The Hives Are Alive

Another week with a serious story dominating the front page of The Westmorland Gazette, so the cartoonist beat a retreat inside in search of stories this week. And a rich feast lay therein.

A swarm of bees the size of a football field (or possibly just a football) was spotted locally, menacing the innocent by sitting on a stone wall and not doing anything. Before a mass panic broke out, an ace apiarist was summoned who took them (the bees) away and found them a new home.

Mountain Rescue teams are again campaigning to have VAT refunded on some of the vital equipment they use in rescues. Being volunteers, they aren't allowed to claim for much of their gear.

And South Lakeland District Council has issues new by-laws for dog walkers which are, to say the least, a tad complicated.

Which cartoon did my esteemed editor go for?

Which one will you select?

Place your vote in the comments box below (as opposed to Twitter, Facebook or in a bottle thrown out to sea) and then sail over to my website to see if you were right.

PS Cartoon 5 has nothing much to do with anything but my steamed editor and I once wrote a play about mountaineers. In it we featured a rescue team leader based on Brian Blessed who we called, rather imaginatively, Brian. And yesterday was the Everest anniversary, so …

PPS The message in a bottle link is really cool. But I expect you already discovered that.

I’ll Huff And I’ll Puff …

Serious stuff on the front page of this week’s soaraway Westmorland Gazette. 

A team of naughty estate agents has been passing itself off as chartered surveyors and issue false certificates for houses. Not only is this fraud but has horrible insurance implications for the naughty estate agents’ victims.

Not a laugh a minute topic but one I wanted to have a go at. There were certain legal implications (although one colleague dismissed these as: “They got banged up in jail so who cares?”), so you have the added bonus of being able to play Spot The Difference.

Elsewhere, a report has shown extreme levels of poverty in Barrow. Fewer signs of poverty amongst Cumbria County Councillors.

And there has been another wind farm fuss. There is always a wind farm fuss. At least our climate-baked descendants won’t have any nasty wind mills spoiling their view of the desert plains of the Dales.

Here are the ideas I pitched to my steamed editor (who is available for talks to the W.I. By the way). 

Choose one. 

Make your choice known in the comments box below (not on Twitter, Facebook, a toilet wall or via the medium of telepathy) and then skip nimbly to my website and see if you’re in tune with my steamed editor.

A Likely Tail

Usually my blog posts are a finely-crafted thing, I'm sure you'll agree. 

The blog gathers together the disparate elements of the week's Westmorland Gazette stories, honing them into a coherent story and presenting the resulting cartoons in a diverting web-sized nugget of opinion and humour.

On other weeks, it's a mishmash of stories and random jokes.

This is one of them weeks.

A rare albino mole is spotted in South Lakeland, Windermere businesses bewail the lack of fibre-optic broadband, Furness General appears to be trying to infect or electrocute (yes really) visitors to its A & E and a pair of lemurs have gone missing from a local zoo.

Now you're up to speed, here are the ideas pitched to my steamed editor. He exercised his astute editorial judgment and picked one for the front page. 

But which would you have chose? Add your comments below (not on Facebook, Twitter or a nearby toilet wall, if you don't mind) and then shimmy off to my website to see if you got it right.