Kiss The Hate Away

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4316 of the world's longest-running weekly covert instruction manual for how to successfully conduct a coup in an unstable 19th-century European monarchy.

It's all there if you listen to the right words in the right order.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann.

It is the 23rd of September 2024 as we record.

And I'm joined by, well, two veterans of the Relaunch Bugle, one who's been here almost since the start.

And firstly, the man who was alongside me in New York when this show relaunched almost eight years ago, just before the 2016 presidential election.

Hari Kondabolu, welcome back.

When you compare now with eight years ago, how's your kind of general sense of balance of optimism and pessimism?

Because I know you're famous on this show for your perennially sunny disposition.

I mean, honestly, has that much changed?

I mean,

I don't know.

It feels like things haven't changed much in the last eight years.

Like, Obama's still president.

We're still laughing at Joe Biden as the vice president.

Like,

it seems like we're still in sunny days.

Well, progress is a curious beast that moves in many directions simultaneously,

seldom forward.

Also, joining us

from

sunny London.

I'm actually up in Durham in the north of England, where it's currently raining a lot, and I'm here to watch cricket tomorrow or just to watch puddles.

But anyway, joining me from London, Alice Fraser.

Oh, Andy, what a pleasure it is to be in London to witness the lurid green of brat summer making way for the more subdued autumnal colours of arsehole fall and the cool darks of self-intellizing winter that at last give way to the bright florals of spring.

What a time to be alive.

Well, I mean it's been insanely wet in London to the extent.

Yeah, it has, I thought

it was pouring through the ceiling of my bedroom at home last night

in, I don't know, some sort of metaphor for the general estate of a planet that even the ceilings are now weeping.

Well, I've made a terrible mistake today, Andy, which is that I came into the studio where we ordinarily record uh the bugle uh when we're in London.

But of course, you are not in London, uh, Laura's Harley, and therefore I would have been much better off being at home.

Where, ironically enough, despite this here being the office of an audio studio, the sound quality is way worse.

Um, but anyway, it brings brings a different texture to the show

The harsh resonance of a meeting is what the Devotez really wanting.

Can I be honest with both of you about something?

And I promise I won't be honest again for the rest of the program.

Oh, good, good.

I think I have a hangover.

Oh, right.

Any particular reason?

Well, last night I had a plantain-infused rum.

And I'd never had plantain-infused rum, but apparently.

I don't think plantain was the issue, Ari.

Oh, you think it was the rum?

Might have been the rum.

And it was a lot stronger than I thought.

And I don't drink very much, if ever, maybe like a few times a year.

And I just happened to have this rum.

And I woke up with a headache.

And I've spent most of the morning trying to figure out why I have a headache.

And I think it's a hangover.

Right.

So

you're both in countries where they drink a lot.

What am I supposed to do at this point?

Well, I mean, I think the traditional British response is to build an entire national culture around drinking alcohol.

So that's an option for you.

You could just declare that.

I think I should turn to alcoholism as the cure for the hangover.

That's basically

the British way.

Alternatively, just watch sport all day.

I mean, I generally find that's a cure for pretty much any ailment, minor or major.

Okay.

Well, look, I think you ought to go with the old classic traditional try regretting every choice you've ever made.

I don't think it's worked, but a lot of people are doing it.

So

get on aboard that.

Doesn't that lead to the drinking as well?

Also, just continue the cycle of abuse.

I don't know about you.

I tend to self-medicate with work, but

the difference in British drinking culture, I think we used to drink to forget the past, and now I think we drink to forget the future.

So I guess that's a progressive sort.

Well, give it a try.

We are recording on the 23rd of September.

Tomorrow, the 24th, will be the ninth time this year that the day, the 24th, has been the same as the last two numbers in the year.

So often away in September.

What a coincidence.

And on the 26th of September, it will be 337 years since the Parthenon, the celebrity temple in Athens, was blew up.

It was bombarded during a siege and had been used as a gunpowder depot by the Ottoman garrison.

And if that doesn't justify us Brits stealing all the statues more than 100 years later and clinging onto them now almost three and a half centuries later, I don't know what does.

Obviously you've had a different attitude, different attitude towards old temples in those days when they used to think, oh, that's a beautiful building that seems quite old.

