G20: Homeopathic Diplomacy

Speaker 1 I will be in Australia for the next few weeks hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

Speaker 1 If you want to come to my shows there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford and I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December and we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January.

Speaker 1 The 2nd of January show is sold out but please, please, please come on the 3rd. My UK tour extension begins at the end of January.
All details and ticket links at andysaltsman.co.uk.

Speaker 1 Don't forget that if you join the Bugle Voluntary Subscription Scheme as a premium-level voluntary subscriber, we will be issuing a vinyl of The Bugle. What? What? I didn't know this.

Speaker 1 That's because you didn't listen to Lost Wikipedia episodes.

Speaker 1 What a revelation.

Speaker 1 The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Speaker 1 Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4273 of the world's first and I sincerely hope last audio newspaper for a visual world. We are now deep into season six.

Speaker 1 I think approximately 0.4 of an episode into season 6. Way longer than the disappointing season 5.
I'm Mandy Zoltzmann, the Michelangelo of Surfing.

Speaker 1 In that, like Michelangelo, I've never been surfing and I'd rather paint some stuff on a wall than go surfing. Unfortunately, I'm also the Michelangelo of painting stuff on walls.

Speaker 1 In that, like Michelangelo, I haven't done anything even half-decent for at least 48 years and 11 months.

Speaker 1 It's the 11th of September 2023, and this week we are back where it all began.

Speaker 1 Sorry, not where it all began, where we occasionally used to record when we couldn't get a studio anywhere else in the pre-pandemic pandemonium years.

Speaker 1 The studio in Cock Lane, home of the famous Cock Lane ghost named Scratching Fanny, as long-term bugle listeners may remember,

Speaker 1 where the Great Fire of London apparently stopped and where we last recorded in January 2020.

Speaker 1 And we had a science section that was, well, I think we can say

Speaker 1 complacent and prescient at the same time. We spoke, we had news of a virus outbreak early in 2020.

Speaker 1 Spoiler alert, in case you've not been following the news since then, that everyone we said was getting too worried about.

Speaker 1 And we also had a report from scientists saying that hibernation was possible shortly before the world hibernated.

Speaker 1 So, anyway, let's we've got to be careful what we discuss in this episode. That's what I'm saying.
This place has strangeness in its bones. Joining me this week,

Speaker 1 a welcome back to Nish Kumar and Tom Ballard, all in the studio together as God intended. Hooray! Back in Cock Lane.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Next week in Vaj Alley.

Speaker 1 Sorry about this rash here. I've got on my arm, Andy.
I'm sure it's nothing, but I just

Speaker 1 been getting on my nerves a little bit. I just don't know what to do about it.
But I'm sure we'll be fine.

Speaker 1 Good to see you, Andrew. How are you?

Speaker 1 I'm pretty well.

Speaker 1 I think we did the news quiz together

Speaker 1 early in 2020 when we covered it. Yeah, we definitely did.
Yeah, we did. We were hosting it.
Yeah, we definitely did a bit of coverage of an unspecified virus.

Speaker 1 And then, I guess, a couple of months later, this trio assembled to record one of the very early socially distanced bugle episodes.

Speaker 1 And yet, we didn't do anything. You know, our satire didn't change anything or help at all in any way.
Like, it just carried on abated.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think it's absolutely wiped out all viruses from the world currently. I've not heard about that.
Well, given that I did have COVID three weeks ago,

Speaker 1 it's embarrassing to have covid in the summer of 2023

Speaker 1 it's it's it's like having it's like having bubonic plague

Speaker 1 lame yeah get up with it grandpa it's all that monkeypox now

Speaker 1 you see last floss in a video

Speaker 1 I'd just like to acknowledge that I'm wearing a bugle t-shirt. Yes.
Well done for that. Thank you.
Well, it was the last clean t-shirt that I had at the moment. So the cycle worked out well.

Speaker 1 Well, and I'd also like to say that I will be bugling with a bugle-branded butt plug up my ass.

Speaker 1 I thought it was a cochlein special, I'd ram it right up there and see how it affects the content of my satire. Well, thanks for being one of our premium-level volunteer subscribers.

Speaker 1 I think I've started to remember why I usually don't get YouTube as I'm doing.

Speaker 1 I think we might have to call an end of season six at this rate.

Speaker 1 Here's what happened: I've had two coffees in quite quick succession. Oh, that's not prepared for the button.

Speaker 1 Everyone's a bit overstimulated.

Speaker 1 Well, we're all very excited to be here in Cock Lane, obviously.

Speaker 1 I now remember the risks of recording in this studio.

Speaker 1 We're recording on the 11th of September 2023, so for this week's anniversary, tomorrow is the 12th of September.

Speaker 1 Wow, Andy, does the phrase never forget mean nothing to you?

Speaker 1 On the 12th of September. By the time people listen to it, it will be the 12th of September.
Oh, yeah, that's right. So it just seems more appropriate.

Speaker 1 And this is the conventionally accepted date, according to Wikipedia, for the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, when the Greeks saw off the first Persian invasion force.

Speaker 1 The battle famously gave rise to an athletics event. I forget which one.

Speaker 1 A triple jump.

Speaker 1 The Greek commander Miltiades escaped from his Persian enemies by jumping over a river.

