In his latest collection of political cartoons, local artist Peter Woolcock uses a wardrobe of funny images ? the Premier?s underwear, the Tourism Minister?s boxing gloves and the Transport Minister?s shoes, to bring a fresh look to some age old topics.

The newly released ?Woppened 16 ? The Year in Review 2003 - 2004? is a compilation of Mr. Woolcock?s cartoons which appeared in over the year.

While the drawings are all original, the topics themselves are deja-vu inducing and include asbestos removal, the baselands? clean-up and Independence, among other things.

?The more things change, the more they stay the same,? said Mr. Woolcock. ?In the line of Woppeneds there have been some that have a special theme. There may be a special letter. There was one called ?The Big R for Recession?. There was another where ?R? stood for ?Referendum?. Then we had a big ?I? for independence. This one was ?R for Repetition?.?

Mr. Woolcock said that compiling ?Woppened 16? revealed how much the same old topics keep going around in Bermuda politics.

?The recidivism that goes on in the floor of the House has hit me,? he said. ?I mentioned this on the back page.?

Mr. Woolcock actually sat down and made a list of all the repetitions in 2004.

?For example, asbestos was old hat in 1997,? he said. ?The Environment Minister was Irving Pearman. He inherited the problem. We still have asbestos oozing out of containers. That is one for a start.

?Road safety was an issue this year. Way back when Wayne Furbert was Transport Minister he was going to lay down a surface on the roads to cut down on speeding.?

One of the cartoons depicts Shadow Legislative Affairs Minister John Barritt violently ejecting a long-winded Member of Parliament from his seat.

?Now we get House Rules,? said Mr. Woolcock. ?Every so often a member gets up and says: ?Mr. Speaker I would like to express my disappointment at the level to which public debate in this House has sunk?. There is clapping and cries of ?hear hear?.

?Then John Barritt gets up and proposes a bill to cut down the amount of time members are on their feet.?

This happened in December 2004, and also in April 1991 when the issue was tackled in ?Woppened 4?.

Another panel depicts Minister of Transport (and now Tourism) Dr. Ewart Brown in trouble with some turbaned gentlemen because he refused to take his shoes off in a mosque. Although the situation itself was fiction, the panel was a reference to a row that blew up between the American Consulate General and Dr. Brown when he boarded a plane to Washington without getting proper security clearance.

?It was understood the Minister was screened, but asked to see the supervisor when requested to remove his shoes,? Mr. Woolcock wrote in the book.

?Having said all this, it is not to give the impression ?Woppened 16? is made up of repeats,? said Mr. Woolcock. ?That is not true. ?Woppened 16? has one or two delights, for example Dr. Ewart Brown?s shoes. You just can?t invent things like that. That is sprinkled throughout the book. In spite of what I have said about repetition, it does have a charm and delight of its own.?

However, Mr. Woolcock said that many of the people in his strips aren?t meant to depict anyone at all; they are supposed to be anyone on the street.

?I spend much more time trying to draw nobodies,? he said. ?They invariably looking like somebodies.?

Mr. Woolcock produces one to two cartoons a week for . Technically, this should be the 17th compilation of his work, but there was one year when his cartoons didn?t get published as a collection.

?Costs went up and the printer and publisher said it was no longer viable since circulation tends to be the same,? he said. ?Then took over, and it has its own in-house printer.?

Today, his strips are sometimes used by teachers in civic lessons.

?It is because when you cut through all the huff and puff it is history,? he said. ?That is why I write more and more at the bottom of the drawings. The drawings may be ?ho ho?, but the captions are dead serious and provide a potted history of what is going on.?

When he first started drawing the political cartoons there was nobody else on the Island doing it.

?When I asked about it, I was told by well meaning friends that Bermudians didn?t have a sense of humour. So for two years I held off,? he said. ?Then in 1983 there was a general election. The situation was so irresistible that I brought some samples to show then editor of , David White. That is when it all started.

?I found in fact, happily, Bermudians do have a glorious sense of humour. I have been bowled over by the way people reacted to my drawings.?

Mr. Woolcock said that in all the years he has been drawing the cartoons he has only had about three telephone complaints.

Although Mr. Woolcock is well known locally for his political cartoons, he actually worked for 38 years for the Amalgamated Press in England drawing hundreds of illustrations for children?s books and magazines including ?Look and Learn? and ?Treasure?. These were comically instructional.

He also illustrated the Amalgamated Press? version of ?Wind In The Willows? and then the ?Further Adventures of Mr. Toad? for 25 years. He even drew ?101 Dalmatians? before the film came out .