Stop Resisting

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4332 of The Bugle, barking helplessly into the void since 2007.

I am Andy Zoltzman, coming to you live and in the past and or future, depending on when you listen to this, from the Granite City, Aberdeen in Scotland a place that fears not the colour grey many people think that Aberdeen acquired its nickname because so many of the buildings here are built of the celebrity rock granite famed of course for its granite rock-like hardness but and those people would be right but there is another school of thought that also claims that the granite city tag actually derives from a 14th century advertising campaign trying to encourage people to consult the wisdom of old women to solve their problems rather than bottling everything up and keeping stuff to themselves the slogan don't can it granite was hugely successful for several hundred years, hence the name of the city.

Sorry, I've got to take this.

Bugle podcast, Andy speaking.

Yes?

So you're saying I need to stop avoiding reality by fleeing to the comforting bosom of bullshit at the first available opportunity.

Oh, okay.

Well, no, I'm not comfortable with it, but you're the boss.

Yeah, yeah, you should have all the oxen for the monthly sacrifice by Thursday.

Sorry, folks.

I've got his use on the line here.

Sorry, said Does it have to be 100?

Can I not do 80 this month and 120 next month?

I know five of January's oxen were technically goats, but I'll make it up to you.

I'm good for it.

You sound cross.

Things are still a bit tricky at home for you.

Well, I don't blame her, TBH.

Can I get on with the show?

Cheers.

Sorry.

Back to the show.

Welcome to

the bugle.

I am Andy Zoltzman coming to you, as I said, from Aberdeen.

And joining me, I'm delighted to say from further south,

to differing degrees firstly from London it's Tiff Stevenson hello Tiff hello hello I'm jealous you're in Abbashneggy and it's warm you told me it was warm I don't know if this is more alternative facts but um to believe that that Aberdeen might be sunny in February but yeah it's it's it's it's it was genuinely sunny and and quite i mean i did have quite a lot of clothes on when i lugged a massive suitcase to the hotel so that i mean whether it's warm or not i think by aberdonian standards it is absolutely toasty.

Perhaps

further evidence that I mean, obviously, Trump, I think Trump has a golf course not far from here, so it is possible it's just the fires of hell just heating the whole place up.

Also, joining us from Mumbai, where I'm gonna take a punt, it might be slightly hotter than it is in Aberdeen.

It's Anuvab Pal.

Hello, Andy.

Hi, Tiff.

Pleasure to be here.

It's

warmer, and the AQI, I think, is in the thousands,

which is about the same as Mars.

So

it's...

Look, look, Andy Tip, I have a suggestion.

Normally, we usually start this podcast with introductions and where we are.

We've done it for years.

But now, this is the end of the rules-based order in the world, and there aren't any laws anymore.

I was wondering if we could start the podcast with a karaoke.

Well,

I mean, I mean, nothing is off the table in this day and age.

I've never actually, I've never done done karaoke,

and I consider that one of my greatest personal triumphs, that I've reached the age of 50 without ever having to resort to karaoke.

There's not even one song that you would do if cricketers had hits?

If cricketers had brought out songs, then

you'd sing them at karaoke.

I'm just not sure.

I just don't think, I mean, what was that saying?

The arc of civilization bends towards karaoke.

I'm not sure that's a good thing, to be honest.

Anyway, we are recording on the 24th of February.

If you get the extended version of this, there will be full karaoke renditions of every single song ever recorded.

On the 25th of February 1991, so 34 years ago now, the Warsaw Pact was disbanded.

at a meeting in Budapest.

Surely, presaging an age in which the old divisions of left and right, the unnecessary power-frittering away of billions of dollars on military expenditure to cover the political failures of humanity, and the sense that Europe was constantly on the brink of war, would surely pass into the annals of history.

Let me just check how that's going.

I could do better.

I guess looking back to 1991 and the end of the Warsaw Pact, people would have hoped that the USA and Russia would start getting on better politically.

So I guess at least that bit is going okay, just not quite in the way that people had maybe hoped and envisaged, naive as we were back in the early 1990s.

On the 26th of February 1616, Galileo Galilei,

double G as he was known, was formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching his view that the Earth orbits the sun.

Galileo, obviously the founder of wokeness, with his rather negative, we are just hapless bulls in a celestial snooker match, passive surrenderism, that has left this planet in the state it's currently in.

When we were the center of the universe and the sun revolved revolved around us, not the other way around, we got shit done.

For example, the Roman Empire,

that was when the sun revolved around the earth, versus the woke lobby forcing everyone on a diversity awareness, cake, bacon, macrame retreat before they're even allowed to hire a vegan, gluten-free car that isn't allowed to go anywhere in case it wakes up a sleeping pheasant.

