2024 so far. Perfectly normal.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to another bonus bugle issue 4312 sub-episode B for back in a few weeks but currently still on our break.

I am Andy Zoltzmann.

As we speak I am communing with Cantabrian cheeses I can barely pronounce and of course spending most of my time looking forward to seeing you all in person during my imminent stand-up tour beginning in November running through to 2025.

Details at andysaltzman.co.uk Whilst you're feverishly booking your tickets to see the Zoltgeist, let's take this moment to look back on what has been quite an eventful 2024 so far.

A year that still has a pretty good shout at being one of the best four years of the decade so far.

And what a close-fought competition that is proving to be, like an Olympic gymnastics final.

Might all come down to whether it can nail the dismount.

We are going to do this chronologically.

So here is...

Hang on, let me just check my calendar.

January.

January 2024.

Top story this week, 2024 has begun.

Yes, as I said, another new year.

And it's set to be a year of contests, conflicts, frankly harrowing matchups, and the kind of head-to-head encounters that make you feel like head-butting yourself in despair at what we're doing to ourselves as a species.

And this week on the Bugle, we look at some of the defining contests that are going to shape this year of contests and uh well let's start with the defining contest that looks set to be the most defining and contested defining contest of the year and that is Donald Trump against American democracy.

Are you both excited at the prospect of

well what 10 months now of pure, unadulterated,

inescapable Trumpian horror?

I mean, Andy, this is wild.

This is the Supreme Court has said that they're going to take up the appeal that Mr.

Trump has made against the Colorado Court that said he couldn't be on the ballot in Colorado.

The Supreme Court has said they'll hear it.

Look,

the argument against taking Trump off the ballot is that to take him off the ballot will cause widespread chaos.

But I feel like they've missed the point at which leaving him on the ballot will cause widespread chaos.

It's extraordinary.

I think this is like the most interesting thing about this story for me, Andy, is that this is a court now, the Supreme Court that is so politicised that no matter what they decide, a significant proportion of the population will refuse to accept the ruling.

It's like at a wedding if the priest goes, I now declare you man and wife, and the groom's half of the room goes, yeah, right.

In this analogy, January 6th is the part where the priest goes, speak now or forever hold your peace, and then a social media paleo influencer in a buffalo hat charges the crush.

So, yeah, I mean, it is, I mean, this idea that Trump can't be taken off the ballot because it would cause widespread chaos.

I mean, it does show that irony is still one of our most implacable foes as a species.

Basically, what this is saying is that we can't take that shark out of the swimming pool because doing so might cause some people sunbathing around the pool to get splashed a bit.

I don't care if it's kids' compulsory swimming hour now or not.

Rules are rules.

So

it's

also, as you said, the also, as you said, it's the Supreme Court that is going to make this ruling, following on from the ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court and other Supreme Courts late last year,

which disqualified Trump from the ballot for being an insurrectionist.

And the Supreme Court ruling will apply nationwide.

So Trump's presence on the ballot paper is up to the Supreme Court.

And of course, the people in the Supreme Court were up to Donald Trump, aka the defendant, whilst he was president, because, well, America is a f ⁇ ing idiot, essentially.

So that's the situation that we're in.

Anuvab, I mean, how much coverage does, I think, I mean, increasingly here in Britain, certainly, we're obsessed with American politics.

Does it get the same level of coverage in the Indian news media?

It does.

And I think one of the things that resonates very well with India is that were he to be elected president and then be convicted, he could run the country from jail.

And that we can really identify with because some ministers have had to face that situation.

There was even some Indian leading corporate figures who were imprisoned for financial fraud, who sold hotels in New York City, sitting in the main jail in Delhi.

So the fact that he can be a functioning president finally means that the American democracy is catching up with the more mature democracy, which is India,

and letting things be fluid.

And also,

times like this, you know, when there is uncertain democracy, is when I usually turn to Napoleon.

I often turn to Napoleon,

but this in particular, because Napoleon did this the right way.