What should we do with it?

I reckon let's use it as a cupboard, but not just any cupboard, a cupboard full of explosives.

What if it goes bang?

It won't.

Pillars stop things going bang, do they?

Yes, Right.

It's the 17th century.

We just make science up.

Andy, I really blame those early statue fondlers for the Kardashians now.

Yes.

Because if all of that colourful paint hadn't flaked off all those nice Greek statues, people wouldn't think that monochrome was classy.

Right.

That is an angle on classical art that I've not heard before, but I like it.

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

This week, we review the latest seasonal technology, including the new wireless e-pumpkin, the must-have Texas food of this year's Halloween.

Not only provides an automatically adjusting level of scariness depending on the age, stroke, edginess of the person looking at it using face recognition software, but also emits a UV-filtered spook glow that doesn't disrupt your circadian rhythms.

Also, it connects wirelessly with the dead using an occult Wi-Fi crossover technology, so you can have a nice catch-up with a late relative, or even with the premium model, a dead celebrity from the distant past, subject to signal.

Not all dead celebrities like being contacted may result in death.

And also, also on the market this week, the seasonal suit.

Do you want to break free of the seasonal cycles that tell you what the prevailing weather is where you live?

Well, then you have two choices.

One, move somewhere where the weather never changes.

Seize the season bodysuits.

You simply choose your preferred season from classics such as autumn, spring, winter, and of course, summer.

And enjoy the sensation of heat, cold, damp, winds, or sog as the built-in heating and refrigerating elements toast you up or shiver you down, and the unique sleeve jets blast you with hot air, frozen water, and everything in between to recreate the sensation of anything from torrential rain to potentially catastrophic heat wave.

Warning: do not use indirect sunlight or when it's actually raining.

And also, we review the latest de-automizing It's Still Summer virtual reality goggles, which makes it seem like the leaves are still on the trees and that we're not heading towards another few months of bleakness.

That section in the bin.

What an active imagination imagination you have.

I don't know if it's an act of imagination or a fear of reality, Hari.

But you know, potato, potato.

Top story this week.

America goes to the polls.

Well, voting has begun.

In-person voting has begun in some states of the USA.

We are six weeks from Election Day when most people vote.

Six weeks until the world sees the results of the quadrennial endoscopy into American politics is a presidential election.

And frankly, I would not want to be the camera on that endoscope.

Hari,

have you voted yet?

If so, how often and how hard?

Let me first say I appreciate the compliment.

You didn't go with colonoscopy, so I appreciate the endoscopy.

Though you are inaccurate, it is colonoscopy.

No, I have not yet voted.

I'm a purist.

I want to go the day of where I feel the most tension and fear.

That's what voting should be.

A lot of people not into early voting.

Two men separately attempted to end early voting by trying to kill one of the candidates.

So clearly not big voting fans.

I mean, it's being implemented in kind of a strange way.

So far, Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota are

currently have early voting with a few more to come later.

But I think it's great that South Dakota has early voting because you would hate to think all 15 people wouldn't get to vote because of their busy Tuesday schedules

between staring at the various rocks and collecting the various rocks.

I've always thought voting should be online, though.

I get the possible corruption, but it would just at least you'd get more numbers.

We could even use it as a captcha, you know, like you have to vote in order to enter your

most favorite torn site.

I'm sorry, I've never done comedy hungover, and this is very hard.

Never, this is incredibly difficult.

I'm like trying to get words out, and I'm like, How do comedians in the UK do it?

Because they're all hungover.

And I'm like, this is extraordinarily hard.

Like I had written some really funny things and I can't get the words out clearly.

This is horrendous.

This this voting six weeks early Andy, I think it's a terrible thing.

I feel like if you're voting now, you're saying you've already made up your mind, but you're lacking six weeks of potential additional information.

How do you know that something won't happen in the next six weeks that will completely change your mind about who to vote for?

Surely one or the other political candidate could present a policy proposal that would completely upend your previous loose affiliation to a particular party.

Sorry, I'm getting a phone call, Andy.

Please excuse me.

What?

What?

You mean there's been comparatively little discussion of policy overall in favour of mainly ad hominem attacks?

Uh-huh.