Oh no,

oh no,

it's happening.

I'm the next one to go to the dark side.

Oh dear.

Oh, I just hoped it wouldn't happen in Aberdeen.

As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, influencers, we have a special influencer section.

The great influencer epidemic still shows no signs of abating.

So we're at the Bugle, where, of course, we take our role as influencers of every generation, past, present, and future, very, very, very seriously indeed.

We tell you which of the latest influence who've hit the big time in the last 48 hours you should welcome into your life and some of the big stars who've really broken through in the last couple of days.

Kara Kalla von Gloppeit, who is 315th in line to the defunct Prussian throne,

CVG is Europe's leading cushion awareness influencer with tips on everything from how many cushions to use in a standard-sized armchair to the optimum cushion design for someone who hates cushions to how many cushions is the absolute maximum to give to someone as a Christmas or birthday present without it becoming one or more of inconvenient, weird or strangely aggressive.

Also, we look at the work of Wowzer McWow, the world's leading influencer influencer, who produces four YouTube videos every quarter hour advising you what influencers you should try to be influenced by today he already has 1.3 billion followers having just uh started yesterday uh sploshy the uh latest influencer genius behind the wild wildly successful sploshy steps in puddles nano video series in which uh the eponymous sploshy visible from the calf downwards steps in puddles uh he has uh 2.7 billion followers on the instagram rival transiense where you can post videos up to uh two seconds long that disappear after three more seconds and uh finally uh on our roundup of the latest influencers, Brad and Roses, the Instagrate trendsetting AAAX supergroup formed of unqualified a historian Brad Strammel, former health work influencer Rose Jumpretta, and the 98-year-old grandfluencer Rose Hobbinsworth.

Brad and Roses suggests ways that governments might distract their people from deep-seated problems with big-ticket ephemeral distractions and tell you how to make sure you can take a photo of yourself thinking about attending one of those hypothetical events.

So

those are the influencers that we would be telling you to follow had that section not been put straight in the bin.

Andy, there is an influencer in New Delhi who goes around abusing other influencers.

She has a million views.

So

I think you're onto something here.

That's the logical end point of all civilization.

I think if, I mean,

I have done the maths on this in the past.

And if the rate of influencer inflation continues, then by the year, I think it's 2049, there will be more influencers than regular civilians in the world.

Then the market will collapse, and all the influencers will be congealed into one giant super influencer called God, and the whole process will start again from scratch.

So

do keep an eye on that over the next 24 years.

Andy, if you're going to be an influencer, you need your own, you need to start your own network.

If Trump has the truth network, I think you should have the bullshit network.

Maybe we should rename the Bugle that.

Yeah, I mean, that's,

I'm pretty sure that's the acronym.

The B of Bugle is definitely, definitely, definitely that.

I can't remember what the UGL and E are.

Anyway.

I would sign up to any rival of Twitter called the Zolter.

I think I can speak to some venture capital financing.

I think we can make this.

Right, I'm up for it.

I'm absolutely up for it.

Top story this week.

Germany has voted and it has got things very right.

The most right it has been since the war.

So I've translated that from a German news website and I don't speak German.

So I might not be 100% accurate, but we'll have to go with that.

It's,

yes, I've been in slightly weird times that we're living in democratically, in which the far-right AFD party in Germany got 21%

of the vote.

This is a party, many of whose senior figures have not been quite as definitely not Nazis as would be ideal for anyone who's ever heard of or read anything about the 20th century.

I guess on the plus side, 21%,

we've probably still got a few happy years until they fully take over Germany.

So let's cling to that.

Tiff, you are our

German electoral politics correspondent.

Congratulations on being appointed to that.

Is it the blonde hair and the blue eyes?

I feel this is unfair.

I've always said, you know, Hitler would struggle with me because, you know, I've got the blonde hair, blue eyes, but I am actually part Romani, so I am part gypsy.

So, you know, he'd be like, f me, kill me.

Basically, the same dilemma that every man I've ever

anyway.

Well, look,

I mean, I've brought up, we've started talking about,

we've started talking about Hitler.

I hate to go

reducto ad Hitler when talking, but I think when talking about German political parties, it's probably a fair.

Because, you know, there's been a lot of discussion about whether or not the AFD are indeed far-right and

some arguments to say they're not.

But then apparently the party's youth wing and certain regional factions of that have been flagged by Germany's domestic intelligence agency as suspected extremist groups, although the party as a whole isn't officially classified that way.

But German politics and the word youth, when combined, are never really the greatest sign, are they?

No, it's a slightly tainted combination historically, I guess.

Anuvad what have you made of

Germany's rightward drift in recent years?

So the biggest party in the election

was the centre-right CDU-CSU coalition

led by Friedrich Mertz.

