Aclockalypse Soon

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4251 of the Bugle.

I am Andy Zoltzmann live in London.

It is the 30th of January 2023 and I'm delighted to report that despite rumours to the contrary, Planet Earth has just been recommissioned for another five-year stint.

There had been talk that the end of 2025 would be it for the planet with several new planets applied for one of the franchise slots.

And Earth's form having, of course, flatlined drastically in recent times.

But we are staying put at least until 2030.

It's bad news for Neptune, though, which has not had its contract renewed.

and is to be replaced by a new planet in January 26.

The bidding process is now open and according to rumours, Elon Musk's megasphere company are amongst the frontrunners having promised the first cubic planet which will also be the second most livable planet after Earth with atmosphere of 50% oxygen and 50% muscular tetra oxide as new gas and makes people impervious to criticism so

what an exciting time to be welcoming my two co-hosts this week firstly giggling away in south london it's mark steele hello mark hello that's excellent news about the new planet and to be honest i've never been a fan of Neptune.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's had his chance.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's nothing ever done.

That's nothing you don't even know.

Is it the big?

It's not anything, is it?

I suppose it's the furthest away now since Pluto lost its franchise a few years ago.

Yeah.

So, yeah, well read of it in my book.

But Pluto's doing very well in the planet conference.

It can work its way back up as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's been drawn.

It's been drawn against Wrexham in the next round.

Also, joining us, and I've no idea his views on Neptune as a planet but we'll she'll shortly find out from New York City it's Josh Gundelman hello

thank you for having me I you know I was pro-Neptune right I it was fine it didn't bother me you know

no one no rich guy was trying to go there wasting taxpayer money so I kind of liked it I liked that it was doing its own thing yeah

so what I mean what which planet would you like to get rid of Josh because you know oh, I, I honestly, I don't mean to sound rude about this, but Jupiter's too big.

I don't trust it.

That should be two planets.

Break it up.

It's like an interstellar monopoly.

Yeah.

It's a gas giant.

It's like Con Edison.

That's what we have in New York, right?

It's just one company that does all the...

It's got all those moons as well, isn't it?

How can the other planets compete?

Too many moons.

Well, we can dream of a fairer solar system.

And hopefully one day those dreams will come true.

But not quite yet.

We are recording on the 30th of January, as I said.

Tomorrow, 31st of January, was a bad day in 1606 for Guy Fawkes, the gunpowder plotter who was hanged, drawn and quartered in the classic British fashion of over-punishing people.

But

it does seem really one of those three would be enough.

Either hanged or what was it, drawn was that?

I can't remember exactly what drawing was at court.

It obviously is being chopped into four bits, which seems.

Oh, it's tied to a horse.

Yeah.

Is the drawn bit.

I think drawn and quartered is a package deal.

Yes, exactly.

The horses go in different directions.

If they just draw you, then you just have to live out the rest of your days tied to four horses.

That's drawing without quartering.

Yeah.

Well, sometimes some of these drawing places,

for good behaviour, they let you out after nine years.

It's a bloody oddity camp.

Some of these drawing places, I wouldn't mind.

They get a telly in there to be watched while they're being dragged along the cobbles.

And Wednesday is the first of February.

And it means that, well,

at the end of Tuesday, January will once again take the lead in the always tightly contested most frequent month of the millennium contest.

And we 24 Januaries now, if you take the millennium as beginning in 2000, which it did, ahead of the likes of August, November, and March, who are in an 11-way tie on 23 occurrences.

So who's going to hit back and pull level?

Or could January open up an unprecedented two-point lead?

Will December leave it agonizingly late again?

Or will February sneak in under the radar once again to equalize?

Full coverage here on the bugle.

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

This week, an ethical hunting section.

And while very exciting times for people who'd like to hunt but have moral qualms about it, following the excitement over Kylie Jenner's appearance at Paris Fashion Week, wearing a hyper-realistic faux lion's head as a brooch, we look at the latest breakthroughs that could soon make hunting accessible to people who are a bit squeamish about slaying animals for fun.