The majority of voters in America are fully convinced that no matter what either party says, the ones on the other side truly intend to come steal their rights, push over their grandmothers, and personally throw their children out the second floor window into a ball pit full of scorpions the moment they attain office.

And some of them might be right.

Sorry,

how did you know to call me?

What do you mean you're listening to the bugle?

We're just recording it right now.

It's not even out yet.

No, I know the people who are listening to me now are listening to it when it's out, but I'm recording it in the past.

No, I'm not a time traveler.

I'm not a time traveler.

I'm asking if you're a time traveler.

He's hung up.

Sorry, Andy.

Back to the polls.

Well, if you're gentlemen,

I think Trump has officially announced that he is going to be throwing babies out of windows and porpets full of scorpions.

So, I mean, that's now, I think that is basically an official policy.

But, you know, whatever work.

That's why I think you should be allowed to change your vote up to the last minute.

You can vote early, but all of a sudden, if Trump says something like he knows Harriet Tubman and thinks she did a good job on the subway, or...

you know, there are good people on both sides of a mass shooting, you should have the right to be like, you know, I've always voted red.

This was the fringe one.

I'm going to change it.

Do you think that means why do we have to just do it once?

I think you should be able to change your vote after the results have come out as well.

I think that would help.

Well, then Trump would never have gotten elected is what would have happened the first time.

Trump has said that only he can save America from the threat of democratic rule.

It's not clear if he means from the threat of the Democratic Party or from the threat of a functioning democracy.

He and his acolyte seem pretty skeptical about both and obviously to see them as one and the same.

One of the difficulties Trump has is that he appears to have chosen as his vice president a man who is an unremitting fit in J.D.

Vance.

Alice, I know you've been fascinated by J.D.

Vance and his contribution to global idiocy.

He seems to have an impressive knack of saying and doing the most predictable but still appalling things, a trained instinct honed over years so that it becomes second nature, so he doesn't even have to think about it.

Like watching John McEnroe volleying a tennis ball or Patrick Mahomes inventing some space at quarterback where there seemed to be none.

So too with J.D.

Vance, but he's just saying and doing stupid things instead of playing sport, which is why I find it less engaging.

It's truly impressive.

It's like William McGonagall on poetry.

You know, he's just, you can't believe that he's not doing it this badly on purpose.

Most recently, he kissed his wife in public as a way of sort of trying to erase the fact that he'd said, said

it doesn't matter if you're eating curry at your dinner table or fried chicken, things have gotten more expensive thanks to her policies, which was read as a comment on her mixed ethnicity.

It's so depressing to me that he then goes out and kisses his wife in public because the two options are either that J.D.

Vance is not racist, but he's choosing to say racist and inflammatory things in order to dock whistle a white supremacist voting base, or he is racist and married to a woman from Andhra Pradesh, which means means that he's the kind of racist who likes to bring his racism home so he can be racist in bed at three o'clock in the morning when he wakes up from a nightmare and just have it right to hand.

Or he's so racist that he has specific theories about specific races in a hierarchy that excludes women from Andhra Pradesh but not women whose mothers came from Tamil Nadu, which is such specific racism in all those people circle into not being racist at all.

Have you heard about Mexican John?

He thinks the first season of Shogun was unparalleled watching, but is skeptical about them milking the premise for a second and third season.

Classic Mexican John.

Let me just say, as a person whose heritage is from Andhra Pradesh, I am offended by their union.

Also, just a little context to what JD Vance said.

You know, he made those comments and kissed his wife in response to something that

a Trump supporter,

a public supporter said,

Laura Loomer, she said that the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.

And so, first of all, like, let's focus on the second thing.

What's more American than having a call center set up to save money using foreign labor?

That's not an issue.

Secondly, the thing about if the White House is going to smell like curry, you know, you're welcome.

Like, when you've never eaten Indian food, what is the problem here?

That you're going to salivate all the time.

The insult will smell like curry and White House speeches.

The smells like curry part,

where did that insult come from?

My fourth grade bullies, like that is such an old, out-of-date insult.

To the point where Marjorie Taylor Greene said it was racist.

And I've never seen her as a supporter of civil rights.

But on the Indian smell-like curry curry issue, she has taken a stance.