With

29%, they've said they will not go into coalition with

the AFD.

So I guess that's another plus to cling to.

And 79% of German voters who voted did not not vote for the far-right's anti-learning even a hint of a lesson from history, AFD party, and its impressively hypocritical leader, Alice Vidal.

Uh, I'm sorry for mashing up pronunciations here, but um, uh, what have you, what have you made of it, watching on from uh a safer distance?

You know, uh,

I think it's an interesting world to be in, where the BBC World podcast in the morning I was listening to said it could have been the fascists, it was nearly the fascists, but eventually it wasn't.

That can't be a way in which we begin our day.

You know, the way for humanity to progress in 2025 should be more that it's not Hitler.

You know, I think

after all this time, I think we should be able to say a few more things that it's not Hitler.

Like, it can be anything.

You know, it's a cyclist.

It's a pickleball player.

But it's not Hitler should not be

the gauging mechanism for relief anywhere in the world.

I mean, Trump immediately took credit for it, didn't he?

Because he said, like, ah, you know, look like the Conservative Party won Big Lee because they're like us, sort of forgetting that Musk and Vance actually, actually backed the AFD, like quite vocally and openly.

And I guess even comparatively with

this party in Germany is more left-wing than,

you know, the Republicans are.

The Conservative is sort of centre-left, is it not?

Like, is the left-wing on a different plane altogether?

It's not.

I've long since given up trying to understand left and right.

I never really understood it in the first place.

It never made any sort of logical sense to me,

left and right.

And now I think, I don't know,

all the old certainties have just evaporated away in a spray of musky and piss, frankly.

The weird thing is that when you categorise any group of people, after a while, the English language stops mattering.

Like,

for example, recently when Elon Musk was talking to the AFT, one of the things that came up was that, you know, we're against immigrants and people who look like immigrants.

And I thought to myself, that could just be a tourist.

The incumbent Chancellor Olaf Schultz bagged just 16% of the vote for the Social Democrats, their sausage.

Sorry, I read that wrong.

Their worst since the Second World War.

Yes.

I didn't go near a worst pun because

I knew that you would go there.

And I didn't even go for they might be sauerkraut about losing.

I didn't even

go there.

You're more disciplined than I am.

There will be weeks and months of negotiations before a coalition is officially formed.

Obviously in Britain, we had a couple of elections after which we dabbled in negotiations for coalitions and it did not suit us well at all.

Not our game

discussing compromise and cooperation.

That's not what politics is supposed to be about.

But obviously they're slightly more used to it in Germany.

So it still remains to be seen exactly how this will, how all the pieces will

fall into place.

But

yeah, I guess as a fan of

humanity not drifting to the right politically,

slightly worrying times across Europe.

I think being part of coalitions can have a significant impact on your mental health.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the leaders of the coalition in Great Britain, a gentleman called Nick Clegg, who then went on to work for Facebook?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

That was a strange transformation.

And we will talk a little more about

the tech takeover of the human soul later in the show.

But yes, he went from the leader of a party that was basically explicitly designed never to have to be in power, accidentally ended up in power and um

yeah it's had a rather sort of curious tech-based career ever since but it just shows the danger of of having to having to have having to compromise on things it does not suit our national psyche

Ukraine update now and since we last podcasted to you Donald Trump has used a very trendy insult towards Vladimir Zelensky called him a dictator

now people get very cross, some people get very cross when you pass Trump off as a dictator simply because he acts, talks and rules like a dictator.

We've got to remember he's a democratically elected leader with a mandate from the people of the USA to behave like a dictator to the rest of the world.

That is a very important difference to make.

It's also not entirely clear when Trump called Zelensky a dictator if it was meant as a criticism or a glowing compliment, the political equivalent of the snooker player tapping a cue on the cushion after their opponent has left them in a tricky spot on the bolt cushion behind the green.

So

also, I mean looking at the way the world is going, the way Trump is governing, if that's the right word, America, this is not so much the pot calling the kettle black as the lawnmower calling the terrapin a lawnmower.

It's a kind of strange,

well, I mean, it would be...

In previous times, you would have thought this a strange thing, that

the American president siding, as we discussed last week, with America's

implacable enemy over its allies.

But this is 2025.

I mean, you can hear the honking in the background here in Aberdeen.

People are not happy about it.

Trump also turned his fire on Kier Stahmer and Emmanuel Macron, saying they have not done anything to end the Ukraine war.

And again, we've discussed in recent weeks that doing not doing anything

and then doing something doesn't mean that something is necessarily the right thing to do.

But anyway, Aniva,

what have you made of this?

Well, I'm just trying to figure out what not doing anything means.