So for those born under the star sign Vegetarius, who've always longed to be able to track down and execute the great creatures of nature, some hugely exciting developments, including the advent of fully vegan big game hunting.

That's come several daintily footprinted carbon neutral steps closer with the development of a giant pumpkin shaped like a rhinoceros.

The pumpnoceros has been genetically modified to have a grey outer shell and knobbly horn-like protuberances that from a distance look quite like a rhino snout.

The vegetable, which has no known conscious being, can then be mounted onto a remote-controlled quadrupedal buggy that can be driven around the safari park in patterns of movement modelled on the real real rhinoceros whilst an on-board sound system enables the hunters to hear the pumped noceros' dying whimpers once shot to complete the true hunting experience without the pangs of guilt caused by slaying an unarmed endangered species just because you can.

Also in production, the tow pheasant, which is a pseudo-pheasant made of tofu that can be attached to a drone and for the gun sports fan is always yen for a fairer contest between human shooter and avian shootie.

Can even be armed with a pellet gun mounted to its wings with a motion-sensing sensing camera so that the bird can return fire and scottish landowners are now offering a humanitarian stag hunting weekend where two actors don a pantomime stag outfit and gamble around the highland glens until you take them down with a paintball gun the actors will then ceremonially smear stage blood over your face before performing a selection of classic theatrical two-handed scenes uh but rewritten to involve deers which is something that you don't get from uh a dead stagnant

are the royal royal family going to go in for this sort of thing they like a shooting party don't they they they do Well, you'd hope so.

They're a bit more up with

Charles.

Yeah.

Going for the stags and ecstasy.

Yeah.

I think he would.

I can see William going for the more humanitarian

vegan stag hunting.

I can see that.

Very progressive.

It is a hugely progressive institution, Mark.

Very forward-thinking.

That's what I was going to say.

Even Harry, who is the far left of the royal family,

even Harry was like in one in one of the many, many interviews that he did.

And there was quite, there's still a few to come, I believe.

There's one, because he's done most channels, but

there's still going to be one on Eurosport in between the Badnington.

He's doing the fugal in a couple of weeks as well, though.

Tell all.

Even Harry, right?

So he was like,

there was one evening, there was one day when we were just a normal shooting party.

You don't have a normal shooting party.

If you want to

try and become the people's bloody royal pots, you have to

don't say things like the

just a normal shooting party.

Most people don't have a normal shooting party.

What do you do over the weekend, Terry?

Oh, we're just gonna have a fucking shooting party.

Oh, not again.

Yeah, the missus, she loves it.

Anything here with guns makes you more relatable to people.

Oh, yes.

Good point.

He was trying to appeal to the American audience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I forgot.

And finally, in our ethical hunting section, whale hunting need no longer be a guilty pleasure with the fun-packed offering from the luxury nautical ethical holiday specialists Moby Diculus, who offer you a range of replicataceous bow whales created from decommissioned military submarines which you can pursue and similar slaughter with a fully biodegradable magnetic suction harpoon.

Anyway, that section is in the bin.

Top story this week.

We are doomed, or at least more doomed than at any point since 1947.

This is according to the latest update to the doomsday clock,

which measures,

I'm not sure entirely how, subjectively or objectively, how close the planet is to Armageddon.

And it was launched in 1947, when, of course, the world had just been through the greatest trauma in human history and had resolved to live happily ever after for the rest of time in peace and harmony, which isn't going quite as well as would be ideal.

But we are now closer than ever to

Armageddon clock.

I don't know as a percentage how doomed we are, but I think it's probably over 80% doomed.

And on this clock, there are now 90 seconds until the end of the world.

I should emphasize it is a symbolic clock, not an actual clock.

So we do hopefully have more than 90 seconds to go before the end of the world.