And so, J.D.

Vance's response, you know, about making a mean like chicken curry and about dietary preferences, that was him

being a little coward, right?

Because he's in this situation where like he should say something because of his wife and kids.

And at the same thing, he doesn't want to piss off the racist constituency in his party, which is apparently quite high.

So he doesn't actually say it's an awful thing initially.

He goes and meets the press and tries to avoid it.

I mean, the thing, you have brown kids, you idiot.

Like,

what are you going to tell your kids?

Daddy doesn't believe in that mean comment, but men of character have to be willing to sacrifice their brown family for the greater good of the ignorant masses.

Once I get power, I promise to let you visit mommy in the detention center.

Like,

absolutely.

And what they didn't catch in the articles is that after he kissed his wife in public, this was caught on the side, he did for breeze his suit

and whisper the words, ooh, gross.

So

just keep that in mind.

Right.

That's the kind of investigative journalism that we pay Harikonda Boda the big bucks for.

Here are people.

I've got to say, I have been enjoying the showdown between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Luma.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who sort of reminds you of maybe a gym teacher who's still on a supplement that got discontinued about 12 months ago, but she hasn't heard about it.

And Laura Luma, who looks like she's got illegal injectables

from the man who invented mad cow disease.

The man

is that a thing?

There was a man who invented mad cow disease.

Yeah, oh, yeah.

He was the original mad scientist.

He invented mad everything.

He invented crazy bargains, mad cow disease.

And this might be slightly more damaging for Trump, although it's very hard to know what could possibly damage Trump.

I mean, can

you further

damage a completely, yeah, if you have a priceless Ming vase

and you then smash it to pieces with a sledgehammer repeatedly every day for a year can you further damage that vase I'm not I'm not sure that's I'm not sure that's possible

but

more than a hundred former Republican officials have endorsed the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and called Trump unfit to serve as president.

And as Oscar Wilde famously said, when one person from the party you pretend to represent publicly endorses a candidate from your only political opposition, that might be considered unfortunate.

When two do it, it looks like carelessness.

When more than a hundred senior members of the party do it, it looks like the opposite of carelessness.

It looks like you have been conducting a campaign of deliberately calculated.

The

officials who signed it include national security and foreign policy

bigwigs who've served under every Republican president since the 1980s.

They've served in various departments, Defense, Treasury,

the State Department, Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce.

They've served in Congress.

They've served in the White House.

Former defense secretaries, former CIA directors, state governors.

Uncle Sam signed it, the hat-wearing personification of America itself, the fictional comic book superhero Captain America, and the ghosts of several former Republican presidents, including Dwight D.

Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt, who took some time out from his attempt to wipe out all wildlife in the Elysian fields.

So when that many Republicans have turned against Trump, is it, I mean, I don't know, you know, if you are a traditional Republican, it must be a really baffling time to see the shattered remnants of the party that you've probably supported all your life.

When George W.

Bush is considered the golden age, yeah, probably not, yeah,

not the best time.

He said that Oprah endorsing Harris was not the real Oprah or not the Oprah that he knew, which which I feel like we should address that more clearly.

Just because it's kind of a wild statement to make.

Presumably, he feels some sense of sort of

reality television show host Solidarity has been betrayed.

But to say that it's not the real Oprah or not the Oprah he knows, first of all, nobody knows the real Oprah.

Not even Oprah.

The whole show, the whole Oprah show is about Oprah being on a constant journey of self-discovery and affirmation and the illusion of constant progress towards self-acceptance is undermined by the fact that the show keeps happening.

It means that she's failed, constantly, means that she's failed to reach sufficient equanimity and equilibrium because the prospect of another couple of billion dollars still feels like it might fill the void within, despite the fact that it has signally failed so far to do so.

So, to say that anyone could ever know the real Oprah is sort of hubris beyond imagining.

I mean, it is possible, of course, that

Trump is right and that it isn't the real Oprah, and the real Oprah has been kidnapped by Haitian immigrants who've set her to work in forced labor in a cat farm and replaced her with a

bogus Oprah to try and skew the election.

That's, you know, I mean, that wouldn't be the most ludicrous conspiracy theory we've heard from American politics recently.

