Just as the writing begins (19,135 words), I remember why I moved into cartoons. It’s because I have days like yesterday and today… My mother has a bad neck. We’ve known about it for years. She has arthritis in it, which occasionally flares. It’s been fine for months but this week she’s had symptoms which […]
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Wrote all morning about the Democratic convention and, the moment I finish, the news breaks about Steve Bannon’s arrest… I was only wondering a couple of days ago how the world would bring Bannon’s reign of influence to an end. I don’t know what promoted it, but I distinctly remember standing in the kitchen thinking […]
Continue ReadingI’m struggling to write today, though that has been true for most of the week. The vibe hasn’t been there, which often happens when I’m keen to get back to the drawing. Part of today’s indifference might be due to my just sitting down and watching some of Prime Minister’s Questions. It’s not something I’ve […]
Continue ReadingI lost my internet (and hence my reason to live) for much of yesterday, throwing out my plans for the day… Virginmedia are generally reliable but they have lousy fault reporting. Their system status doesn’t actually pinpoint if their engineers are working on the local network, so when the system does go down, it’s too […]
Continue ReadingI’ve not followed the career of Ben Shapiro except by accident. He’s one of those people whose opinions pop up on social media and have generally led me to think of him as a walloper with spectacular means for self-promotion. Last night I only noticed him because he’d posted two maps of the US, challenging […]
Continue ReadingAlso from me today, over at Reaction, I did some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations about mortality rates and why politicians seem to get it so wrong.
Continue ReadingWell, that was something of a surprise. Donald Trump has now lost both cases that were before the Supreme Court and with the court divided, remarkably given how Trump was supposed to have stacked it in his favour, 7 votes against 2. I wrote about this a few months ago when the best legal minds […]
Continue ReadingI thought I’d wait to see what the Chancellor had to say before I blogged today but I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered. There’s really not that much to say… I’m sure some of his measures will do what they are intended to do but so much of it works at the macroeconomic level. […]
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As much as it is measured by affection, success is too often measured by hate. Hate proves a useful metric because it allows writers to test how successful they’ve been, positioning their selves on one side of the political divide. How much the Right or Left hates you often reflects how much the other side […]
Continue ReadingI have a new piece over at Reaction. It’s about the whispers that Donald Trump might quit before November. I look at the pros and cons of the argument; how it fits with the character of the man, how it doesn’t; and which option is probably best for Republicans. It’s over here [CLICKY] should you […]
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First of all, to avoid accusations of hypocrisy, let me put it out there that Twitter has every right to ban Graham Linehan from their platform. It would be wrong of me to argue that one rule applies to Katie Hopkins and another rule applies to people I generally agree with. Freedom of speech also […]
Continue ReadingOne of the pleasures of writing a blog is having intelligent conversations with people who visit. It does me some good to have my opinions challenged in a way that’s largely consequence-free and where I’m in no more trouble than a slightly bruised ego when I get things wrong. The downside of this is that […]
Continue ReadingOkay. No more Benadryl for me. The hay fever was terrible, but this sleepiness is worse. I skipped a dose yesterday to ensure I didn’t sleep through the podcast, but I took one just before I went to bed last night, thinking that the effects would have worn off by the morning. They hadn’t. Holy […]
Continue ReadingI’m not sure how or when “truther” became the go-to word to describe people who routinely spread lies, but I suspect it’s going to be a word we hear a lot in the coming months. (Quickly checks the OED. First use: 2005, in the alt.fan.gene-scott usenet group, during a discussion about the government’s “involvement” in […]
Continue ReadingI have never flashed a stranger in my life. I thought I better get that out there (no pun intended) at the start. One of the current trends that annoys me the most is the need to state things which, in a mature and civil society, shouldn’t need stating. I’m also not a serial killer. […]
Continue ReadingWhy Dunciad.com?
It’s a cool domain name and it was available. Yes, I know. Available. Crazy, isn’t it?
Really?
Yes. It also helps that it’s also my favourite satire written by Alexander Pope, one of the most metrically pure English poets who also knew his way around a crude insult or two. If you’ve not read it, you should give it a try.
So this is satire, right?
Can’t deny it. There will be some. But it’s also an experiment in writing and drawing, giving work away for free in order to see how many people are willing to support a writer doing his thing. It’s the weird stuff that I wouldn’t get published elsewhere in this word of diminishing demands and cookie-cutter tastes.