I think in Trump's book, does not doing anything mean he hasn't threatened to bomb Ukraine along with Russia till they reach a settlement?

Yes,

doing nothing means you're not having cozy afternoon tea with Putin.

And he also said that Zelensky had no cards in peace negotiations.

And I didn't know they were sending cards.

Is it a Hallmark holiday?

Is this how this works?

Well, I mean, he doesn't have cards in peace negotiations because Trump has just taken all the cards out of his hand and given them to his opponent.

So, I mean, yes, I guess there's an element of truth in that he doesn't have cards to play.

Trump also said Russia wants to stop the savage barbarianism.

And look, I don't know if any of you listening, Buglers or Anuvab or Tiff, have you got any suggestions for how Russia might stop?

the savage barbarianism that it is perpetrating itself.

I don't know how it might do that.

I mean, there are, I guess, I mean, one way would be to just stop it rather than just wanting to stop it, would be to actually stop it.

But evidently, that's quite a big step politically.

It's weird to call Zelensky a dictator when he's doing classic dictator things like offering to step down if it stops the invasion or if Ukraine can join NATO.

I mean, you could offer world peace and an end to all hunger and Trump would not step down.

He'd still be wanting to rule whilst he's a cryogenically frozen head cold lazarus style in the 24th century where britain becomes america's 51st state and all experiences are virtual via your tesla shit

sorry did i just describe a dystopian dennis potter novel or is this a possibility of our future i don't know

the dividing line between those is more blurred than ever

The way I look at the way geopolitics is being played right now is very similar to what my yoga teacher told me this Sunday.

I've started going to yoga.

I'm sorry to report this.

My wife's been taking me to yoga.

And I think what Donald Trump is saying to Zelensky is exactly what my yoga teacher said to me in my first class, because I wasn't doing the stretch and the downward dog correctly.

And he said, stop resisting.

And I think Donald Trump is saying the same thing to countries that are being invaded.

Stop resisting.

Let things flow.

Stop resisting, and then

I'll claim credit for creating peace, world peace.

He did blame Zelensky for starting the war, which was, I mean, even by Trump's standards, impressively inaccurate.

I guess, you know, then again, he's a man who's complained about how Abraham Lincoln got blood all over John Wilkes Booth's lovely clean bullet.

Well, and Musk blasted Zelensky for doing an old vogue photo shoot during wartime.

It was from three years ago, but he said he did this while kids are dying.

And that is the same Musk who went on a PR spree when those Thai kids were trapped in a cave to sort of publicize how Tesla could fix this, then called the Rescuers Pedoes.

You did that whilst kids were dying, Elon.

You did that.

And I don't really understand how the idea of like doing publicity and or propaganda, which all seem to be blurring into one these days anyway.

I thought I'm going to do propaganda for my upcoming tour, actually.

I'm not going to do publicity.

I'm going to just do pure propaganda.

But, you know, doing a story where you get a chance to reach lots of people to tell them what's going on in your country.

I don't really know how that can be seen as a bad thing.

And actually, Vogue were like quite intrinsic during the Second World War, weren't they?

With their, you know, photojournalism and stuff for a fashion magazine.

They're actually, you know, Lee Miller famously like shot all this stuff.

So you're just sort of reaching people you wouldn't normally.

But maybe Musk is jealous because he hasn't been asked to do do Vogue.

Exactly.

I mean, look, I guess he's trying to get on any media for Western support.

I guess he would have done Twitter, but it costs nine bucks to verify yourself every month.

I'm sure he wanted new media, but it's so expensive.

He had to go for traditional media.

Boris Johnson

said that

basically said that all Trump was trying to do, and whilst it might seem to our untrained, less expert heads that Trump is just caving into Putin, betraying America's allies, and willfully abandoning everything that America used to claim to stand for, all he was actually doing, according to Boris Johnson, is trying to shock Europeans into action and said people need to stop being scandalized by Trump's words and instead help him to end the war.

Now, on many readings of other realities than the one Boris Johnson lives in, Europe has been trying to end the war by helping Ukraine beat Russia.

I mean, obviously,

that's quite a big task, ineffectively, in the place of Putin's willingness to send his own people to slaughter and be slaughtered.

He's not a nice man, Vladimir Putin.

That's just my opinion.

This is an opinion-based podcast.

I'm prepared to say that.

But being scandalized by Donald Trump's words, I mean, to me, that's a necessary step to try to achieve an end to the war.

Crucially, an end to the war that actually ends the war, not an end to the war which gives Putin a lot more power and,

I don't know, determination to start another war, for example.

But of course, there are two sides to every coin.

And no one uses coins anymore.

There are about 35 sides to every banknote once you've folded it into an origami mushroom cloud.

And we live in a cashless society.