So I, for one, I'm happy to buy it.

Though that is something I will post on QNON later.

That is ripe.

This letter from the

100-plus

Republicans said this.

We believe that the president of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader.

And to be honest, I think one out of three would be okay.

It's the fact that it's zero out of three that is,

I think, a problem.

Just one of those three.

Let's not reach for the stars when we just want to get down

a tin of beans from the shelf.

Let's be let's say achievable goals.

He hasn't lost all Republican support.

No.

He still has the support of the governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson.

The only problem is that it was revealed that he allegedly once called himself a black Nazi and proposed bringing back slavery in comments posted on a pornographic website.

So, you know, he has that guy.

And honestly, I think, first of all, he calls himself a black Nazi, but he's also denied the Holocaust in the past.

So isn't he just being honest?

But I feel like that's

you rarely get honest politicians.

Also,

who doesn't regret writing things on porn sites they wish they could take back later?

You don't think I wish someone

would have stopped me from writing that I wish someone would make a porn video of Nehru having sex with Edwina Mountbatten while Lord Mountbatten watched?

You don't think I

believe that should be funded?

That I should be directing it?

I'm sort of amused by the internet sleuthery that led to the discovery of this.

Who is

reading

all the comments left on pornographic websites and going, aha, political activism?

Yeah, that is a little.

Well, of course, a lot of people do visit pornographic websites,

not for

the pictures and the videos, but for the articles, the couple of the comments underneath.

It's always been that way.

This letter, just going back to the letter from the

100 plus Republicans,

we firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump, the letter says.

As president, he promoted daily chaos in government.

Now I'm going to just pick up on a few things in this letter that I think they're being a bit harsh on Trump for.

I mean, because surely daily chaos is better than random fortnightly or monthly bits of chaos, because at least you can plan around it when you know every day it's, you know, it's the kind of constancy you want in politics.

They complain that Trump praised our enemies and undermined our allies.

I just see this as reverse psychology.

It's like dog training.

You know, dogs are evolutionarily our rivals, but we praise them when we get them and they become our friends.

So maybe that's just for too long in human history.

We've been showing appreciation and support for our allies and hostility towards our enemies.

And has that really done the world any good?

Maybe Trump is a visionary.

They also complain that he prioritized his personal interest above America's interests.

Now, Hari, is that not the most American thing any American can do?

Yeah, of course.

Absolutely.

Like,

the selfishness, the single-mindedness to your own cause.

Yeah, absolutely.

Liz Cheney said that a new political party may be needed due to war.

Can you refer to her as Nepo baby Liz Cheney?

She'd appreciate being called a baby because she's not young.

But I'm not sure.

The idea of their new political party, I'm all in favor of new political parties, but essentially America already has a new political party because the Trump Publicans are essentially a new party, are they not?

A virally mutated perversion of an already questionable entity.

So do we actually need another new one?

What if it's worse?

Do you think the Whigs are coming back?

It's time.

You know, the 90s are in.

Do they mean the 1790s?

What are we talking about right now?

Well, the 1790s is pretty much when it started going wrong for you guys.

Started getting really wrong.

Yeah.

1780s weren't too good.

All right.

You tried it in 1812.

Didn't work out, did it?

Tried to make a comeback.

Never say never.

So, I mean, Trump is on record of supporting the North Carolina governor.

Like, he has literally said

he is Martin Luther King on steroids.

Now, first of all, Martin Luther King,

Martin Luther King on steroids, some would argue that was Malcolm X.

Secondly, are you saying that Martin Luther King could hit 50 home runs?

Because

even with steroids, I don't know if he could, to be perfectly honest.

I'm not sure if he was really a baseball guy.

He had an eye for it.

Yeah, for our younger listeners, Malcolm X used to be known as Malcolm Twitter.

Show cancelled.

Boo!

Oh, man.

You know, I mention you on stage sometimes, Andy.

Did you know that?

No,

I'll be on stage, and a pun will come out of my mouth, right?

And I will say and Andy Zaltzman.

Right.

And the two bugle listeners that are at the show

laugh hysterically.

Well, you know, if you get two, two people laughing at a show,

that's basically 66% of the audience I've found.

Nice.

UK news now.