Speaker 1 He hopped onto a small rock, skipped onto the back of a turtle, and then jumped to safety on the far side.

Speaker 1 At Marathon, also famous for being the first major battle ever fought to raise money for charity, with a significant number of participating warriors in fancy dress.

Speaker 1 Persian complaints that the Greeks only won because they were wearing high-tech new shoes that made them faster were overruled by the adjudicator, so it's stuck at a Greek win.

Speaker 1 On the 12th of September 1940, cave paintings were discovered in Lascaux in France, known as the Les Gaul cave paintings, or in Spain the Vamos cave paintings, or the Caman cave paintings, as they're known in Australia.

Speaker 1 15,000 BC, they've been dated to. It's amazing how much prehistoric art was painted in years at the beginnings of millenniums BC.

Speaker 1 Because it's always 35,000 BC, 27,000 BC, 15,000 BC. I guess they probably just commissioned it to commemorate millenniums, just like we do with domes these days.

Speaker 1 Everything just gets rounded up, Andy.

Speaker 1 Eventually, the past just all gets rounded up. We're basically recording this in 1900.

Speaker 1 On the walls, in the Cape. Any guesses what was on the walls? Fing bison.
Of course it was bison. Always with the bison.
Come on. Add one drawing of a car.

Speaker 1 Are you telling me prehistoric people didn't have a sense of humour?

Speaker 1 On this day in 19, well, on tomorrow's day in 1962, the 12th of September, John F. Kennedy delivered his famous, we choose to go to the moon speech.

Speaker 1 He said, we choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because we can't let the fing commies get there.

Speaker 1 Sadly, the moon turned out to be a lot further away than Kennedy or anyone else had thought at the time.

Speaker 1 Estimates in 1962 suggest the moon was only 120 meters across and a mere two miles off the ground.

Speaker 1 They planned to do it within a week using a trampoline and a simple rocket-propelled backpack, or by getting an astronaut to straddle a giant firework whilst wearing flying goggles.

Speaker 1 NASA then acknowledged the folly of hiring Warner Bros. animation director Chuck Jones, creator of the Wiley Coyote franchise character, as head of lunar missions.

Speaker 1 The Soviets, meanwhile, focus on the theory that suppressing poetry and starving our own people to death in their millions would accelerate space travel by incentivizing cosmonauts to get the fk out of the circle

Speaker 1 as quickly as possible. Kennedy, sadly himself, was destined never to go to the moon as his career petered out rapidly the following year and he was assassinated by

Speaker 1 God, is that public domain yet?

Speaker 1 He has gone down in my estimation.

Speaker 1 Excellent snooker player, but that is unacceptable behaviour.

Speaker 1 As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

Speaker 1 This week, a home-worsening section. Home improvement was all the rage a few years ago.
It has now become very passe as more and more people look to make their homes worse.

Speaker 1 Everything comes and goes in cycles. Various reasons.

Speaker 1 Not wanting to be surrounded by the trappings of privilege.

Speaker 1 The cruel batterings of modern economics amongst the reasons people make their homes worse.

Speaker 1 So, we look at the latest home-worsening accoutrements you can get: the one-legged sofa, for example, the best trip hazards to make you clock up a minimum of five toe stubbings per week.

Speaker 1 We advise you how to maximise the moldiness of your carpets. Lighting, some lighting tips.

Speaker 1 You can now get interrogation lights from former Black Ops CIA sites on the internet, and they can make you feel really uncomfortable in your own kitchen. So, I might want to consider that.

Speaker 1 And in terms of painting, we suggest painting everything a mildly depressive grey using the leftovers from your recent home improvement drive. That section is in the bin.

Speaker 1 Top story this week, the G20 have met and they have, well, you're never going to guess this, they've issued a statement.

Speaker 1 It's hard to overstate quite how exciting a moment this is for the world. The issuing of a statement by leaders of the world's leading

Speaker 1 economic powers. We preview the G20 on last week's show here to review all the action from India, if we can still call it that.
My two G20 expert correspondents, Nish and Tom.

Speaker 1 I mean

Speaker 1 what would the highlights be for you?

Speaker 1 Because I mean in terms of the statement, and it came to Ukraine, they've called on states to refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition. And

Speaker 1 you can imagine Moscow literally shitting itself in its boots at those words. Listen,

Speaker 1 a lot of the naysayers will come together and say the G20 is nothing but a glorified photo opportunity, and it's actually a waste of time for a lot of people who should have much more significant things on their plate.

Speaker 1 And to those people, I would say this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely right. It's a complete waste of everyone's fing time, everyone's fing money.
It's a complete and utter shit show.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 they came together under a slogan of one earth, one family, one future. And I would say, given Hitler's slogan,

Speaker 1 I would, where possible, avoid a slogan that involves repeated use of the word one.

Speaker 1 It was, yeah, and in terms of... One motion, one colour.
I mean, these are all good ideas.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't think that was an ideal slogan choice. Yeah,

Speaker 1 in terms of Ukraine, yeah, there was a statement that was actually a watered-down version of last year's even more watered-downs. Like, it's getting worse and worse.

Speaker 1 It's a homeopathic approach to diplomacy. There's the memory of diplomacy somewhere in the comment, but it actually has no medical impact whatsoever.