He was, but there was a council that was going to run France, and it had to have five people on it.

There's a lot of debate on who should be on the council.

Napoleon wanted to be the head of the council, so he had the vote at gunpoint.

So, you know, those things really help you know they they really help the situation so i think like you said to have some supreme court judges that you've appointed you know it's i mean i'm all for for a fair fight but it's it's a bit of a help yeah i mean this whole election campaign of you know trump versus american democracy it's essentially a major sub-conflict in the ongoing um bout between america and its most lasting hate hated and remorseless opponent um the usa and trump obviously the bloviating f pigs bloviating f pig, the grand wizard of groundless whinging, the undisputed archduke of arse holitude and dick waddery, the foremost living example of the disappointingly tenacious mammalian species which goes by the Latin name Cancerous cantankerous, by this time next year could be set to move into either the White House or, as you said, Anavab, a maximum security penitentiary, or both, or a specially configured maximum security White House that can double up as both.

And now here are some bugle highlights from February.

What we've had has been reports that Trump supporters have apparently pledged that they will wage, quotes, holy war against Taylor Swift, the multi-award-winning singer and Kansas City Chiefs head coach.

There appears to be an assumption that there is a conspiracy involving Swift

to basically

steal yet another election from Trump.

Nish, I know you're a died-in-the-wolf swifty.

I'm one of the great Swifties.

I've got my eras tour back tattoo, locked and loaded for when she gets here next year.

I am.

Gets here to the shed.

It is interesting, she's playing stadiums across the country, but she is playing the shed as a warm-up gig.

Little acoustic.

Just Andy and Taylor Swift.

Yeah, I said she could look at my

collection of signed cricket bats.

Well, we know she likes sports.

She likes sports.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so she's dating.

Now, how do you pronounce this man's surname?

Is it Kelsey?

Travis Kelsey.

Travis Kelsey, right.

So she's now being accused.

It's Trey Vice Kelsey.

She's dating Trey Vice Kelsey.

So she is now being accused by prominent Trump supporting Republicans of being an op or a psy-op engineered by the deep state in order to benefit Joe Biden.

I'm reading these words from the New York Times.

Okay, so she is in a relationship with Travis Kelsey and he plays for the Kansas City Chiefs.

He's the star tight end, which is amazingly a position

in American football and also pornography.

And

so

this right-wing conspiracy that the Kansas City Chiefs have been given a free pass to the Super Bowl so that Taylor Swift can be pictured in the stands at the Super Bowl and because of that people will vote for Joe Biden.

Am I summarizing that correctly?

No, that is the absolutely correct summary.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you what, I think we can all agree.

If there's one organisation that is going to favour progressive politics, it is the National Football League.

It is the organisation that punished Colin Kaepernick, not for protesting the national anthem, but for not protesting it hard enough.

They wanted Kaepernick down on both knees.

The the fact that he was taking one knee was not uh not enough for them and it's an organization that has hosted such progressive franchises as the new england clan robes and the minnesota white men of the best

um reince prebus um again i'm have i've pronounced that right sound right

former republican national committee chair if indeed he exists reince priebus is a legal tenet

for you being arrested for

he

He said that he thinks the Republicans are pursuing a questionable strategy by attacking Taylor Swift and the NFL.

And he was the one that said that it is a powder cake of stupidity.

He said, I think we ought to have a few things in America that we can agree on, and those are two things.

So, I mean, is that,

I mean, is that, for a start, are those the only two things America can hope to agree on?

And even if that is the case, should Taylor Swift be I mean, should America have to be of one mind about the multi-Grammy award hoarding pop through the door?

Hoarding!

Our dissenting views on the Pennsylvania-born Shake It Off star are no longer acceptable in the so-called land of the free.

Listen, I've got to put my hands up here to say that I am not completely impartial on the whole Trump versus Swift thing.

On the one hand, I increasingly feel there's something a little bit off about Trump.

And on the other, I absolutely, I genuinely love Swift.

I love Shake It Off.