And well, the Labour government entering its party conference, the first party conference since it won the election at the start of July, has found itself somehow mired in controversy after

a relatively short period in office in which it hasn't done very much yet.

And all the attention is on,

well, sleaze.

I don't know if it's corruption, but basically taking free gifts from party donors, having spent a lot of time when they were the opposition complaining about sleaz in government.

Now, this is not to say that Keir Stahmer and accepting free clothes for his wife is on a level with multi-multi-million pound dodgy COVID contracts.

But when you have spent so much of your time complaining about the previous government behaving in that way, you really ought to avoid doing things like accepting free clothes, accepting free tickets to Arsenal vs.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, to a Taylor Swift concert, to an illegal unlicensed bare-knuckle fight between Rishi Schunak and Boris Johnson.

It was difficult to be fair.

On the black market, those tickets were going for hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Or even for Miffy Unleashed, the no-holds, barred, outright, trash-talking, conspiracy-addled live show by the popular fictional rabbit, finally telling you that she really sees it.

But

and also, I'm not going to say how our free clothes and football ticket scandal here in the UK compares to what other politicians in other countries get up to.

Maybe it's just a sign that we're losing our edge as a nation that this is the kind of controversy that could rock a government.

It's that old saying, you know, people in taxpayer-funded glass houses shouldn't throw

the sponsorship donor gifted stones, right?

I believe that is how the saying goes.

Yeah, I don't understand what the big issue is.

In America, we have Supreme Court justices that accept rides and private planes by right-wing lunatics, and things here are working out great.

Some have suggested that such donations should be banned.

Starmer said that he will continue accepting some donors' gifts, although not clothes, apparently.

But of course, there is quite an easy option if you're a politician.

And i'm not for a moment bugler saying that you necessarily are um even if you've been elected somewhere quite quite often you're still not a politician but there is an option which avoids the need for you know redrafting guidelines legislation even or for for the kind of scrutiny monitoring and other forms of costly surveillance people have been talking about to keep an eye on these things and that is that option is for you yourself to ban yourself from receiving free gifts given to you yourself and that option might be particularly attractive if to pluck a random example out of the ether you're a newly installed prime minister wanting to mark clear water between your regime and the previous regime, which used to claim was rotten to its core because of all the dodgy gifts from unaccountable donors.

So

I guess that option is one that Labour hasn't yet taken, and hopefully it will soon start to take.

There was one figure in there that the fact it was seen as a problem upset me.

Apparently, he was given multiple pairs of glasses equivalent to £2,485.

And this was seen as a problem.

As somebody who wears glasses, and I know, Alice, Andy, you will understand this.

The fact that we need to wear

this machine on our faces because of our defective eyesight means we should be allowed to spend as much and be given as much aid as possible to maintain some level of dignity.

We look ridiculous.

This is what a human being looks like.

Glasses removed, glasses put back on.

This is absurd.

What are we wearing on our faces right now?

This is not what

we're supposed to not be able to see, and we should be eaten early in our childhoods because of our inability to see what's in front of us.

And we have to wear these freak things.

So if he has $3,000, no, sorry, sorry, it was 2,485 pounds, which I believe based on current see now is about 25 American dollars.

He should have the right to take every one of those glasses to give himself the confidence he needs to be prime minister.

Well, I think also you've come up with a good justification for it because there have been some slightly odd justifications, such as the corporate hospitality at football matches, him saying that because

it's not possible for him with the security detail he has to

sit amongst normal fans.

Although I think Rishi Sunak did sit amongst normal fans when he was Prime Minister,

I think he's a Southampton fan.

Rishi Sunak and Starman is an Arsenal fan.

I don't know if that makes it different, that slight difference in level of club supporting.

But that excuse you've said that he needs very expensive glasses, otherwise he will be eaten by a predator.

I think that that is one of the best justifications for it.

I think anyone's going to be angry.

Avoiding predators is why I wear glasses too, because they say predators don't make passes at girls who wear glasses.

And as a woman in the colours industry,

this is my defensive colouration.

That was a fair knocking poem, I think, was it?

I'm laughing, but I feel very sad that you said that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

That's my wheelhouse when it comes to comedy, laughing but feeling very sad.

That's my MO.