Speaker 1 In terms of on climate change, they said there was a statement released that said the G20 countries will pursue and encourage efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally through existing targets and policies.

Speaker 1 No new targets, no new policies announced. Bear in mind, the G20 nations account for, depending on which estimate you read, either 75 or 80% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaker 1 You thought there might be a more stronger statement. And this is ahead of the upcoming Global Climate Change Summit, which is happening in, can you guess where?

Speaker 1 Oh yeah, that's right, the United Arab Emirates, which is basically like a vegan conference happening in a f ⁇ ing McDonald's.

Speaker 1 And, you know,

Speaker 1 is it a surprise that they were able to achieve nothing? It's a group of world leaders that means that there are going to be some spicy customers present. Okay.
Probably chief amongst them.

Speaker 1 Vladimir Putin was not present. Russia was not present.
And China also didn't send a delegation. She was not present.
However,

Speaker 1 a man who was present was Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 1 The man who puts the Mohammed bin Salman into the phrase, US intelligence believes Mohammed bin Salman authorized the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamar Kash Hoji.

Speaker 1 Well, you say it's just a photo opportunity, but they didn't even f ⁇ ing do the photo.

Speaker 1 The family photo did not go ahead. The G20 family photo, no reason was officially given.
Reports say many ladies refused to be photographed, pointing to Russia's presence at the summit.

Speaker 1 And I was furious. The G20 family photo has been my number one masturbation material for years.
I look forward to it like Christmas.

Speaker 1 Those dignitaries smiling awkwardly and looking deeply uncomfortable in local traditional dress used to make me absolutely rock hard. And I've been able to have a new G20 jizz tuggie for two years.

Speaker 1 Thanks a lot, Putin.

Speaker 1 Andy, you're not saying anything.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 I'm saying a lot on the inside.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 1 Ukraine fought understatement with understatement.

Speaker 1 It took part in last year's summit, but was NFI this year, and responding to this statement

Speaker 1 calling on states to refrain from the threat or use of force,

Speaker 1 said the statement was nothing to be proud of, which is a rather polite way of saying an absolute absolute disgrace and betrayal of all humanity.

Speaker 1 Exciting, though, there is a new permanent member of the G20, the African Union.

Speaker 1 Are they going to have to do new merchant G21 now, or is someone going to get relegated?

Speaker 1 Listen, as a nation, Britain has been trying. We've been trying to be relegated out of the G20.
We're doing our level best.

Speaker 1 It's going to be Australia, isn't it? I can feel that.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 One of the other big stories to emerge from the the conference was the use of

Speaker 1 well a a different name for India on some of the official pronunciations, Bharat.

Speaker 1 Apologies if I've pronounced that at terribly, how would you go with that niche? Bharat. I would I but again,

Speaker 1 as I'm constantly reminded by my Indian family, I am quote not a real Indian.

Speaker 1 And as I'm constantly reminded by the British press, I'm not a real British person either.

Speaker 1 I sort of exist in a liminal space between nationalities.

Speaker 1 What says someone hovering over Turkish airspace somewhere?

Speaker 1 I'm Schrödinger's dude.

Speaker 1 Are you suggesting Schrodinger kept a hot dude in a box?

Speaker 1 There are no heroes anymore.

Speaker 1 I think Schrodinger was a total.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure. Schrodinger's a f ⁇ ing cat.

Speaker 1 I think we can creditably call them question marks over his behaviour.

Speaker 1 So explain this, this, Nick, because it is an official name of

Speaker 1 India, but it still splits opinion in India

Speaker 1 how it should be used and when it should be used. Yeah, Bharat is the Sanskrit term for the nation of India, but it's a bit more complicated than that because it sort of refers to

Speaker 1 a larger territory than the modern nation of India that extends actually down towards Indonesia as well.

Speaker 1 There's been a kind of

Speaker 1 over the last sort of 20 years, there's been a kind of movement to move away from either Mughal or British colonial names for places in India. Bombay became Mumbai, Bangalore became Bengaluru.

Speaker 1 And so this feels like a sort of

Speaker 1 logical extension of that potentially, but it's very difficult to not see this as a kind of

Speaker 1 a problem that has gripped the BJP, which is a kind of obsession with nationalistic symbols instead of in lieu of actually doing things that might help people.

Speaker 1 And here's the thing about Narendra Modi, say what you will about him, and you will be in jail.

Speaker 1 I would describe his relationship with certain communities in India. I'd describe him as being Muslim sceptic.

Speaker 1 I think that's that the best way to characterize it. He's Muslim sceptic.

Speaker 1 He's got a sort of, he's yet to be, he's yet to fall down one way or the other on the whole Muslim question.

Speaker 1 The Muslim question. Yeah,

Speaker 1 there's a real,

Speaker 1 he's not a good guy. And he's kind of,

Speaker 1 this is sort of seen as it feels like this is another kind of publicity stunt designed to kind of drum up a nationalistic fervor.

Speaker 1 And there was something interesting this week where he had all the world leaders walk without shoes and socks in tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and the reason that is interesting is because Narendra Modi himself has been pretty keen to invoke the memory of Mahatma Gandhi however a lot of his supporters are pretty hostile towards Gandhi and the roots of the BJP have has a kind of roots in an organization called the RSS which is a kind of Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization that has traditionally been pretty hostile to Gandhi especially one man Natharam Godse who was so hostile that he assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.