There are infinite sides to every cryptocurrency.

In summary, I can't remember what I'm talking about, but I'm not happy about it.

Andy, listen, this winter, I don't know what got over me, but I read the official biography of Boris Johnson titled Unleashed.

And in it, this is the same gentleman that, at the height of the Ukraine war, writes in his biography that he threatened Vladimir Putin to an armed wrestling match.

Well, that's what they would have done at the Bullingen Club to fix it.

I don't expect any more maturity from Boris now.

He's in, what, his 60s?

I think, yeah, I mean, technically, in terms of age, that might be right.

It really depends how you measure

those numbers, I guess.

Donald Trump also

he basically declared himself king of America in a social media post

to do with

congestion charging in New York, which he says he's going to end.

And

he posted a mock-up of a magazine cover saying, Long live the king, with a picture of him with a crown on.

Now, I mean, that's a weird kind of line through history.

George III, big gap, Donald Trump as

kings of America.

But also, it's kind of a bit of a weird thing for Trump to go for.

Does he not realize how little power kings actually have these days?

I just don't think that would suit him, to be honest.

They just have to go around opening supermarkets and not saying anything.

But anyway, whatever you say about Donald Trump, I think it's fair to say he's not an overly committed historian.

And

he might need a little bit of reminding.

There was a time that America decided having a king wasn't really its thing anymore.

I mean, obviously, it's not worked out for them.

But

yes, I guess that does also lead to concerns about what other aspects of America's past Donald Trump might be looking at reintroducing.

And I really, really don't want to go down that path.

Go into the bullshit.

Into the bullshit.

It's like into the like.

Into the bullshit, Andy.

Into the bullshit.

Follow the bullshit.

Well, I mean, all I would say, in conclusion to

this section and just the general state of the world, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, I'm starting to think that maybe,

just maybe,

looking at the state of the world,

the world has bigger problems than some people wanting to use different pronouns look i don't have any scientific evidence to back it up yet at the moment it's just a hunch but i i'm thinking that might not be the biggest problem that humanity faces so yeah i have to disagree with the leader of the conservative party on that

anubab um trump has um

bought and been getting involved in indian politics as well uh now you've uh you've not escaped the uh the

whirling dervish of

insanity that America has bestowed upon the world.

That is correct.

In fact, after Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister Modi was the second world leader to visit him because they're very good friends.

And if you remember, in his first term, he performed, Donald Trump performed in a massive cricket stadium in India to 100,000 people, didn't understand a word of English, and he mispronounced the names of Indian celebrities and cricketers and left.

And now Modi's gone back and they hugged.

And

immediately he announced tit-for-tat tariffs on India.

So I don't know how useful the trip was, but in the Department of Government Efficiency, in the Doge audit report,

it has been found that USAID, the grant organization gave $21 million

for elections in India.

Now,

no proof proof of this has obviously been found.

The head of the Indian Election Commission from 2010 to 2012, when the money supposedly received, S.Y.

Qureshi, he denied receiving this funding in his tenure.

And interestingly, he also said he's waiting for his own pension, which hasn't come through.

So

let alone receiving $21 million,

he has bigger problems.

Now, Donald Trump's accusation was that this money was used to probably elect a rival of Mr.

Modi.

So was there a conspiracy?

He sort of lobbed that tennis ball in the air.

It's a big furor in India.

Who could this money have gone to?

I can tell you one thing though, if it went for improvement of elections in India,

I saw no proof of that because,

you know, the day of voting, they put one leaflet per apartment building.

There was no signage on how to get to the voting booth.

If you've got $21 million, you can spend on these things.

Once you got to the booth, there there was a sign saying after voting collect a free samosa there weren't any free samosas and the actual polling booth was a mobile toilet so

i i don't know where this money has gone so maybe there is a conspiracy but just not the one that mr trump thinks it is

it's interesting isn't it because they've got musk going in this and doing this um to go in and see what the us aid has been spending money on if you really want to know about budgets or do some auditing to see where money has gone, I think you should just ask a mum.

That would be better.

You would get real answers.

You know, she's scoured the supermarkets to find the best deals.

She knows exactly how much change you should be giving her when you go to the shops.

She's got a purse full of coupons, 50p off election interference and two for ones on mail ballots.

You know, she's the person you want to be going to.

I don't know why Trump has put Musk in charge of this.

It's a lovely excuse, you know, because the Indian political party in power has been saying this is an effort by the American deep deep state to put the opposition Congress party in power because they're connected to George Soros.

And then all the usual conspiracies start.

George Soros is actually Bill Gates in disguise.

All the conspiracies sort of come into that vaccine George Soros area.

So now here's the thing, though.

