A Damp New Year

Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope you have your wellington boots handy - it’s going to be a wet start.

2012 has gone down as the wettest year in Cumbria since records began in 1910. Given that the Lakes already has a reputation for rain (it’s how we keep the lakes topped up, you know), visitors decided they’d had enough and stayed away in droves over the Christmas period. The tourism industry wasn’t too happy about that.

This became the main story in this week’s Westmorland Gazette and, as it is becoming a novelty to tackle a page one story, this is the one I concentrated on for the cartoon.

Below are the four ideasI pitched to my editor. The final one of the four is my favourite. Sadly, this also proved to be controversial; the Gazette’s editorial team felt that flooded hotels were too recent a memory to be popular with our readers.

Now you know which one didn’t get in … so which would you have chosen for the front page?

Cast your vote in the comments box below, then paddle across to my website to see if you were right.

How newspaper cartoons are produced

As a public service, I offer the following scribbly infographic to show how the front-page Westmorland Gazette newspaper cartoon is produced.

 Stage 1 - A journalist goes out and gathers a news story

Stage 2 - The journalist types in the news story, adding supplementary facts, figures and typos

Stage 3 - The cartoonist turns up 3 hours before press deadline and consults with his esteemed editor on suitable stories for the week's front-page cartoon

Stage 4 - The cartoonist then goes off to quiet corner to come up with ideas and pretend not to be daydreaming

Stage 5 - The cartoonist offers ideas of unsurpassed brilliance for consideration of the editor

Stage 6 - The steamed editor subjects the cartoonist's ideas to a rigorous editorial selection process

Stage 7 - Once the cartoonist receives the editor's final choice, he embarks upon artwork of great depth and beauty

Stage 8 - The artwork is scanned and beamed through cyberspace to Westmorland Gazette Production Command somewhere in low Earth orbit

Stage 9 - The following morning, The Westmorland Gazette appears with cartoon on front page. Loyal readers search out magnifying glass and prepare to be amused.

Stage 10 - The sketches submitted appear on this blog on Thursday morning and you get to vote which the editor should have chosen. To find out if you were right, the final cartoon appears on my website and you can find it here.

Murder most fowl

Mystery abounds in this week's Westmorland Gazette newspaper (and no, I haven't a clue what "mystery abounds" means).

Locals were astonished to find themselves featuring in an Inspector Lynley novel by best-selling author Elizabeth George. Believing the Lie is set in South Lakeland and involves dodgy goings on at a local stately home. For those who haven't watched the dull exciting TV series, Inspector Lynley is a toff who slums it as a detective inspector and solves posh crimes involving members of the Bullingdon Club. Or something, I haven't stayed awake for a whole episode.

In other news, fell walkers are being swooped upon in dawn raids by a local buzzard.

As you can see, all of life's rich variety parades across the front of the Gazette. 

Below are the four ideas which went off to my editor (or the deputy editor, this week). But which got in? Was it my particular favourite? (Here is a clue: No.) Find out by turning immediately to my website to find out whodunit.

Tweeting the twaffic

Let me take you by the hand to the Auld Grey Town - the little market metropolis of Kendal which nestles (as all rural towns do, according to the media) on the edge of the Lake District.

It is a place of castles (it had two), traditional architecture and quaint, gated yards (built to keep out the naughty Scots in times gone by). It is the home of Catherine Parr, The Blessed Wainwright, Kendal Mint Cake and a variety of exciting festivals throughout the year.

It is also the home to far too many cars. So much so that some streets - including Lowther Street - are a veritable porridge of pollution.

Much has been done to try and alleviate this problem. A few years ago, Kendal Department of Pointless Fiddling rearranged the traffic system, hoping to confuse motorists to such a degree they would all go somewhere else instead.

That didn't work so now they have come up with another plan. One which is bold, innovative and, above all, fearlessly trendy. They are going to use social media.

Yes, coming to a smartphone near you, messages on Twitter and Facebook, urging motorists to leave their cars at home and visit Kendal by foot or public transport.