Speaker 1 And I would say that is too hostile.

Speaker 1 I would say if you're assassinating somebody, you've gone too far. What happened to a strongly worded letter, Godse?

Speaker 1 Did British rule leave no legacy behind?

Speaker 1 If you really had a problem with Gandhi, you should have learned from the British and taken him over using a string of complex borderline incomprehensible trade agreements.

Speaker 1 Civilization. I was interested in there.
Some people obviously not on board with the whole idea of officially changing the country to Bharat. This is

Speaker 1 Shashi Tharoor, a lawmaker for the Indian National Congress Party.

Speaker 1 While there is no constitutional objection to calling India Bharat, which is one of the country's two official names, I hope the government will not be so foolish as to completely dispense with India, which has incalculable brand value built up over centuries.

Speaker 1 So I think she's done a lot of market research out there, a lot of focus testing, found that consumers strongly associate the name India with the country that heaps of people call India.

Speaker 1 Calling India India is extremely on brand for India.

Speaker 1 Shashi Thoreau is a man. He's a man.
He's very much a man.

Speaker 1 I apologise. Why did I think that?

Speaker 1 He's written books about cricket, I think.

Speaker 1 He was also like Under Secretary to the UN.

Speaker 1 We all judge people by different parameters. In terms of the importance of their work.

Speaker 1 But I was going to ask Tom to pick that line up, but I think we'll keep it. Yeah, great.
Excellent.

Speaker 1 He was Under Secretary General of the United Nations. And you just said, I think he wrote some books about cricket.

Speaker 1 Christ's alive.

Speaker 1 I will say this for you, Andrew. You've got a world view and it is ultimately inflexible.

Speaker 1 A number of world leaders were criticized for giving Modi, quotes, a free pass at this summit, despite his persecution of Muslims and other minorities in India.

Speaker 1 But that's one of the problems with the G20, because most of those countries do not have even the flimsiest of legs to stand on.

Speaker 1 And if countries start boycotting other countries because of morally objectionable behavior, it would not be a G20, it would be a G0.

Speaker 1 But it might benefit humanity a bit more. What I would say, Andy, is with your idea of a G0,

Speaker 1 would that achieve any less than a G20?

Speaker 1 If they had just hired a hall and left it empty for the exact amount of time of the G20 summit, would we be in any sort of different position than we are now?

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly the same amount of climate action and condemnation of the Russian Federation. That's true.

Speaker 1 It would cost a lot less. We'd save a lot of money, too, actually.

Speaker 1 Britain going to shit update now. And as if

Speaker 1 things weren't already going bad enough in reality

Speaker 1 Liz Truss is bringing a book out.

Speaker 1 Tom I know you're hugely excited about this as a fan of all literary works. It's entitled 10 Years to Save the West the subtitle presumably being after my six weeks in charge.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 what are you most looking forward to from this, what promises to be one of the

Speaker 1 landmark literary productions of this and any other millennium? It's going to be huge. 10 years to save the west.
Yes, follow-up to a previous work, 44 Days to the Country.

Speaker 1 So she's done that, so surely she knows the reverse way to do that. And I think step one, I've had a preview of the book.

Speaker 1 I think step one of saving the West is make sure Liz Trust doesn't become Prime Minister again. Step two is, is she PM again? No good, keep doing that.
Let's press on.

Speaker 1 So I think it's going to be amazing. Peppered with newsworthy anecdotes from her time in public life, such as a memorable last meeting with Queen Elizabeth II.

Speaker 1 Her last meeting.

Speaker 1 Her challenges to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as foreign secretary, her encounters with the Trump administration as trade minister, and a dismay at the political class attempts to betray Brexit.

Speaker 1 This book will be a timely warning about the perils facing conservatism in the years ahead.

Speaker 1 So thank God that Conservatism is going to be getting this warning from someone who knows how to f things up properly. I'm excited about this book.

Speaker 1 From the publishers that brought you the Joseph Fritzel Guide to Parenting

Speaker 1 comes How to Save the West from a Woman Who, to be fair, murdered the Pound and the Queen.

Speaker 1 Allegedly. Yeah, we don't know about the pound.

Speaker 1 It's yeah, she was promoting it in the Daily Mail, which for international listeners is basically Der Sturmer for the men called Nigel who live in the home counties of like Formula One.

Speaker 1 And she promoted it.

Speaker 1 The whole, the title of the book, the premise of the book, and her promotion of the book seem hell-bent on indulging the most cranky of crankish conspiracy conspiracy theories from the hard right on the internet.

Speaker 1 She said, I really fear for the future of the West. We have seen very slow growth for several decades and our culture is being questioned, even basic things like human biology.

Speaker 1 At the same time, the same thing has happened across the Western world. At one G7 meeting, I thought, actually, I'm the only conservative in the room here.

Speaker 1 You've got Biden in the US, Trudeau in Canada, and Macrod in France.

Speaker 1 It really is like, she really is indulging. There is a genuinely dangerous side to this.
She's indulging some of the most unpleasant

Speaker 1 conspiracy theories about, like, great replacement theory and about how the West is under threat. But the important thing to remember is she is fing shit and she can ruin absolutely everything.