This is the deep state, I've realized, has just become an just all-encompassing term now when you're feeling lazy to find anything out.

I've been using deep state to uh not finish writing deadlines.

Columns and newspapers have been telling people that the deep state has got involved.

And I recommend you both do it for all sorts of things that you have to do.

Well, I mean, that's uh, I definitely go for that to be honest.

I wish I could have blamed some of the gigs earlier in my career on the deep state, but didn't have that option at the time.

Um,

well, I mean, on the subject of the deep state, uh, Liz Truss has been

very, very worried about the deep state.

And

in case

you were in any doubt about Elon Musk and judging Musk by the content of his character, up pops Prime Ministerial speed failure, Liz Truss, and proves that everything you thought about Musk and Truss is correct.

For those of you who've

forgotten Liz Truss, A, congratulations.

B, please tell me how you did it.

And C, a quick reminder of her works.

Well, just as once

it boggled the mind that you could fit the contents of the world's biggest library on a device the size of a disappointing goldfish.

So Liz Truss managed to fit into six weeks basically as Prime Minister, the amount of incompetence it traditionally took a solid full two terms in office.

But sadly, she's found another audience in America.

And the CPAC conference that

followed up the conference we talked about in London last week as the,

I don't know, meeting of minds, is that the right term

from the global right?

She said,

and clearly, since she's been Prime Minister, she has not been working on her rhetorical skills because

I don't know what possesses her arms when she speaks in public.

Anyway,

she had a weird Jimmy Cranky thumbs up for like three-quarters of the speech.

Like, we just, do we, we don't talk enough about how bad an orator Liz Truss is.

I mean, she's shocking.

Sorry, Andy.

I just had to.

I felt like it felt like something out of Clockwork Orange that I was being forced to watch that with my eyes being pinned open, like finding myself losing skills as a stand-up because she obviously

has no Riz.

She has absolutely zero RIS, yet she thinks she's funny and charming.

It's quite mind-boggling to watch.

The Clockwork Orange is, in fact, Donald Trump's Secret Service code name.

Only every hour.

Some bullshit comes out.

So she said, we see Trump in the Oval Office signing off executive orders, and we want some of that in Britain.

No, we f ⁇ ing don't, you clattering buffoon.

You do not speak for this country.

When you tried to speak for this country, the country said fing right off.

And also,

I mean, the signing off of executive orders.

I mean, I think we're quite fond of the vague idea of a functioning democracy in this country.

And the democratic process bit was always a bit of a bulwark for Truss.

I just don't think Britain is I just don't think it's the British way to stand back and watch a megalomaniac autocrat unilaterally make laws without oversight or consultation.

As for example, Charles I would testify if he ever recovers from his pretty severe neck injury that he got back in 1649.

She also said we want a Trump revolution in Britain.

Let's see what the opinion polls say about that.

Well we don't unless you're comparing it with how much we want Liz Truss back as Prime Minister again, in which case, I mean that's a low bar, but we might take it.

And then she said we want Elon and his nerd army of muskrats examining the British deep state.

Now,

I sincerely wish there was a British deep state, because if there was, something in the country might actually work.

And if there was a deep state, people like Liz Truss would be safely, covertly squirreled away to a well-maintained, humane, secret, government-run safe house to live out their days shouting at trees.

There is no deep state.

I'm the deep state.

The deep state in the UK is me drunk at 3 a.m.

in the queue for a cab wearing half a kebab on my dress.

That is the deep state in the UK.

I will take the public.

We do that London fashion week.

I've spent a bit of time in your pubs, you know, between gigs, and I've noticed a different kind of British deep state.

I've noticed that your British deep state is a retired pensioner named Clive sitting in that pub.

The pub's usually called Cromwell's Head.

Doesn't mean it like that.

And he's reading a book about airplanes in World War I and complaining about cyclists.

This is the deep state I've encountered.

But also, you guys in your country do have one ability for executive orders.

I think they're called knighthoods, and they're mostly given cricketers.

I think the king is allowed to do that.

I don't think he has to go to parliament for that.

It's embarrassing, isn't it?

I mean, I've said this before about Liz Truss, but

she gives the air of an Avon sales lady that you hide from when she knocks on the door.

Do you know what I mean?

Like,

oh, hello, we're selling tea to China and lipstick in Beijing.

You put a string on her back, and she just says, Pork market.

It's um,

that that speech was quite chronic because she was clearly waiting for applause breaks, or she had something in her notes or on the prompter going, applause breaks.

So she said, like, we want a Trump revolution in Britain, and no one really sort of responded.

Then there was like a smattering, and then she didn't know whether to start.

It was like she was a clap-on-clap-off device, like like she was waiting for a clap that wasn't going to come so she could start again.