Because this is a show on the internet, at some point, someone could be listening to this when there are literally 90 seconds to go until the end of the world, but hopefully not for at least another five or 10 years.

How worried are you both

by

this clock?

I mean,

do you keep tabs on it to think quite how close we are to the end of everything?

I have my alarm in the morning set to it.

I like to wake up with just kind of a baseline dread because this does seem pretty harsh, right?

Like 90 seconds till the earth is done.

That's not apocalypse now, but I would call it a clockalypse soon.

I know.

I have some questions.

Does it account for daylight savings time or saving time, which you still have here, right?

So maybe we forgot to set it back like I do with my microwave and it's only actually like about 11 p.m.

instead of midnight.

Um, because 90 seconds does sound so dire, that's not even enough time for me to text my family group chat, right?

To say I love them.

It's I'm not making individual calls, never mind that.

I will say,

What were you gonna say, Mark?

Sorry, I jumped in.

No, what's that?

What's that group chats when the nuclear bomb goes off?

Hi, everyone.

Did anybody see that blinding light?

I've got a cactus in the window.

Do you think it will harm it?

uh but that's it right like i kind of feel like they're bluffing because that's that's that's not to talk ill of the bulletin of atomic scientists or boas as i hope they call themselves to sound more intimidating um just like we're snakes and we know science

at the end of the cold war There were we were 17 minutes from doomsday.

That was the high watermark for a distance from apocalypse.

And we still haven't hit doomsday yet, decades later.

And that's like a common trick, right?

You text your friend and you're like, we're 17 minutes from doomsday and you haven't even left the house yet.

So like that just feels, and now it's at 90 seconds.

And I'm starting to feel like it's when parents want their kids to behave and they're like, I'm counting to 10.

And they're like, the kids are still being bad.

And they're like, nine and a half, nine and three quarters.

I swear to God, I'll make this planet uninhabitable if I get all the way to 10.

Yes.

I know.

Is it Putin that's done this?

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, apparently.

I hope he's pleased with himself.

Yes,

it has got closer to midnight because Vladdy Poodles, the Kremlin Gremlin, has

the big two of a very short temper and a nuclear arsenal.

Now, one or the other.

In isolation, wouldn't be quite so dangerous, but both together

is high risk.

Also, we're closer to Armageddon because of Prince Harry's memoir and the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill.

I must stop reading the Daily Telegraph.

Plus, the inexorable rise of the T20 franchise leagues at the expense of Test cricket.

And Elon Musk, once again, having almost certainly developed a cosmic death ray nuclear mega penguin that can lay radioactive eggs that will surely destroy us all.

So a number of factors, but definitely

the Ukraine-Russia situation is

shunting us closer to the precipice.

If I could just, I'd say, I saw one thing I think was very alarming here was that Putin at one point said when he put his nuclear weapons on absolutely the top high alert that the reason for it was a speech by Liz Truss.

And

I thought I could just about accept the end of thousands of years of civilization, but let it not be because of Liz Truss.

What a terrible reason for the human race to die out.

When aliens land here in a million years, they go, I wonder what happened.

And then eventually they work out, oh, then this woman made a speech.

Well, she must have been in power for a long time to cause the entire destruction of humanity.

No.

About as long as it takes to launch a nuclear missile is how long she was in charge.

Yeah, I mean, another thing that really alarmed me was

a woman from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Boas,

called Rachel Bronson, and this is the organization that

decides where the big hand of the doomsday clock is pointing.

And the fact that they've only ever got, as Josh said, to 17 minutes to midnight.

So this they're not using the full scope of the clock or being slightly over-pessimistic.

She said that Russia's threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention, or miscalculation is a terrible risk.

And look, I mean, you might not be happy with Liz Truss causing the end of the world, but I'm really unhappy with the idea that accident or miscalculation could bring about the end of the world.

I don't mind so much if it's intentional human self-destruction.

That would fit with our overall narrative through our history.

