Shooting yourself in the foot

Over the years, the local council in South Lakeland has come up with a number of brilliant schemes. One of the most spectacular was to close a number of public toilets. Just the thing to encourage coach parties to a tourist area. What could be finer than being cooped up in a coach for a few hours, disgorged into Grasmere or Bowness and then discovering the loos are all closed?

Now they have a scheme to withdraw Blue Badge free parking, stop funding Shopmobility and generally make it difficult for the disabled to park and shop in Kendal. This is an area where 1 in 17 are registered disabled. (Or at least have a Blue Badge, and they can’t all be lazy 4x4 drivers.)

However, at least the council can be relied upon to provide me with material for my Westmorland Gazette cartoon.

Below are the four preliminary sketches for this week’s. As usual, these are scanned direct from the scruffy scribbles I present to the editor. They are always designed to get the idea across, not be works of art, so look rather hectic and scribbly. Rather irritatingly, sometimes the final artwork doesn’t have the same charm.

See if you can pick which one the editor chose. You’ll find the finished cartoon in the newspaper or over on my website from 8.00 a.m. Thursday.