And absolutely, the embarrassment of like Elon and his nerd army of musk rats.

And I'm like, what?

What we don't, that's basically Britain's already got enough water rats because of the Conservatives allowing sanitation companies to literally dump shit in the waterways.

So we don't, we don't need any more rats, musk, or otherwise.

It's just,

she's so bad at it.

That's my main takeaway from it: is every time she does a speech in America, it comes across as so deeply uncool that you look at it and you go, Do you think, do Americans think that we're all like Liz Truss?

You know,

as she described Joe Biden as a black cloud and then complained about the establishment stooges, just the latest in a line that lasts decades.

You are one of them.

What are you talking about?

Like, the lack of self-awareness is incredible.

She's like a reverse T1000, you know, in Terminator.

There's like zero self-awareness.

I think that's a reverse T1000.

There was a, you know, in one of the speeches, she said that,

you know,

the whole point of crashing the economy and nearly crashing the British pound was an economic experiment not understood in its time.

So maybe in a way, she's like Galileo or Caravaggio and will perhaps be understood in maybe a hundred years that somehow

crashing a currency and entirely ruining its stability in the financial markets is a good thing.

Maybe that is how the world will be in the future.

Well, we will have exclusive coverage on Liz Truss's transformation into the Caravaggio-stroke Galileo of the early 21st century over the next 500 years on this podcast.

Well, the Elon Musk who Liz Truss was so fond of has raised a few hackles in America after sending out

orders to US government departments telling staff to list in five bullet points their accomplishments over the past week or face immediate firing

because that's really the way to get people on side and make the state more efficient.

He said failure to respond by Monday would be interpreted as the employee resigning.

I mean Musk's efforts to fix the US public sector as cures go

along the lines of the Coney Island amusement park's efforts to cure Topsy, their elephant, in 1903.

And if that reference doesn't work for you, and it is something we've mentioned on the buglers before, just carefully type the words electrocuting an elephant into someone else's search bar and you will soon understand.

But five bullet points, Musk did in the circular email,

give an example from

his own week, the five bullet points that he's achieved.

Support the resurgence of the far right across Europe, a place where they should be aware of the dangers of drifting to the far right.

Bullet point two, rehabilitate the Nazi salute.

Bullet point three, make billions of people weep silent tears at the perversion of the free market dream.

Bullet point four, make Tim Berners-Lee regret even paying attention at school, let alone inventing the internet.

And step five, reduce a large proportion of Tesla drivers to gazing wistfully at their space-age futuristic dream cars and thinking, does this make me a

so

that was his example for what you can achieve in a week.

So, I mean, he set the bar pretty high.

He hasn't added the bullet point about the chainsaw.

Wield a chainsaw whilst wearing sunglasses.

Bullet point number six.

Yes.

So in terms of sort of sorting out the public, Musk is not so much throwing out the baby with the bathwater as urinating in the bath water, feeding the baby to a crocodile, and then blowing up the bathroom.

So it's just he's taken it a couple of steps further.

That's a very worrying hotel to be staying at.

That's where that happens.

Listen, I have a confession to make.

I should have said this right at the beginning of the podcast.

I got an email on Friday from the Office of Elon Musk saying, please list your accomplishments to be worthy to be on the Bugle podcast

tonight.

So I made my list and I sent it in.

So here are the things that I did to be worthy.

I have a yoga class, as I mentioned.

I've seen four of the ten Oscar-nominated films.

And

I saw a monkey in a hot air balloon, but I can't go into any more details.

But I sent it in.

I sent it in it was an excel spreadsheet and everything i epilated my legs and at a snickers bar yesterday so i think that can count as like two yeah two of the five yeah we're all high achievers on this show um

musk of course is halfway sort of famously at the halfway point in his journey he's basically one of those word puzzles where you have to change one letter at a time to get from the origin word to the end word and you have to do it in eight steps so he's gone from dick dick tick tuck muck musk that's where he's now husk hunk hunt.

Yeah, he's going to get there.

He's going to get there.

Moving across the tech verse,

if that's a term, to Amazon.

Amazon have bought James Bond, the famously fictitious British spy.

Obviously, Bond, I mean, there's concerns about what this will mean for James Bond, a fundamental part of our national identity here in Britain, in that

he's entirely fictitious, like most most other parts of our national identity.

And there's concerns about what this will mean in terms of the independence of Bond.

And Bond has obviously been as much a commercial franchise as an actual functioning British agent for quite a long time.

Product placement has been rife in the Bond films from cars to watches to deadly attack sofas to exploding toothpaste to branded space stations to special cricket bats that open up to release a swarm of poison tip wasps, that one was never broadcast, to home STD kits, which can be seen in the background of 12 Bond films along with some somewhat optimistic homeopathic groin creams.