But what I do not want is the last words of our species to be either whoops or did you say go, go, go, or no, no, no.

that is not not what i want

yeah well there we are we live with it yeah i mean would you well it can't be worse than it was in sort of 63 when the uh when the uh russians put their missiles in in cuba or threatened to would it yeah well that's what they've worked that's what they've worked out they moved it 10 seconds closer right it was 100 seconds and now it's 90 but what does that mean i can't even heat up leftovers in that 10 seconds but i mean given that you know we've we've never got more than 17 minutes away is is it time to accept, you know, it's inevitable and just, you know, just, you know, try and remember the good times and accept that, you know, maybe our relationship with the planet has reached

an end point.

And the longer we stay together with, the more we just hurt it and hurt each other, really.

So,

and if the world did end, would you...

Would you miss it?

I mean, there's pluses and minuses for me.

Minuses, no more Olympics.

Obviously, that's bad.

That's tough.

On the plus side, an end to all the disharmony in the United Kingdom over Brexit.

And I think that's the only way that we will ever fully get through it in this country is just the end of the world and everyone who lives on it.

On the plus side, Donald Trump's 2024 campaign could struggle if the world has been reduced to post-nuclear nothingness.

On the minor side, from a Jewish perspective, no messiah.

And

that's really disappointing.

I mean, waited all this time.

And if the world ends now, you know.

Oh, what if he's planning to come back?

Rather than he ends up coming back back a couple of years after the world's ended.

I should have texted to see if you were still going.

He's got the whole universe full of planets.

He must be going back to all of them in turn, I guess.

And we are,

that's why if you are, if you ask, if you have prayers, if you ask for him to come back, it will go, you are being held in a queue.

You are planet number 304.

F's sake.

Also, from the Jewish perspective, just historically, we're not fans of Holocaust, nuclear or otherwise.

So, I think it's just fair to say this one wouldn't be really in our wheelhouse.

And also,

I do not want the world to end now, mostly because this coming summer's Ashes series looks like it could be an absolute belter, Mark.

So, I mean,

I really want to wait until at least autumn before the world's end, and before the world ends.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.

if it's uh what if it comes just before the last day of the oval test when england need 170 to win with seven wickets left oh

don't put that thought in my head

i'm not sure i could cope with that

there'll be

people in the commentary box saying you know as the as as the the the radioactive cloud envelops the oval saying oh you can play in this i don't know why they're going off you know

in the 60s, they'd have played through this.

So the Ukraine situation has been...

Well, Russia has been aggravated.

It doesn't take a lot to aggravate Russia.

And as I said, Putin has a bit of a short temper.

But Germany, after a long period of pressure, has agreed to send its highly rated Leopards 2 tanks.

Is everything a sequel these days?

To help

Ukraine's effort in the war against the underpressure of Vladimir Putin's

Russia team, which has been underperforming, I think it's fair to say.

I mean, it's

Putin does not rap,

doesn't seem to take constructive criticism well,

so he's probably going to get quite cross about tanks.

Um, just seems he's not the kind of guy you should waggle tanks at.

Uh, but uh, no, I'm still not enjoying the Ukraine crisis, I still don't like Putin, it's nearly a year on, and I still, it's one of the most baffling out of all in the huge catalogue of completely pointless wars.

I think this is right up there in the most pointless.

And there doesn't seem to be

any end in sight.

No, it's got years on it, isn't it?

And it doesn't even have a close season this war.

At least with football you get a couple of months off.

This is, I know this sounds ignorant, but we're still doing tanks.

That's still what we're doing.

That feels too old school.

Like, at this point, are we trying a big wooden horse full of soldiers or asking poseidon himself to send a tidal wave to intervene like tanks is still how we do it a big wooden horse full of soldiers would be a would be a magnificent unexpected i mean i'm not generally a yeah i'm not generally a fan of war but that would make it all worthwhile yeah if the germans sent in a big wooden horse.

Oh,

at last the Germans have been nice to us with presents.

