I have finally heard back from the good people at the Daily Mail who were running the Not the Turner Prize Competition. What must have been several years ago now I entered a figure illustration for their consideration (top prize £20,000). Here's what they had to say:
Dear Mr Hughes,
The response to the Not the Turner Prize Contest has been overwhelming and we have been surprised at exceptionally high standard of the majority of the work. Unfortunately your entry did not make it into the top twenty but we hope you will continue to follow the competition in the Daily Mail.
Yours etc,
Somebody or other whose name I can't recall.
I don't get it! Me? One of the top figure illustrators in Britain! Not even making it into the top twenty? Are these people insane?
To prove the point, here's the entry that I sent them. I'll let the Rant of the Week readers decide for themselves!
Iraq lies in tatters, homes, shops, hospitals, banks and schools...all looted, smashed, burned and vandalised by the liberated citizens. Donald Rumsfeld's master plan of only sending in twenty-three troops (twenty-four if you count the officially embedded journalist) has worked wonderfully. "This new method of warfare is fantastic," Rumsfeld commented today as he watched the Iraqi currency plummet through the stock market floorboards. "We've created a completely feral society. People are shooting each other in the streets. Homes are getting wrecked. Children and injured civilians are dying due to medicines and hospital equipment being stolen. The whole thing's a complete fuck up. However, we have stationed guards around the oil wells...so who gives a shit?"
So...in response to all those delightful right-wing pro-war Americans who so proudly called the rest of us a bunch of ignorant fuckers who ought to be ashamed of ourselves yesterday...it's wake up time! Saddam's despotic regime has now been replaced by total anarchy. The innocent are still getting killed...only this time by their fellow citizens. And, with the sort of horrible irony that only the American diplomats could possibly muster, Ba'athist police men are being released (the ones that are still alive anyway) in a desperate attempt to restore some form of law and order across Iraq.
How many dead, maimed and dying? And was it all worth it? Well...go on you obnoxious, arrogant pro-war toss pots who were gloating so much yesterday...was it really the best way to bring freedom and stability to Iraq?
Who cares...I'm off to hospital the day after tomorrow so I've got more important matters to see to.
Deputy Editor posts warning for Editor. If your "more important matters" involve, as I suspect, wholesale looting and gutting of the NHS ... don't bother, it was done some time ago. What's left aint worth nicking.
"Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," he told reporters.
"I don't think there is anyone in those pictures or any human being who does not prefer to be free and recognise that you have passed through a transition period like this and accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom." Donald Rumsfeld being particularly sanguine about this ...
Medical equipment such as heart monitors and incubators have been stolen and even the laboratories ransacked - centrifuges and microscopes smashed.
"I am desperately looking for someone to co-ordinate the situation with the hospital directors in various parts of the country, but I haven't found anyone, " said Mr Bonamy.
And he stressed that responsibility rested squarely with the Americans.
"You entered a city. Civil society broke down. "It is your responsibility to guarantee at least minimal operation of infrastructure - hospitals, police forces, firefighters, water, electricity," he said.
Spotted at and brazenly lifted from The Eejit's Blog.