I'm a huge fan of Lover.

That's a great album.

I adored Gulliver's Travels.

Lemuel Gulliver.

There aren't enough people called Lemuel these days.

There should be more Lemules.

There must be some in the NFL.

They've got...

Yeah, for sure.

Well, there are fewer than you think, because the difficulty is the minute you've managed to get to assemble a decent number of lemules, they all panic and run off a cliff.

Anyway,

Travis Kelsey is, as Nish says, the tight end.

The tight end.

For the Kansas City Chiefs.

I do love that that is a position.

I've seen that guy in his game day leggings, and let me tell you, it is not a misnomer.

Other positions in American football include wide on low sack and deep back hole presumably anyway but look it strikes me that uh conspiracy theories um are just the standard is dropping back in the day it was the illuminati and global elites people were convinced that the moon landings were faked but the nfl are throwing games to get biden elected just feels a bit lowbrow you know only a couple of notches above greg wallace is using tick tock to try and shift the odds on who's going home this week on dancing on ice so in an attempt to rectify this situation and with one eye on merch opportunities, I've constructed a random conspiracy theory generator

so that would-be conspiracists and lonely men sitting in their basements on jizz-encrusted cushions can once again get behind some proper gold-plated batch shittery.

So it's quite a simple system.

You spin each of these three wheels once.

The first determines what is being affected, the second determines how it is being affected, and the third determines who is doing the affecting.

So let's have a go.

All right, so spin the first wheel.

Unidentified flying objects.

Spin the second

are being chemically castrated by, spin the third,

the Jews.

Let's have another go.

Spin one.

White history.

Spin two

was constructed in a lab by, and number three,

the Jews

let's go spin one

JFK classic two

is spread in chemtrails by three

The Jews.

It is always the Jews in conspiracy theories.

They're basically like creative writing projects by anti-Semites.

The third wheel in this system is just a disc with the Jews written all around it it's like the dartboard at Jeremy Corbyn's house

you can buy that from the bugle shop

moving on now to March Google has launched a five million dollar prize fund for people to find

things that quantum computers can actually do

because I mean to be honest I don't understand whenever the word I think the word quantum just gets thrown around to stop people asking questions because as soon as someone says quantum you think oh this is way beyond my level of human comprehension you know that's why you know the James Bond film quantum of solace I just I couldn't I couldn't watch it I thought no

I can't but but so so but luckily we have we have two trained quantum physicists

with us today.

So they're trying to find ways to actually use these incredible computers that are almost so powerful that they have no application in the known universe.

So how is Google intending to do this, Josh?

So I think this is actually a huge thing to do, right?

I think Google should have someone in charge of whenever they spend billions of dollars making a new kind of computer, just tapping a lead engineer and going, hey, why the fuck did you do that?

I think it's important.

It is.

But this is the thing.

They've launched a $5 million prize to find actual uses for these computers they've built.

That's not a contest.

That's a job.

Give people money to do science for you, Google.

You have all the money and that's what it's for.

Why are they treating quantum physics like a fing scratch-off lottery ticket?

Do they think the world is just full of unemployed quantum scientists sitting around entering contests all day?

No.

I assume they're out there doing calculations on a dry erase board or listening to the bugle and then writing me angry emails about how I misunderstand and mischaracterize their jobs.

Just

pay people to do things.

That's what I do when I need something done.

I don't offer a $50 prize for anyone who can figure out how to get me to the airport for a gig.

I call a fing cab.

Alice,

are you going to enter this competition?

I absolutely will.

Even though the prize doesn't cover one of the most interesting parts of the problem, which is, as Bill Pfefferman at the University of Chicago says,

they need to figure out algorithms that require a better understanding of how the computer works, such as how to deal with noise and errors.

So basically, they've got computers that don't work very well and they're not sure what they're meant to do,

which I think is like the perfect kind of computer.

On the bright side, it being quantum, there is an alternate universe in which these computers have a purpose and work really well.

So that's something.