Speaker 1 So, there is a chance that Liz Truss could be the solution. She's actually said of the upcoming US election that what we really need is a Republican back in the White House.

Speaker 1 Biden should be printing that on posters right now. A woman who was prime minister for less time than the lifespan of a lettuce is now openly endorsing Donald Trump.
And, you know, I think

Speaker 1 she does know how to build a political career. It's just not a good one.
Liz Truss's recipe for a political career is take Margaret Thatcher's Wikipedia page and add in a metric tonne of crystal meth.

Speaker 1 And bang, you've got yourself a political philosophy.

Speaker 1 I was intrigued by this bit of the blurb.

Speaker 1 It said that Truss will warn that too many of her fellow Conservatives have allowed themselves to be captured by the left-wing influences that set the agenda and frame the debate.

Speaker 1 Now, bearing in mind that she is a Conservative Prime Minister. She has been followed by another Conservative Prime Minister.
She was preceded by three other Conservative Prime Ministers.

Speaker 1 They have been certainly in Britain

Speaker 1 running, if that's the right term, the country for 13 years. I mean, when your governments and national leaders have become...

Speaker 1 conspiracy theorists about who is really running stuff,

Speaker 1 you know you've got problems as a species. No, the big problem with the world today is the left has too much power.

Speaker 1 And the left are two-left wing, and economics is too lefty, and it's lefty, lefty, lefty. She literally used the phrase global left.
She said the global left was in control.

Speaker 1 Ideas like redistributionism, which I'm not completely convinced that's a word, but business being bad, the anti-growth people like Extinction Rebellion to Just Stop Oil.

Speaker 1 Those are the ideas that have made the running in the last decade. And who can forget Just Stop Oil's victory in the 2016 presidential election? It was a big surprise that an organization that

Speaker 1 at that point didn't exist won a US presidential election. But it was a really, really huge, really, really huge moment.

Speaker 1 I mean, if there are people that think businesses are bad, I would say that's largely been the fault of businesses.

Speaker 1 She also said

Speaker 1 only if the West recommits to building both strong societies and strong economies. There's a bit of a credibility gap.
here,

Speaker 1 given the essential demolition of society by successive Conservative governments and her own economic strategy seemingly being designed during an opium-fueled Jenga session.

Speaker 1 Also, she says,

Speaker 1 only then can we guarantee voters a free and meaningful choice in their destiny. A free and meaningful choice.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, just from a British point of view, we have First Bastor Post, we have the House of Lords, and we have her as a Prime Minister chosen by a fraction of a percent of

Speaker 1 the fraction of the percent of most lunatic people in the country.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and bear in mind, our current Prime Minister is a Conservative who was chosen by a fraction of a percent of that fraction of a percent.

Speaker 1 I like the idea of building societies.

Speaker 1 Let's deal with schools, okay, Liz, let's just build actual buildings that aren't crushing children in the head, then focus on building your right-wing Conservative utopia, you crazy lady.

Speaker 1 Well, that takes us on to our next story,

Speaker 1 that you've just hinted at there, the concrete in schools story.

Speaker 1 I mean, normally at this point point of the year, you've got the new school year, your focus is on buying new shoes for your children, you know, them seeing their friends again, the excited anticipation of another nine months as de facto guinea pigs in the social engineering experiments of whoever the current government is.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Bing's pupil at school. And the reason

Speaker 1 is because for decades we've been using aerated concrete that is lighter, less dense and less durable and more prone to sudden catastrophic collapse than regular concrete.

Speaker 1 Raising the question, you know, who looked at concrete and thought, I'll tell you what this stuff needs to be, it needs to be a bit more brittle.

Speaker 1 It's been used in a lot of schools, hospitals and other public buildings, many of which are pretty high up the list of buildings you would really rather did not suddenly collapse,

Speaker 1 which is quite a hotly contested list, to be honest. And the problem with it as a building material is that it's only safe for strap-in short-term planning fans.

Speaker 1 30 years, or to put it in terms you might more easily understand if you're a fan of buildings, approximately 1.5% of the lifespan of an ancient Roman Colosseum, or just slightly less than one and a half Jimmy Anderson's England cricket career.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's not really. He's got a worldview.

Speaker 1 That's not really.

Speaker 1 That's not enough, is it,

Speaker 1 for a building such as

Speaker 1 a school? 30. Well, we're talking about, you know, state schools here and under Tories, how long are they going to last, really?

Speaker 1 I mean, like, you know, what's what's the lifespan on public education system you know so essentially I mean it does I guess tap into that fundamental question of of government do we actually need children yes

Speaker 1 what do they do why do we allow them at best they're gonna grow up and vote labor

Speaker 1 until they grow up and find sense

Speaker 1 so yeah I mean maybe this is just part of the Part of the plan. Part of the plan just to get rid of children.

Speaker 1 They just whinge about things like, oh, we can't afford houses and the climate's collapsing. Whinges.
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 Well, and also, you know, education in this country has long been designed to spiritually crush children.

Speaker 1 Take it into a physical realm. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not a great week for metaphors laying it on too thick.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I think it might have been the most metaphorical summer we've had in this country.