But I feel like I would love to be able to condemn Kia Starma, but as

a parent with two very small children, I'm currently part of the black market sub-economy that is children's clothing being passed from people who have children who are slightly too big to the people who have children who are getting slightly bigger.

And so I'm living almost entirely.

I think I bought two items of clothing between my two children.

And given the way the children's clothing prices are going, I probably saved about $20 million.

Well, as long as you declare it all, Alice, because the bugle must be

white of the white on these things.

Do not come into equity with unclean hands.

I mean, there's a positive side to this: that

we don't know the extent to which

influence is acquired by such donations, although it would be

unlikely that no influence at all would be acquired.

But it does open up politics to people who wouldn't otherwise get into it because a lot of people feel underrepresented in politics.

But then, you know, trying to actually affect change feels a bit distant.

But this way, you don't need to protest, campaign, fundraise, go through the tedious administrative process of of standing in elections and getting elected.

You can just bung a politician a funky jacket and some novelty socks and a cheeky little bit of corporate hospitality at the British Moral Equivocation Championships, and you may well find that your concerns are rather more rapidly addressed.

There's been criticism from across the political spectrum on this matter.

Of course, the Conservatives have long since chainsawed any legs off that they might have had to stand on.

But there's been criticism from within Labour.

as well.

And I guess another counter-argument would be to say that we live in a free market consumer economy.

And if, legally, you're allowed to buy, for example, a chicken nugget or a powdered bench, just add water for a nice sit-down, or a commemorative figurine of a naked Jon Stuart Mill getting his utilitarian free con, no judgment, or an illegally realistic Grim Reaper outfit complete with a wireless 3D, 5G-enabled safe scythe, or the solar football, or a mullet, or a knighthood, or a seat in the House of Lords, should you not logically also be able to buy some natty clothes for your favourite politicians and their spouses in exchange simply for the warm glow of natty beneficence and possibly, but not necessarily, but also assumedly behind the scenes influence with high-level politicians and a receipt so he can claim it on expenses.

This is what we fought the Cold War for.

And also, another thing to factor in, Starmer won the election in July.

And obviously, before the election, he and his wife Victoria, you just see him in ripped jeans, worn out, tie-dyed t-shirts, you know, socks with holes in, and someone else's discarded slippers.

They were a fing mess.

So, you know, they obviously, when you're prime minister, you have to achieve a certain level.

I mean, he'd been a

high-ranking lawyer, then a politician, and didn't even own a tie,

never bought an item of clothes.

He needed to achieve a certain level of smartness.

And by smartness, I, of course, mean a currently accepted norm of smartness, because otherwise you end up with your national leader turning up to a G8 meeting in a toga, a stovepipe hat, and a distractingly prominent country saying, what are you looking at?

Style is style.

What's that term that you...

What's that phrase you used earlier?

Natty beneficent?

What did you say?

Natty beneficence.

Yeah, Tiki's just joined the Mets.

I was about to say that.

That would be my rap name if I could say it.

I would absolutely go with that.

And finally, national emergency news now.

Sorry to bring more doom into this doom-laden world.

A national emergency has been announced in the United Kingdom.

Due to the declining number of butterflies, which have fallen to their lowest ever level or lowest recorded level, the annual big butterfly count recorded its lowest numbers in its 14-year history of counting butterflies.

Now, 14 years might not seem that long to us, especially if you've been listening to me blathering on on this show for 17 years, but that's about 500 lifetimes for a butterfly.

So that's quite a lot.

That's quite a long time.

And it's, I mean, it's very worrying, Alice.

I know you're a huge fan of the butterfly as a

metaphorical creature.

Yes, I just enjoy anything that doesn't have an asshole.

Right.

Or an opinion.

I think we're missing the

subtext of this story because nobody gives a shit about moths, really.

We're talking about butterflies.

We don't give it there is a prejudice here because they're not as pretty as the butterfly.

That's what's, I don't know a thing about moths, what's happening in their lives.

Are they dying out?

Don't worry about it.

They're unattractive.

Oh, don't worry.

Don't worry that Hurry died.

He was just a Kirkland signature Hassan Minaj anyway.

That's what this is.

It's pretty privilege.

Right.