Can any of you explain what quantum computers do here in Cambridge?

No, correct.

There we go.

I just want to hop in.

But to be fair, someone who doesn't know what quantum computers would do would say they don't know what quantum computers can do, and somebody who does know what quantum computers do also knows that they don't know what quantum computers do.

Andy, I love

the crowd interactions you're having at this show.

You've asked, does anyone know what quantum computers do?

You've asked, does anyone have faith in democracy?

And you've asked, does anyone like bees?

Most comedy shows, I don't know if this audience knows this, the comedian just looks at the two people in the front row and goes, are you two?

And now, as sure as regret follows kebab, April follows March.

Top story this week, Donald Trump is on trial.

Well, just a quick quick uh refresher for those of you who've forgotten how this story all started well as I said in the 1770s America for some reason thought it could be trusted with itself one thing led to another and it ended up voting in a self-proclaimed sex pest as president and hence we are where we are Hari I mean you are right there as our official Donald Trump's legal affairs correspondent in in New York

just I mean

The city must have been, yeah, has it been played on big screens in Times Square?

There's sort of huge parties where everyone's gathering to watch the death of American hope and democracy.

Andy, can we start with something lighter like Iran and Israel?

Because with Iran and Israel, there's hope there.

Oh, right.

Really?

That there is an yeah, because with the end, the pain will stop.

Okay, good.

So

I see hope in that.

No, no, we're not watching this on a big screen.

I don't think you understand this, Endy.

We're all trying to forget, right?

Okay, he's from here.

Yes.

We did this.

Every time we see him, it's a reminder of we could have stopped this a long time ago.

And we just let, this is a fun sideshow.

And we just kept doing it over.

Let's watch where this goes.

Married again, had an affair.

Oh, another lawsuit.

He's bankrupt.

Has a TV show.

Oh, this is entertaining.

We caused this.

We don't like thinking about it.

So far, we've had the selection of the jury, which is a rather complicated process, our hair, in which they have to find 12 people who don't have an opinion on Donald Trump.

Now, I mean, I think you could scour the entire universe, and the best you could possibly hope for is 12 recently slaughtered goldfish would be the closest you can get to this.

Yeah, I was just like, do you have to sort of, if you're trying to construct a jury, do you just have to hope that there's been a really fortunate like timing with a full ward of coma patients who've all

sort of went down and came up at exactly the same time?

And that's because it does strike me as one of those things where not

having any sort of opinion is in and of itself sort of like it's not a neutral thing to be entirely unaware of what's going on.

And to be fair, I do really like admire the people who were able to, because like half the people straight away like stuck their hands up, well, there is absolutely zero way I'm going to be able to be impartial about this.

And they're like, fair enough,

right?

Because let's be honest, being on that jury would be exciting, but equally, probably lead to you getting loads of death threats.

So that would be less fun.

I mean, the troubling thing about everyone leaving, you know, like having an opinion and then being dismissed, is that I'm sure almost all of them are liberal, right?

Because liberals emote.

When they talk about them, they get angry.

They don't play it close close to the vest.

Conservatives play it close to the vest, right?

Like conservatives in New York City, particularly, they keep it close.

Like, I had no idea anyone I knew voted for Trump until after he won the election, and all of a sudden, their social media is suspiciously quiet, right?

And at that point, you're like, gotcha.

You know what I mean?

And that's how he'll get acquitted because they keep it close to the vest.

They shut up.

They don't let people see, oh, I hate Trump.

No, they shut up, they vote for him, and he wins.

But so in that case, do you regret having spoken about him previously, sort of on stage, on podcasts, on social media, and everything?

Because you could have been in that jury otherwise.

Oh, no, because look at where it's taken me.

Look at where talking about him has taken me.

You know, the jury, there's...

First of all, the fact they found 12 is shocking to me and makes me suspect some things.

And here's here's just a review of one of the jurors because they listed some of the characteristics of some of the jurors.

One juror watches MSNBC and Fox News and has no opinion of Donald Trump.

