Spooky

Last week's Westmorland Gazette newspaper stories presented a challenge for the front page cartoon.

The main story was the proposal to build 20,000 new homes in South Lakes. Some bright spark had realised that some of those new homes would be inhabited by children. And those children would need schools … In fact, the estimate was that South Lakes would need two entirely new primary schools.

Elsewhere, the National Park Authority were continuing with their plan to cut down Brockhole National Park Centre's famous, 100-year old monkey puzzle tree. Protestors were galvanised into action and chained themselves to the tree.

The challenge for the cartoonist? Remaining tasteful.

As usual, I may not have been entirely successful.

Add your comments below, then swoosh across to my website to see which cartoon my editor picked.

Click on any of the cartoons for a bigger and scruffier version

Clocking on

After last week's rather heavy Westmorland Gazette front page, it was a relief to turn to something lighter this week. 6,000 new homes are to be built in the South Lakes area.

Anything involving building work in a national park is guaranteed to have people hopping about in indignation.The requirement for more homes, doubly so (especially as there is a large pool of predominantly unoccupied second homes in the region).

In other news: 

Tourism chiefs (as opposed to tourism squaws) want the clocks to go forward to allow people to enjoy more daylight hours in the Lake District (i.e. spend more).

A burglar broke into a house, made some toast and fell asleep on the sofa, where the police found him the following morning (a classic case of story-funnier-than-any-cartoon)

And there's a campaign to remove A-boards from the street as they are a hazard to pedestrians. 

View the sketches , pick the one you think should be on the front page and then stroll over to my website to see if the editor agreed …

“Will you stop going on about the economic benefits of moving the clocks forward.”

“I’m all for it as long as they don’t build any near my holiday home.”

“Fortunately we found out about the 6000 new houses just in time and bought a 2^nd home in France instead.”