So what will Amazon bring to the to the to the fran to the franchise?

I know both of you have in the past auditioned to be the new James Bond without success as of yet.

So what are you hoping to see in the new Amazon Bondic era?

I'm excited for the new storylines now that Amazon are in charge of Bond, like Bond completing a grueling twelve on, four off shift pattern

in an Aston Martin screech around London, throwing deliveries on doorsteps and having a fling with someone called Ivana Send a Package

before saving the dashing a lot of recycling from certain death.

Just give me, just give me the job to write the script.

I'll write the script.

It's almost there.

I mean, look, two things are going to happen, right?

One, I think we all love Bond villains, you know, all the great ones, Dr.

No,

Oric Goldfinger, Ernest Blowfield.

One of the main things I've always loved about bond villains is that most of them have an underground layer, right?

And usually they're sitting there on a throne.

It's underground.

It's somewhere in an ocean, and he's got alligators and stuff like that.

Bollywood, many years ago, did their own version, and they raised the stakes one higher.

Bollywood had a bond villain called Mogambo.

And he had an underground layer.

He had all of the stuff, except he didn't have sharks or crocodiles.

Under his premises was molted lava.

And I think that needs to be brought into the bond films.

I think they'll do a countrywide franchise.

Like I think an Indian bond, you know, it's about time.

You know, I think one of the things that bond films don't think about are cost concerns.

Bond is recklessly spending, you know, martini, shaken, not stirred, is fine, but where is the bond who's asking which one is cheaper?

And to to have a happy hour two for one?

You know, this sort of spending in the 70s and 80s is fine.

I guess in the 60s post-war, Ian Fleming had an unlimited expense account.

But I mean, this is bond in the age of 11% inflation.

There's also rumors.

Well, a couple of things about what Amazon might,

I mean, also, I mean, the idea of what a bond villain is could shift, given that it's now owned by Amazon.

And the boss of Amazon and his friends are essentially classic Bond villains.

So we could see the series shift perceptions of who's on whose side.

But there is rumours that there'll be a crossover with Amazon's sports coverage.

So there'll be half-time analysis in future Bond films.

Well, Gary, we've circled the villain here.

And as you can see, he's had a great chance to finish Bond off, but he's overcomplicated.

He's tried to go in for the perfect sadistic revenge lane.

It took too long and the chance has gone.

Obviously, he's still on top, but you can't help but think he might come to regret that by the end of the film.

So that man that could be something to look forward to.

Also the inescapable sense that everything in the world is for sale.

Like tickets for my remaining tour shows.

Details at my website and isols from co.uk.

You raise a very good point because I think

if bod villains are producing Bond movies, it's about time the villain wins.

Too many times Bond has won.

Yes, and with the world as it is now, I just don't think people will will accept that anymore.

I think they want to see something more realistic where the kids come out on top.

My yoga teacher was always right: stop resisting.

That's all.

That brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

We'll be back next week with, I'm sure, some extremely happy news about the world fixing everything that's been wrong with it.

So, yeah, do tune in for that.

Just some news breaking, reaching us now.

The Snutterbridge Zoo in England claims to have bred the first ever ethical lion.

The morally aware carnivore has been bred and trained to hunt only terminally a wildebeest, racist zebras and tofu-based imitation gazelles.

So exciting breakthrough from

science.

First rule of showbiz, start with bullshit, end with bullshit.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

Details of my remaining tour shows at my website, andydawson.co.uk.

Thanks to everyone who has come to the shows so far.

Anuvab, anything to plug?

I am in the UK in a couple of weeks at the Chiswick Comedy Festival and I will

put up the dates on my social media and I've been away from London for about four or four and a half months so I just want to ask Andy if it's still there.

Well, it was there when I left it the other day.

I'm not saying it was in absolutely tip-top shape.

I've been on the road for a few days.

I saw Hadrian's Wall the other day for the first time, which, again, that needs a lick of paint.

But I think London's still there.

But yeah, do come and find out.

All right.

Tiff, anything to plug?

Yes, I have some tour dates coming up.

I'm in Liverpool on the 5th of March.

I'm in Brighton on the 16th at the Forge.

I'm in Hot Water Comedy Club in Liverpool.

I will be at Soho Theatre

1st and 2nd of April and Glasgow Comedy Festival on the 20th of March.

So check those out.

Those are my ones that are coming up imminently.

Yes.

Don't forget to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme to help keep this show free, flourishing and independent.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

At our website, you will also be able to find details of the London show on Alice Fraser's book tour on the 1st of March.

Do go to that and all the other stuff that all Bugle co-hosts are doing in now and in the future.

Until next week, goodbye.

Hi Buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.