So clearly, this is a bot.

They are putting bots on the jury.

Like, this is where it's come to.

Another one

said that

she appreciated the fact that

he speaks his mind.

Watch stand-up if you feel that way.

That is not...

A lot of the men just,

you know.

And then there was one juror.

This is a perfect juror.

This is actually the kind of juror we need.

He said, I find him fascinating.

He walks into a room and he sets people off one way or another.

And I find that really interesting.

Really?

This one guy could do all this.

See, that's a perfect juror because if you can't figure out why

and you don't follow the news, clearly you have no stake in anything.

Right?

That's perfect.

That's like watching sports and never has a team.

Never roots.

Just watches.

And imagine him saying, I find it interesting how a person hits the ball and everyone chases the ball.

How could one ball do all this?

Absolutely.

But there's not going to be, I can't find 12 of those.

Yeah.

I think that the sort of ideal jury is evidently comprised of, does anyone remember that Futurama episode where they went to war with the neutral planet?

It was like, your neutralness, it's a bejolette.

If I die, tell my wife hello.

And you're like, it's that person that you need 12 times.

Or maybe like, you know, the person who says, oh, I watch MSNBC and Fox News and everything.

All this person was aware of.

back in when Donald Trump first announced that he was going to be running for president.

this person was a New Yorker, right?

And they were like, from this moment, this guy might win, and if he does win, eventually, the mother of all court cases is going to land in a New York City courtroom.

And I will do everything within my power to live my life as the perfect jury member so that when the time comes, I will be there, because that is my greatest ambition.

So, therefore, like spending exactly equal amounts of time watching, like, oh, it's

time to watch Rachel Maddow for half an hour and then switch over to Sean Hannity for exactly the same amount of time.

I think, like, no one can possibly.

It just feels like someone who watches that much news and doesn't have an opinion is someone who probably can't make a decision.

And is that what you want on a jury?

Well, that was April.

Now, here is something from the bugle in the merry month of, not very merry, month of May.

In other American news now, well you don't just have to be a presidential candidate to talk absolute unutterable bullshit.

As proved this week by Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs,

who gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College, a Catholic school in Kansas,

in which

not only did he criticize President Biden, but he also suggested that women should focus on being mothers and wives rather than pursuing careers

and also laid into various other parts of society.

In, I think, a speech that really proved that

there is a time and a place for athletes to talk

and

subjects that they should talk about.

And look, I don't want to be prescriptive about saying all athletes, all sports people should steer clear of politics.

I don't believe that.

I just believe that if you are Harrison Butker, you should probably

shut the f up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because look, it's easy to denigrate sports people as unsophisticated spurners of the intellectual realm who've pointlessly devoted their lives to the physical and the fundamentally irrelevant.

It's easy, but it's also, I think, mostly wrong.

These people are often strivers for some form of human perfection, however fleetingly ephemeral, challenging themselves in multiple dimensions of excellence, mental, spiritual, physical, and temperamental.

The complexity of a sport like American football as well requires a mental combination of study, study, memory, instinctual perception, spontaneity in the face of physical danger, unless you are Harrison Butker, in which case you have to run up and boost a ball with minimal risk of injury.

Obviously, it's not as simple as that, but it is as simple as that.

It's as simple as that.

And you're absolutely correct.

Also, the fact that this isn't the result of him getting hit in the head repeatedly since he's a kicker.

Yeah, I was wondering.

So the CTE doesn't, because I thought maybe CTE had prevented him from reading the room or just reading.

Unless it can go up, can it migrate from the foot up to the body?

It's weird because Travis Kelsey is his teammate who is dating Taylor Swift.

Yes.

So what does he see?

What does Butker see when he sees Taylor Swift?

What does he say to Travis Kelsey?

Like, it was a great concert.

So when is she giving up this singing hobby so we can finally get down to you having kids?

He quoted Taylor Swift in his speech.

The lyric familiarity breeds contempt.

I mean, I'm not a huge Swifty.