Speaker 1 We've just had, you know, lonely turds sunbathing on British beaches in the article for national decline and now crumbly schools.

Speaker 1 I actually'm making a TV show for Sky here where I go and work for local newspapers and last week I was working for the South Wales Argus and we went down to a river and an actual scientist

Speaker 1 who works on river pollution,

Speaker 1 when I asked him about the state of the river usk in Wales, he used the phrase, the E. coli is the least of our problems.

Speaker 1 I was talking to him and the singer Charlotte Church, who's very involved in the campaign to clean up that river.

Speaker 1 I can't remember which of the two of them it was, but one of the two of them definitely used the phrase the E. colise at least without problems.
Yeah, we've got rivers full of shit.

Speaker 1 We've got collapsing schools. And there are a lot of questions for Rishi Sunak because officials,

Speaker 1 former officials from the Department for Education, have alleged that Sunak was told how grave the risk was of these buildings when he was Chancellor and refused to commit the cash needed to keep the buildings upright and the children safe.

Speaker 1 So there are questions questions swirling for Rishi Sunak,

Speaker 1 which adds to the list of my questions for him, which are, why don't you f off? And how did you get to be so much of a fish?

Speaker 1 Well, some experts have suggested that the cost of repairing all these buildings could be as much as £150 million.

Speaker 1 But using the approach adopted by Sunak as Chance, you can bring that price down considerably by just not bothering to do anything about it, which constitutes a bargain in public spending terms.

Speaker 1 And another way of doing it is you've got to work the statistics.

Speaker 1 So if you have, say, 147 schools awaiting repairs and you tell 142 of those schools that they're not going to get those repairs, you have reduced the number of schools waiting for repairs from 147 to 5, which is pretty much fixing the problem.

Speaker 1 And it's an educational experience, right? You're teaching children how to problem solve.

Speaker 1 The school around you is about to collapse and kill you all. What are you going to do?

Speaker 1 Well, you're teaching them physics. Physics.
You're teaching them engineering. Engineering.
Economics. Yeah.
The dangers of insane short-term cost cuttings.

Speaker 1 It's good for physical education. It's learning to run away as fast as possible.

Speaker 1 You're going to have some high-quality sprinters coming through. Design and technology.
You're building hats that can withstand falling concrete. Love that.
Love that.

Speaker 1 And best of all, they're not talking about bloody gender.

Speaker 1 The head of the National Audit Office here suggested that there has not been sufficient focus from government on what what he described as unflashy but essential tasks, which clearly include stopping buildings falling on people's heads.

Speaker 1 The kind of thing you can only turn your attention to as a government once you finish the more important tasks, such as very slightly reducing the journey time from London to Birmingham, or training robot pterodactyls to pick asylum seekers up in their beaks and fly them to Rwanda.

Speaker 1 Can I just say that sentence could have stopped before the word on?

Speaker 1 I think you could just have put out a statement saying there's not been sufficient focus from the government and leave it.

Speaker 1 That's a catch-all coverage

Speaker 1 for the last 13 years of Conservative rule in this country. And particularly the last sort of two years, where the principal focus has been which one of the is going to be king.

Speaker 1 Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Second, he's a fortunate name to the government. Follow that.
The government will spend whatever it takes, but only from the existing education system.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 essentially the choice is between having schools that might fall down but still have teachers and facilities in them or having no schools but with teachers and facilities standing around in empty fields.

Speaker 1 It's a tough call. It is

Speaker 1 unquestionably a tough call.

Speaker 1 Football news now

Speaker 1 and well the Spanish football smooch

Speaker 1 Ferago story is apparently reaching

Speaker 1 what will hopefully be a conclusion with the resignation of Luis Rubiales, the president of the Spanish FA,

Speaker 1 in the fallout from him

Speaker 1 grabbing World Cup winner Jenny Hermoso by the cheeks essentially and planting an uninvited kiss on her lips.

Speaker 1 at what should have been a moment of glory for women's sport in general and the Spanish national women's football team in particular. I think there are fairly basic rules.

Speaker 1 This is, I mean, the story has been going on for a few weeks since the World Cup final in August.

Speaker 1 There are fairly basic rules, I think, as a man presenting awards of any kind or being part of the sort of awards at

Speaker 1 a women's sporting event.

Speaker 1 One is don't grab your balls when celebrating something, which Rubiolees fell down on. And two is don't grab an athlete by the face and plant a big smooch on her lips,

Speaker 1 either with or without the cameras of the world trained upon you. And he's gone over two on those.

Speaker 1 and only now some what's it three weeks on has finally quat so uh i mean tom i know you know you you are a sports sceptic i think it's it's fair to say you've not embraced humanity's greatest creation fully into your soul that's fair yep what what have you i mean is he just a victim of the fact that we've, you know, for whatever reason, we've moved on from the universally accepted rule of human life that men can do what they want when they want.

Speaker 1 I think so. I think it's PC gone mad.
I feel good about weighing in on this story because it involves my two favourite things, sport and kissing women.

Speaker 1 Gentlemen, welcome to my wheelhouse.

Speaker 1 Look, obviously, terrible story, full solidarity with Himoso. And yes, God, this guy was no good.

