sunak who was seen as one of the main plotters stood for the leadership but the membership seemed to want almost anyone else including lots from the right wing.  For a while it looked like Penny (I was in the Navy) Mordaunt was going to be in the last two but somehow Liz Truss managed to hang in until she got to spend the summer suggesting she could just ignore the first minister of Scotland and magically produce economic growth by going against the consensus.  She won.

  I used the leadership challenges as a time to practise drawing people who might get to be PM (and Tom Tugendhat).  This is from one of those debates and while everyone isn't perfect I like my sketchy Rishi, Liz and Penny.

15. Mini budget

One of the least funny political stories of the year was Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng's ill-conceived Mini Budget of 23rd September.  Shortly after Liz Truss became PM in a not official budget her friend the new chancellor went on a tax-slashing rampage mainly benefiting the wealthier (the abolition of the 45% high tax rate a classic example) without any OBR assessment.  Immediately the pound tanked against the dollar, the Bank of England had to intervene and Kwasi Kwarteng went on the Sunday shows to promise more fiscal surprises were coming.

  Rarely have you seen such disasterous policy deployed leading to a spectacular government implosion which lead to various row backs, Kwasi being replaced by Jeremy Hunt and eventually Liz Truss having to resign.

  This is my favourite illustrations I did of those crazy/Kwasi times.

16. Italian election

Lots of big stories broke at the same time in the Autumn and my only cartoon in Private Eye at the time was about far-right leader Giorgia Meloni winning an election in the Italy and hoping to set up a government of various right wing parties.

  This was my Private Eye cartoon from that time.

17. The queue

On the 8th September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral and a period of national mourning began.  The queen's appearances earlier in the year had been much reduced even at her Platinum Jubilee that was labelled "platty-jubs" by some, and her son opened parliament.  I recall announcements that she wasn't well, various Twitter rumours about when Operation London Bridge would occur before a sombre Huw Edwards read out the official news.

  There was a couple of weeks of mourning with no comedy shows and various sporting and cultural events postponed.  All the documentaries and obituaries were well prepared and run on TV channels until various official lying in states occurred first in Edinburgh and then in London.

  Britons love a good queue and soon the coverage of the queue to see the queen's coffin in Westminister Hall yielded various stories to feed 24-hour news.  Every popular thing gets co-opted by celebrities and soon it was a badge of honour to be a celebrity who waited the full 20+ hours in line with the commoners like David Beckham.  Conversely Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby were vilified for appearing to jump the queue although in various apologies they tried to justify it by saying there were offical journalists for ITV This Morning.

  I drew this cartoon from this time featuring Paddington bear who somehow became the British Charon the boatman escorting the Queen across the Styx.

18. King Charles III

One wondered if Prince Charles would become King Charles III given what happened to the previous King Charles (the first was executed, the second dissolved Parliament).  Having not exactly been the hero of Netflix The Crown people wondered how King Charles would come across to a public who had only ever known his mother.

  There is however no election of monarchies and before too many republicans could protest the ascension was a done deal and Britain had a new King.  This is my caricature of King Charles III.

19. Elon Musk Twitter meltdown

This was probably my most popular caricature of 2022 drawing for one of Martin Rowson's #Draw challenges #DrawElonMusk.  Throughout 2022 there was speculation on when and if Elon Musk would buy Twitter and once the deal was done there were many staff laid off and much confusion as to whether the platform would survive and whether certain banned accounts like Donald Trump would be reinstated.  Whenever Elon Musk does something crazy this caricature seems to pop up but despite Musk banning certain accounts that criticise him I still exist on Twitter even though I now have a Mastodon lifeboat.

It remains to be seen if and how Twitter survives in 2023 with Ad revenues tumbling and the ability to buy a blue tick subscription for visibility getting mixed reviews.  So many good art challenges and communities exists that I would hate to see it go.

20. Iran protests

The Ukrainian war has the ability to knock nearly ever other foreign news story off the front page but protests in Iran that arose in Iran in September after the killing of 22 year old Mahsa Amini for wearing an "improper" hijab was a significant event this year.  Women in Iran nationwide protested without the hijab and demanded more women's rights and greater freedoms, but the government response was brutal with mass arrests, beatings, torture and death penalties.

  Martin Rowson did another challenge to draw Khameni, the supreme leader of Iran who I drew in an hourglass with bloody handprints mostly in hope as 2023 has shown just to what lengths autocratic leaders will go to cling to power.

21. World Cup

I'm a bloke so I like football and the World Cup is usually a big thing where I often do lots of illustrations of players but the 2022 World Cup was very different being in the tiny state of Qatar in the winter surrounded by controversy due to the way the tournament was awarded, their treatment of migrant workers and LGBT people.

  This cartoon from the reject pile was an attempt to show that.  I can't say that I didn't watch any of the matches and the Argentina v France final was a classic but the whole affair seemed corrupted as Salt Bae friends of Infantino wormed his way onto the pitch after the final whistle to harass Messi.

22. Christmas - strikes

After a year of eye watering inflation and huge bills the paltry wage increases offered by some employers lead to lots of industrial action from rail workers, Royal Mail posties, teachers and nurses.  The Scottish government has been slightly more inclined than Westminster to try and offer more but so far the strikes have felt like that are going to continue into a Winter of Discontent in 2023.  As a result Christmas mail took longer, trains were unavailable or unreliable for a good number of days in December.

   The whole point of industrial action is to render services unusable so there was a fair few cartoons about the Christmas impact including this one from the reject pile.  

  Unfortunately the governments wants to act tough against unions and portray workers who are asking not to effectively take a pay cut as greedy so this strife will continue.