I don't know a great deal about

the Swifty and Urva, but she does not seem to be the most obvious source of inspiration for someone arguing that women should stay in the home and historic patriarchy with

humanity.

Well, he said that with the idea that women don't understand irony.

Added to that as well, it's also been reported that Harrison Butker's mother

is a fairly high-flying scientist as well, who's worked in oncology.

So, again, that's it's quite hard to see where these views

have, you know, what evidence he's been looking at here.

Oh, I get it, Andy.

How many birthdays do you think she missed because she was working?

How many times was she just too

busy to be there?

Do you think he wanted to kick a football?

It's what he had to do.

He was kicking footballs, waiting for his mom to come home, and he got good enough at it to play professionally.

Yeah, that's actually, let's, I think, when in doubt, don't blame a man for his actions.

Let's blame his mother.

There's always a woman.

If you look around hard enough, there's always a woman at fault for this kind of thing.

I think this is a reaction to the fact that Nikki Glazer did the best at the roast of Tom Brady.

I was like, we need to put these women in their place.

Like, because she absolutely nailed that.

She was so funny.

So I think

this is a kickback.

He sort of said, my wife was, listen, and it's fine if these are his beliefs,

which I disagree with.

It's more that you're at a college doing a commencement speech to women who are gone into further education.

They're not doing courses on nappy changing and meatloaf cooking.

Like, they're there because they want to do something, you know, like your mum did.

But he said, My wife was happiest when she accepted her role as homemaker, which sounds like an official job that she applied for, you know, salary negotiable, depending on my mood, hours endless.

Welcome to the team.

Uh, so the women should like stick to being homemakers and leave men to the real jobs, like kicking a pigskin.

Well, that's fair, and you know, it is it was a speech suffused by his uh his deep uh Catholic faith.

Um,

I mean, he did also rail against the tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Now, I think I've laid my cards fairly firmly on the table over the course of the Bugles history in that I am not a Christian,

but

I seem to remember that Jesus Christ, the number one ranked Christian Messiah, if memory serves,

was pretty pro-diversity, equity, and inclusion generally.

I mean, he only employed 12 guys

in his boardroom.

But still, you know, what he said, let's judge him by what he said, not by his recruitment policy.

You know,

he did seem to play those cards pretty strongly.

But like I said, I'm a bit out of the loop.

The tyranny of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The tyranny of inclusion.

I teach my kid that all the time.

I tell my kid all the time, leave the minority kids out.

And that means I do not want you looking in a mirror.

He did say some things that I think no one can argue with, including these words.

Everything I'm saying to you is not from a place of wisdom.

I mean, it's good to say we'll let those cards on Taylor.

Well, that was May, and what better to follow May than June?

Top story, democracy is reigning.

Well, yes, if democracy be the food of love, we're all going to be single and vomiting within four weeks.

because it's election time and

this week we've had we've had well two debates the leaders we had Starmer against Sunak on Tuesday we had the seven prong debate last night anyone watch it last night

how was it

yeah

I mean it sort of does make you think with those all the D-Day anniversaries that we had this week that someone should have said I'm really sorry you died for this shit

but no one, I mean, I think certainly watching the seven-prong debate last night, about on a level with dripping vinegar in your eyeballs whilst listening to Rudy Giuliani sing, You Make Me Feel Nike Like a Natural Woman

in terms of pure enjoyability.

Nish, you obviously are

global democracy correspondent and aficionado.

Have you enjoyed it so far?

Well, let me just start with the debates, because the debates are two of the worst pieces of television of all time.

And take that from me.

Someone who's produced several of the worst pieces of television of all time.

I did a show for Quibi.

There was a network that was so shit it got cancelled in the middle of its own existence.

Not a programme, the whole network.

And in many ways, this Conservative campaign is the Quibi of election campaigns.

It's a bad idea, being executed poorly, and it's going to end in a British Indian man losing his job.

We've got some exciting breaking news.