Speaker 1 He kind of apologised to people who were offended initially and then tried to stay there and eventually stepped down. That's great.
But, you know, we should look on the bright side.

Speaker 1 We should celebrate the progress. I mean, mean, men's sexual assault scandals are now in women's football, and that's extraordinary.
And people are tuning in and caring, okay?

Speaker 1 Maybe there are little boys at home watching this on the news, Andy, and thinking, maybe one day I could be a sex pest in women's football. But I think, or as I call it, football.

Speaker 1 So I'm an ally, I guess.

Speaker 1 What was that thing he was grabbing his crutch when they won? What was he doing?

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that's the obvious thing to do, isn't it? If you're the representative of your nation's football or football association and your team is winning a tournament, I mean,

Speaker 1 who wouldn't instinctively grab their nuts in celebration? I mean,

Speaker 1 you do it, Nish. I've seen you do it at Champions Football on Tuesday.
Yeah, to use football, I do. Is there you injured your head?

Speaker 1 I should say.

Speaker 1 Nish is performing this week's people heroically. He's an inspiration to everyone with his hand in quite an elaborate cast.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I've broken my little finger because I sat on my hand whilst in goal at Fiverside Football, which I think it's probably means I'm officially middle-aged.

Speaker 1 I think sustaining a minor injury whilst playing extremely low standard sport. Don't lie, Nish, you sat on your hand, make it feel like it wasn't yours, and then you grabbed your crotch.

Speaker 1 I sat on my hand, forgot that I had my Bugle brand rack, butt plug up there,

Speaker 1 smashed straight into the finger, broke the finger, broke the butt plug. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 I would say it was one of my least favourite Tuesdays

Speaker 1 when we came in as I was explaining the state of my injury to Andy Chris came in sporting something of a sort of mild shiner on his face that it transpires you did how Christopher I top edged a cricket ball into my own face that's the official line I'm just gonna go with the new official line you punch me in the

Speaker 1 you broke your hand doing it

Speaker 1 anyway while that was all happening Ballard was doing a funny dance and celebrating never playing sport and never being injured from sports. Sports for losers.

Speaker 1 My body's entirely healthy and I don't do anything with it.

Speaker 1 So he's quit because he says that he wants to,

Speaker 1 he can't continue with his work and that he doesn't want to affect Spain's bid to host the 2030 World Cup.

Speaker 1 And he went on to say this, I have faith in the truth and will do everything in my power to prevail.

Speaker 1 My daughters, my family and the people who love me have suffered the effects of excessive persecution as well as many falsehoods.

Speaker 1 But it is also true that on the street, more and more every day, the truth is prevailing. And to that, we say, brother, we've seen the video.

Speaker 1 This isn't a case of he said, she said. This is a question of we saw.

Speaker 1 We all watched the video happen. We all thought, that's not cool.
You described it as mutual and consensual, which doesn't work if it's only one party saying it.

Speaker 1 On the street. On the street.

Speaker 1 It wasn't extraordinary. To take back through the narrative.
On the 20th of August, England allowed Spain to win the women's

Speaker 1 in order to help advance the cause of equality in Spain.

Speaker 1 We've got it all sorted here, so I didn't need to win. And yeah, Spanish players were collecting their medals.
Rubiales,

Speaker 1 freshman grabbing his nutsack,

Speaker 1 grasped Jenny Hermoso, record goalscorer for the Spanish national team with over 100 international caps, and planted a vigorously masculine kiss on the lips. The apology the next day was,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I mean, half-assed

Speaker 1 seems an incredible overstatement. He said this, at a moment of maximum excitement.

Speaker 1 Now, for a start,

Speaker 1 that is a phrase when you're apologizing for doing something wrong to a woman and you are a man, do not say at a moment of maximum excitement. It just conjures up wrong images.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it wasn't half-assed, but it was whole dick.

Speaker 1 Peace of porn. Maximum excitement is my poor name, by the way, that's how how I performed.
What happened happened in a very spontaneous manner.

Speaker 1 It has caused a controversy in some sectors, and some people appear to have been upset, and therefore I have to apologise.

Speaker 1 It sounds like something that was drafted by the G20, to be absolutely fair.

Speaker 1 Please ignore this gun at my head.

Speaker 1 Well, let's finish this week with a quick crime section.

Speaker 1 Exciting week for crime around the world. We had a very exciting prison break in London in which a terrorist, a suspect who was awaiting trial, escaped from Wandsworth Prison, not far from

Speaker 1 where Nish and I live, in south London.

Speaker 1 Coincidence. Ignoring...

Speaker 1 Well, due to lack of funding, our prison stock is in not great repair and is generally underfunded, and the staff has underpaid and undervalued and overworked.

Speaker 1 And he ignored the please don't escape signs

Speaker 1 and managed to get out of Wandsworth jail by clinging onto the bottom of a food truck.

Speaker 1 He was then recaptured three or four days later,

Speaker 1 having not got very far,

Speaker 1 just wandering around the towpath of a canal in north London.

Speaker 1 Prison authorities had appealed for a completely innocent person to volunteer to go into prison to balance out

Speaker 1 massage the stats um the one in one out puzzle

Speaker 1 you've all you've really buried the lead on this story

Speaker 1 the reason that this has captured the imaginations of the people of this country is the guy was hot he's hot the guy

Speaker 1 he was a hottie on the run man i mean he was fit man The guy on the run was fit. That's why everybody's been following this story.
The guy on the run was an absolute smokeshot.