I imagine it will go brilliantly and can see nothing wrong with the plan whatsoever.

Here are my cartoon sketches about it for last week's Westmorland Gazette. To find out which one made its way - by foot - onto the front page of the newspaper, cycle to my website now.

Nice place to live

The sun is out

The grass is riz

I want to live

Where Wordsworth is.

So said viewers of Channel 4’s Location, Location, Location (prop. Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer). South Lakeland topped the pops in an online poll to find viewers’ preferred place to live. Of course, if they al buy second homes here then those of us who are here already may have to go live somewhere else.

This was one story in this week’s sun-soaked, soaraway Westmorland Gazette. The other concerned unused space at the Westmorland General hospital. Have closed bits down, administrators are surprised to discover they’ve got rather a lot of room and are wondering what to do with it. Rent it out to Channel 4 viewers?

These were the topics for this week’s cartoon. You can see my sketches below. For the editor’s final choice, wander lonely as a cloud to my website.

March

Last Saturday, the Westmorland Gazette and LibDem MP Tim Farron organised a march through Kendal. Not in support of Canada geese but to campaign for a new radiotherapy unit for Westmorland General Hospital.

In my years on the front page of the Gazette, I’ve done innumerable cartoons about the  hospital. 25 years ago the cartoon was campaigning to have the thing built. Now we’re trying to keep bits of it open. And all around us, the LibCon government is happily trying to dismantle the whole NHS.

This march was a big thing and the Gazette pretty much cleared the front page for it in today’s paper. The cartoon got a bit squished as a result but it did make me determined to cover the story.

The Gazette’s editorial team were not so sure. There was considerable debate about which cartoon to use, especially as I was trying to tie two stories together in the one cartoon - one of them from the wider, national news.

You can see the six alternatives below. Which would you have chosen? 

Comment below and then sashay over to my website to peek at the one which graces the front page of this week's newspaper.

Recycled

As my regular reader will know, The Westmorland Gazette cartoon is always greatly interested in the doings of the local council. This is fair enough. As I pay them council tax, I feel it is only fair that they provide me with an income in return. It’s all part of the circulation of money which has helped make capitalism the astounding success we see today.

Recent council doings have included a couple of wheezes which have proved useful to a cartoonist. These include a plan to close down local waste recycling centres and a campaign to remove A-Boards from our pavements.

But locals have not been amused. A petition was compiled. People Had Their Say. The result being that the council has backtracked on both these schemes and they are either “in consultation” (i.e. Keep quiet about it until everyone forgets about them and we can pretend they never happened) or “we are actively looking for viable alternatives” (which translates as: Do nothing).

Elsewhere in this week’s newspaper, two lads in Grange-over-Sands have set up as ghost-hunters. Next week, I’m hiring a daily Mail investigative journalist to track down the fairies at the bottom of my garden.

Here are the ideas for the cartoon. A few of them recycled, in the spirit of the stories. To discover which made it onto the front page, visit my website from Thursday afternoon.

Snowboard

As snow settles on the Lake District, turning it into a winter wonderland (© WaltDisney) the thoughts of residents turns to one thing: Grit. Or the lack of it on the roads.

Elsewhere, geese are being culled, A-boards are being banned and new chairman is being parachuted into a failing NHS Trust. 

Yes, it’s all the news that’s fit to print in this week’s soaraway Westmoreland Gazette and therefore grist to the cartoonist’s light blue Studio 33 Derwent pencil.

Below are the cartoons with which I confronted my editor. Did he choose the right one? Only you can decide - add your comments below and then check out my website after midday to see if you were correct and whether you're the winner of this week’s star prize.*

“That should get round the A-board ban.”

“It’s our allocation of grit from the Council.”

“I came in as a patient but by the time I got to the head of the queue I’d qualified as a doctor.”

“As you’re a member of the NHS Trust, this is my prescription.”

“The new NHS Trust chairman certainly means business.”

* there isn't one