The original Conservative slogan, this is just broken, just as I was walking on stage, clear plan, bold action, secure future, has been replaced by, oh shit, oh f ⁇ ing kill me.

The campaign started very poorly.

Rishisunek announced the election in the rain without an umbrella.

Then he posed in front of an exit sign which was pointing directly at his f ⁇ ing head.

He asked folks in Wales if they were looking forward to the European Football Championships, a tournament Wales did not qualify for.

He started his campaign with a launch event at the Titanic site when he was immediately asked by a journalist if he was the leader of a sinking ship.

Basically, Rishi Sudak at this campaign, I haven't seen an Asian man look this uncomfortable since the night I lost my virginity.

It is

absolutely extraordinary.

The first big policy announcement was national service for young people.

Telling a generation of young people who have already given up two years of their lives to protect older people from the novel coronavirus that they now need to do national service is insulting enough but that is not anywhere near the top of the list of this nation's problems.

We are currently contracting diarrhea-based diseases from our tap water and when we contact the water companies they advise us to simply ship directly into the rivers to quote cut out the middleman.

Then

on top of all of this this week Rishi Silak was heavily criticised for not being at a part of the 80th anniversary D-Day ceremony on Thursday.

He attended several of the events but then before the massive event involving all of the world leaders, he traveled back from France to the UK to record a television interview that is set to go out next week.

The ITV journalist doing the interview confirmed that that was the only slot offered by 10 Downing Street.

It is a huge PR gap, and incredibly, Rishi Tunak's election is going so badly that the only person who's had a worse D-Day is Adolf Hitler.

I mean,

say what you like.

Say what you like about Hitler.

He did kill Hitler.

Alice, have you enjoyed the opening gambits of our glorious

Festival of Democratic Freedom here?

I mean, it is a wonderful thing to watch from a safe distance.

I've been particularly enjoying Nigel Farage's attempt to claw his way back into relevancy.

That's been very exciting.

Have you guys been following that, his reform UK?

Oh yeah, yeah, we're all over it.

Chris has got the tattoo, isn't he?

He truly is the herpes of British politics.

The movement as a new phenomenon occurring, that he is the head of a movement of something mysterious happening in the in basically that there's far-right governments rising up all over the place and

he's just, I feel like he's putting the ash into fascinating observation about the rise of anti-immigrant populism during an economic downturn.

You know, I just think it's

he's presenting this as a new thing, a completely unprecedented thing for a nation that may perhaps feel it's humiliated itself on the global stage to feel that drawn to the person who's telling them it's somebody else's fault.

They just

can't see any outcomes that would be bad.

As a result of the unrestrained indulgence in grievance politics by men who talk about how being a man involves being stoical while whinging like a toddler about how things aren't as good as the olden days.

Have you?

You know.

Sorry, have you.

The olden days.

Have you bought

when men were men and women were your mum?

Nice.

You've just Rod, did you see any of the debates?

Yeah, so I mean, as I mentioned, I arrived a few days ago trying to blend in.

I shit in the river.

So

your country's in crisis, Andy.

I went to a bookstore, and it was like an entire wall of books about the crisis of British politics.

It was, you know, like,

you know, how the commons is f and how to unf it and the Tories are bastards and

labor is f and

Liz Trust, how you like me now, Rishi.

And like, it was just, you know, and,

you know, libdems are shit, scratch and sniff pamphlet.

It was like just lots of books about the turmoil in British politics.

And

I'm trying to understand what's happening.

And

the Tories are on track to lose, according to the polls, but there's good news for them that Labor has lost two points in the polls since the election started.

And so at this rate, the Tories will catch up and win the election about 37 years

after the election,

if I'm understanding it right.

Yes.

I watched the debate and

Kirstarmer looks to me like

someone started an illustration of a generic white guy and didn't finish.

Well, that is 2024 so far.

Thank you for listening.

Here's to a positive second half of this year.

What could possibly go wrong?

Don't answer that.

You'll spoil my holiday.

Until next time, 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.