Speaker 1 They leaked his mug shot and everyone agreed the guy was finging fit. I think it's good.
I think the judge should take that into account.

Speaker 1 I'm quite a lot older than you guys, probably a decade and a half. And to me, I just thought terrorist suspects look so young.

Speaker 1 It's also, I mean, presumably there's some rack knocking around in some prisons.

Speaker 1 We're going to start seeing prisoners escape just by slowly pushing the walls of their cell and watching them melt like aerobars?

Speaker 1 I think most of our prisons are too old to have someone as advanced as aerated concrete in. It's like the Shawshank Redemption, but you just punch through the wall to get out immediately.

Speaker 1 And, well, some crime across the pond in America

Speaker 1 involving the potential future president and actual past president, Donald Trump,

Speaker 1 notorious cancerous cyst on American democracy, facing more court cases than you can shake a stick at. And

Speaker 1 as a result of that,

Speaker 1 some are suggesting that the 14th Amendment could be brought into action to prevent him from running for office again.

Speaker 1 So the 14th Amendment, I mean, they did get quite a lot of the initial constitution wrong, hence they kept needing to amend it.

Speaker 1 Some of those amendments have really not gone well for them.

Speaker 1 But I think it states that you can't run for president if you are a certifiable f ⁇ ing lunatic in terms of

Speaker 1 everything America claims to hold dear. So, I mean, Nish, where do you see this?

Speaker 1 I know you've followed

Speaker 1 every single court case Donald Trump's ever been involved in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the legal process. I love a John Grisham book.
And this is the John Grisham novel of presidencies.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 the thing with the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars people who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the country from holding federal office.

Speaker 1 And I mean, listen, that does seem a relatively sensible thing. It doesn't seem like you should elect somebody to run the government who doesn't agree with the existence of the government.

Speaker 1 Like, it sort of feels a little bit like, you know, you're fireproofing by an arsonist. But, like...
That's very woke of you, Nish. And by woke.
By woke, I, of course, mean something I disagree with.

Speaker 1 But, you know, the thing with Trump is, at the end of the day, if only there was concrete evidence of him trying to win tie a rebellion, if only there was evidence of him standing in front of his supporters, instructing them to fight like hell.

Speaker 1 He's the Louis Rubiales of the US presidency, both in terms of his penchant for sexual assault and his the absolute fact that we have video evidence of him doing the thing he's alleged to be doing.

Speaker 1 It is puzzling to me how we haven't managed to secure a conviction on this guy.

Speaker 1 Well, on the streets niche, the truth is prevailing. And by the streets, I mean 4chan

Speaker 1 and Facebook. Also, you've got to be careful with the term concrete evidence.

Speaker 1 Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening.

Speaker 1 Well, I think we've had something for everyone.

Speaker 1 I think Chris has remembered why we continued doing these in Zoom and welcome back.

Speaker 1 Everybody gets a bit too giddy.

Speaker 1 Tom, have you got anything to plug?

Speaker 1 Well, a bag from Nisha's asshole.

Speaker 1 Don't worry, guys. The rack has completely, and I cannot stress this enough, collapsed into oblivion.

Speaker 1 You're more rack than men now.

Speaker 1 Say what you will. The soluble butt plug is one of nature's great inventions.

Speaker 1 People in Australia could come see my show, Yes No, my comedy lecture about Australia's referendum process. You, it's good.

Speaker 1 That's coming to Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney across September and August. All the details at comedy.com.au.
September and August. September and August.

Speaker 1 Racist?

Speaker 1 September, October. Sorry, as hemisphereist, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 If you live in the United Kingdom or Ireland, you can watch my stand-up comedy special, Your Power, Your Control, on Sky, On Demand, or Now TV.

Speaker 1 It will be available to buy globally once I've worked out how to do that.

Speaker 1 It will genuinely be available. I can't stop you from pirating it if you have a VPN.

Speaker 1 I can't do that. But I would rather you wait until I sell it officially.
Here's what I would say. Pirate it and then buy it.
Do you know what? This is even for me a bad plug.

Speaker 1 There is a live bugle show this coming Saturday, the 16th of September, at the Leicester Square Theatre. There are a few tickets still available, I think.
About five. Oh, right, okay.

Speaker 1 Don't bother. Ignore that.

Speaker 1 No, no, sell the last five.

Speaker 1 Andy. There's still five available.

Speaker 1 We should be announcing some more live shows soon, hopefully early that will be happening early next year.

Speaker 1 In the meantime, you can listen to me on the Newsquiz. Tom is making his Newsquiz debut this week as well, so you can hear

Speaker 1 more of him.

Speaker 1 It's just like this, right? It's just like this. They do edit some of the rudibits out there.

Speaker 1 This episode would have been a minute long.

Speaker 1 It would have been... Hello, I'm Andy Zaltzmann.
It would have been us saying our names and then a hard cut to tickets for the live show.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 1 There's nothing more to say. If you want to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 get hold of the vinyl record whenever it comes out in the nearest future,

Speaker 1 Or to help keep the show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.