"Age of Austerity"

Now we come up to roughly when I started posting my cartoons to toonpool.com. This was my final comic before dedicating my final efforts to the uni assessments before summer break. It also - for now - completes the roster of undead creatures I'm playing with throughout the series. Zombies symbolise those who have become politically disaffected, disinformed and complacent with being taken advantage of. Given that I'm mainly using them for reactionaries, there's also the parallel with Reform as vampires.

For context, the term 'age of austerity' was spoken by former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, whose austerity programme has been almost ongoing ever since (including into Labour, pretending otherwise doesn't change things). The point of this comic is to show the timeline of what that looks like. Once you come out of the facts and figures alluded to in Grettoon 012, this is what it's like to live under austerity. To be deprived of resources, to have people hopeless and zombified, promoting right-wing populism as a non-solution. Domestic violence shelters are defunded, homelessness increases and poverty worsens. That's the reality, and it needs to be presented coldly and clearly.

Originally posted on Instagram on 9th May 2026.

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