Few people believe that Mugabe and Zanu-PF stand any chance of winning the the Zimbabwe elections if they are fair and honest. But we all know what Mugabe’s idea of fair and honest is. However the signs are that books might be being cooked to fiddle another ‘win’ for him. Whichever way this goes it’s hard to see how violence can be avoided.
The staggering hypocrisy of the G8 leaders supposedly discussing global poverty and food shortages, while sitting down to eat 16 course meals of the most expensive and scarce foodstuffs. No wonder so many of us have lost all faith in our politicians. To emphasize the point I used four endangered species as the main courses (which upset my other half so much she couldn’t look at it). I originally wanted to put ‘let them eat McDonald’s’, to make the point that the globalisation agenda favoured by the more right wing nations at the table was indeed part of the problem, but unfortunately this was judged as too litigious. Personally I find it very worrying we can say almost anything we like (as cartoonists) about our elected political representatives who we have at least some power over, but we cannot make even the mildest of criticisms of the multinationals who we have absolutely no power over what so ever.
Gordon Brown and the Chancellor Alistair Darling seem to lurch from one disaster to the next/ leaving a trail of political mayhem, which translates into bad news for the rest of us, behind them. The really worrying thing about all of this is when we look to the alternative! No wonder so many of us don’t see a reason to vote!
Is the world powerless to do anything about a despot like Robert Mugabe and his murderous regime? Or are they unwilling to act because they have investments in the country like the senior Tories who are defying their leader’s instruction to remove all economic ties? Then we have Thabo Mbeki, who is reportedly lobbying other African leaders to legitimise the results of the second ‘election’, where people were forced to vote for Mugabe, under threat of death and yet still many brave people spoiled their ballots and wrote messages of support for the MDC (even though they’d been told by the government they knew how they would vote and they would be killed if they did anything but vote for Mugabe and Zanu PF). I cannot see how much more evidence the powers that be need to act, unless of course it isn’t in their personal interest to do so.
Fuel prices for the roof, utility prices the same and interest rates set to rise again and the government wants everyone to accept wage settlements, which will effect mean a drop in their standard of living. Everyone except the people who landed us in this mess in the first place, who are still awarding themselves huge bonuses. And while all this goes on, more and more people’s homes are at risk of negative equity and repossession.
It would seem to some that New Labour really don’t want to win the next election. If they do have any aspirations of victory why would they immediately announce another raft of privatisations (this time of the most sacred left wing cows), on the back of local election results that to anyone else would prove the true Labour core vote had finally had enough of New Labour’s overtly right wing agenda and Toryising of policy?
If you like your politics without substance or policies then Wavy Davy Cameron is for you. And if the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is anything to go by you’ll have a lot of company, as so many people voted for the party with no policies. That’s UK politics for you.
The unfathomable despotic regime in Burma continues to allow its people to suffer and die while simply paying lip service and patting heads on the state controlled media. All this as the regime’s closest ally suffers unimaginable death and devastation from the massive Sichuan earthquake. But whereas the Chinese military appear to be doing all they can the Burmese junta appear to have adopted a ‘let them eat cake’ attitude for the 21st Century and their people continue to die and unless attitudes change dramatically things can only get worse. The text element of this cartoon my understandibly confuse people not familiar with Cockney rhyming slang where ‘china’ is shorthand for friend i.e. china plate - mate.
The polls continue to nose-dive for New Labour and Gordon Brown. The much vaunted ‘re-launch’ of the party provided me with the idea to use the iconic image of the first US astronauts from the classic 80s film ‘The Right Stuff’. My title ‘The Brown Stuff’ of course has the obvious duality in meaning, because they really are in messy stuff right now and surely the only way is up? They really need to get their act together to win back their core vote, who have obviously finally had enough of their brand of right wing politics with only meaningless platitudes offered as crumbs to their left-leaning core support. Whether they can turn this state of affairs around I’m not sure they even know how or where to begin.
Another bad week for Gordon. New Labour routed at the polls and rumours rife of a leadership challenge. New Labour having much more in common with the Conservative Party than old Labour, they are almost certain to stick the knife in the PM’s back if fortunes do not turn around quickly.
