Bring on the Penguins

It's the 30th birthday of Steve Bell's If…, his nasty, bitter, brilliant Guardian cartoon strip. I collect the books. Highlights for me are his policemen (corrupt bullies with a neat turn of phrase, all called Gerald 'Badger' Courage), his self-parody Monsieur L'Artiste, and most of all, the penguin family: Prince Philip of Greece (who'd 'do anything for a piece of fish'), Gloria, Cousin King Penguin and various others: Falkland Island refugees who mutate frequently: bigoted Tories one day, welfare-scrounging lowlife another, entrepreneurs the next, and quite often right-on lefty troublemakers.

Hurrah for Steve Bell.

Here's a selection:

On the banking bailout

The Albatrosses are the Argentinians

Bankers, the lot of them

The greedy bastards who bankrupted us while raking in billions to stash offshore are threatening to leave the country because taxes have been increased to pay for bailing the banks out - Steve Bell nails these destructive, selfish gits:

This is infuriating - Cameron's announcing 'the age of austerity' as though government waste has ruined us all. It hasn't. Saving the banks (Tories all) has sunk us, but Cameron's desperate not to mention his commitment to finance capitalism. It's such lazy, reactionary politics to blame big government for shortfalls - very Reaganite 1980s. We all like schools, decent hospitals and state pensions - let's be proud of paying for them.

Personally I'd have protected depositors and allowed the institutions to crash, but Brown et al decided this wouldn't be good for the economy. If goverment cutbacks are required: ID cards, nuclear weapons, the armed services in general, Department for Business (fewer businesses - fewer bureaucrats required to kiss their arses), properly nationalise trains rather than pay extortionate subsidies to franchises.