I mean, I think people's issue with moths is less that they're not pretty and more that they'll like fuck themselves at a light that you're standing next to and like explode into dust in your face in a quite disconcerting manner.

Everybody has their thing.

That's their thing.

We are open-minded on this show.

To give further context to the low numbers of butterflies, there are now thought to be fewer butterflies in the UK than there are social media influencers or former education secretaries or correctly placed apostrophes.

I even chucked an unneeded apostrophe into the word apostrophe's there.

You probably didn't hear it because it's there in my script.

I actually spelt here wrong as well.

But again, that's not something I needed to tell you, isn't it?

Now the apostrophe and isn't it was correct, although the words isn't it were not appropriate at the end of that sentence.

What were we talking about?

Butterflies.

Sorry.

Sorry, it should have been I-E-S at the end of butterflies, not Y-S.

Does this matter?

I'm reckoning making a real mess of this.

Anyway, the butterfly conservation organization is calling on the government to ban pesticides, which is all very well if you want the universe to be overrun by hideous, squiggly little shitheads that make up the majority of the insect community.

But butterflies are very popular, due, as you were talking about, to their brightly coloured kit, although traditionists preferred it when they all wore white wings before they started becoming more colourful in the late 1970s in order to appeal to a restless Australian TV audience.

Was that butterflies or cricket kids?

Cricket, crickets, I forget.

Anyway,

on the plus side, the falling butterfly population means that fewer beautiful butterflies are being brutally slain and eaten by birds, spiders, wasps, and other predators than was previously happening, which is great news if you are as scarred by the sequel to The Very Hungry Caterpillar as I was.

So,

geez, it was the terror in the eyes that I can't get out of my head.

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's Bugle.

We do hope you've enjoyed it.

Apologies for Alice's

less than traditionally excellent audio quality, made up, as always, by the outstanding quality of the words.

Do you have anything to plug?

Yes,

I have to plug in my microphone back at home, which is half an hour away from me.

No, I would like to plug the Gargle, which is the sister podcast at Bugle.

It's all of the news and none of the politics.

If you like this,

like the glossy magazine, a Bugle's audio newspaper.

I've also got a book coming out on unbound.com.

It's called Passion for Passion, and it will be out on the 6th of February.

So I'll be doing some sort of launch party probably in London around then.

So just block out that area of your year

and come along.

Otherwise, patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

If you're in Tokyo on the 12th of October, I'm running a workshop.

So head over to patreon.com slash AliceFraser and you can sign up for a workshop in Tokyo.

All right.

Well, I'm going on tour this fall because I have a small child.

It's not that I'm trying to avoid the child.

I just need to feed him.

But I'll be in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase from October 3rd through the 5th.

Athens, Georgia at the legendary 40 watt on August 16th, sorry, October 16th, the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta, October 17th through the 19th, Savannah, Georgia, October 20th, Sunnyvale, California, near San Jose, November 1st through the 3rd.

And then after that, it's Bugle Stronghold, Greensboro, North Carolina.

Bugle Stronghold, Charleston, South Carolina.

Bugle Stronghold, Richmond, Virginia.

Bugle Stronghold, Wilmington, North Carolina.

Bugle Stronghold, Greenville, South Carolina.

Bugle Stronghold, Fort Worth, Texas.

and of course the strongest of Bugle Strongholds, Kansas City, Missouri.

All coming up.

My tour begins on the 1st of November.

Details at andysolsome.co.uk.

I'm doing a few work-in-progress shows over the next week or so, including on the 2nd of October, Wednesday the 2nd,

at the Laugh Train Home Comedy Club in Battersea, where Alice will also be appearing.

So that will be a Bugle Spectacular Come along to that and then the tour from the 1st of November come along to all of those shows.

We will be back next week with Anivabh Pal and Tiffany Stevenson before I head off to Pakistan to spend three weeks in the comforting arms of Test Match Cricket.

Thank you for listening.

Don't forget, if you want 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.

And as a subscriber, you will receive universe exclusive access to the monthly Ask Andy show, where I answer all of your questions apart from the ones I don't want to answer.

And another Ask Andy will be coming to you in the next week or so.

Until next week, goodbye.

Bye.

Bye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very 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.