To add to the general sense of Armageddon's gloom, an American general called Mike Minahan

has predicted that the USA could be at war with China within two years.

He said, I hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me we will fight in 2025.

Now, let's just hope that this American general's guts are wrong.

Let's just hope he ate an undercooked homemade kung pao squirrel and is feeling negative towards anything even vaguely chinese and also the gut has largely been proved to be less accurate as a diviner of the future than an evidence-based approach to analyzing the current trajectories of global politics and economics which can also be wrong uh of course also it's possible he was sitting in his armchair with his shirt off got bored and made his tummy button talk by squeezing it and uh and letting it go but um

yeah just There seems to be almost a story every week that just makes you think, oh, what the f ⁇ are we all doing?

And why on earth did I bring children into this world?

There was one other

sort of apocalypse related story.

It came from Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State under Donald Trump, published a memoir.

And I've not read it, but I did read the headline of the story, which he highlighted quite how close we came in 2019 to a potentially world-shaking showdown between India and Pakistan.

Now, that was all I read about it, just this, and I hadn't read the article, but so I assume what Pompeo was revealing was quite how close India and Pakistan came to meeting in the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup in 2019.

Pakistan would have made it if they hadn't lost the first of their nine group games by such a big margin to the West Indies.

And as the former Secretary of State, no doubt, pointed out, that defeat ultimately cost them as they lost out to New Zealand on the controversial net run rate rule.

Cricket's equivalence of goal difference, and New Zealand went on to play and indeed beat India.

But it just shows on such slender threads the future of humanity can dangle.

One final Armageddon related piece of news that I mean it might be that humanity doesn't destroy itself but that it outsources it as it tends to do to the robots and the latest news from this an article on the new scientists website a millimeter sized robot made from a mix of liquid metal and microscopic magnetic pieces has been developed.

It can stretch, move and melt.

And it's almost like these people want to destroy the planet just to prove how fucking clever they are.

The first rule of designing robots, don't make them so f ⁇ ing small that you can't see absolutely everything the f ⁇ ers are doing to you.

Second rule, don't make robots that can shift between being solid and being liquid.

That is f ⁇ ing obvious.

And third rule, actually, come to think of it, don't make liquid robots at all.

It's obviously asking for f ⁇ ing trouble.

Have these fact-based, f ⁇ -witted scientists never never watched science fiction?

Their naivety is fing staggering.

According to the new scientist, this technology could be used to fix electronics or remove objects from the body.

Could be used to do that, but it obviously won't be, will it?

It will be used for some nefarious ends by a cackling megalomaniac billionaire in a secret island lair somewhere before the micro-robots inevitably develop minds of their own and start slithering their way into all the computers in the world, as well, of course, into our human brains by wheedling their way into our skulls by the various poorly designed orifices in our heads this is a disaster and the new scientists present it as progress uh josh i know you are hugely skeptical about all scientific progress and this must must have rattled your brain i mean this honestly where i feel like we're at 87 seconds now in the doomsday clock just after hearing this because the headline that that announced this like you said the new scientists they put it as progress they said metal robot can melt its way out of tight spaces to escape when the headline should have been holy shit we made the terminator real and we're sorry exactly who could hear that and not think of the terminator how do you want liquid robots yeah but i i'm very much the same with the dishwasher

right i mean these things are evil they take 10 times as long to load as as it takes to wash things up in a bloody sink and yet they're convincing us with their bloody waves that they're obviously sending out that they're useful and one day they'll just be taking over the world they'll just be marching down the street, sucking in buildings and spraying them.

Totally unnecessary.

How come when we invent stuff from science fiction, it's always the stuff that murders and never just like the box where you can be like, boop, piece of cake, and then a cake comes out.

Yeah.

Why aren't they working on that thing?

Humanity having less money than sense now, in the sense that it has a huge amount of negative money.

It's uh US debt ceiling season.

It seems to come around pretty much every year, Josh.

And the, I mean, if you could choose one ceiling to be smashed to pieces, you know, the glass ceiling, the Sistine Chapel, or the US debt ceiling,

you'd probably have predicted it would be the U.S.

debt ceiling.

And sure enough, the Godzilla of debt has knotted through the saggingly damp blaster work of moulding beams that is the American debt ceiling.

$31.4 trillion

in debt now.

That seems like

a lot.

How far do you think America

can take this before essentially it just owes everything in the universe?

I think we're going to beat the high score.

I think we're going to do it again.

So if people don't know, the U.S.

Congress votes to authorize how much debt the nation is allowed to carry.

It's unclear how our government is in charge of of that.

It seems like it should be up to China.

It's their money.

They should have some say, right?

Like we have this fight in the U.S.

Democrats versus Republicans.

Like, should we be allowed to owe more money?

And we just get to go, hey, China, we voted.

It turns out we're going to tack a few more trillies onto that IOU.

Do you have Fenmo?

What are we doing here?

Yeah.

We're the worst episode of MTV Cribs of all time.

We're just, because we didn't even get anything good with all the debt.

We just lead a camera person around our nation going, like, look at these corporate tax cuts.

Check out the most expensive military in the history of the world.

And then in three years, when we haven't had a hit record in a while, the whole country gets listed on Zillow or Street Easy.

Yeah, and such a really good podcast.

I'd never thought of it.

Because if you would, if they went, oh, no, look at the debt we're in.

And we were just like, everyone had swimming pools, guitar-shaped swimming pools.

Yeah.

But we've got nothing for it.

We had nothing for it.

We don't have health care.

Nothing.

We have so much debt and we have nothing.

Well, it's kind of an addiction, isn't it?

Economically.

I don't know.

It seems it's not possible to wean ourselves off it.

In Britain, we've also hit record levels of national debt.

£2.5 trillion worth of debt, which, of course, is...

That's cute.

That's exactly.

It's barely chicken feed across the Atlantic.

But,

yeah, I mean,

it's astonishing, really.

In 2001, that was the last year that the US government ran a surplus.

And American national debt then was under $6 trillion and under half of GDP.

And now it's over 30 trillion and 125%

of

GDP.

And

I dread to think what...

If there are any historians in the future, and maybe this is the one good thing about Armageddon is we will never be judged by history.

What they make of the first

23 years of this millennium.

God, God, but I think we've made, we bloop out quite a lot as a species, I think.

Who's got it then?

Ah, well, that's the kind of question.

You start asking that question, Mark, the whole economic edifice will crumble.

You've just got to believe in it.

It's like

fairies in Peter Pan, isn't it?

Anytime someone says they don't believe in the global economic system, somewhere in the world and an investment bank dies.

So you've just, you've just got to stay the course and keep the faith.

So

this happens all the time.

We're nearing a standoff on this again because, excuse me, Republicans love to create debt, but they hate to borrow money, which is a conflict.

They only want to pay for, as I said, military and tax cuts for the wealthy, guns and yachts.

They're like the world's bougiest pirates.

They're like the friend who orders three cocktails at dinner and then suggests splitting the check evenly, except in this case, they order all the cocktails and go, we're going to run out on the bill.

No, you created this mess.

You stick around to deal with it.

And that's, this is the problem is that

if we do raise the debt limit, right, we're still going to spend it on the same things and the government gets to keep running.

If we don't raise the debt limit, the government will default, which is worse than when a regular person defaults on a loan because

it's not like the Chinese government just comes over and breaks Joe Biden's thumbs and Janet Gellen's legs it would throw the global markets into chaos which for the Republicans is actually a win they'd be like see America is still number one we're throwing the global economy into the most chaos it's ever seen

would you think that might be a way to to to solve it politically if

politicians were going to have their thumbs broken they might be a little more responsible yes i think i think the that the world would be better if politicians ever faced any consequences for their actions.

If you're asking that, I think.

Look, I'm not saying regular people should break the thumbs of politicians.

I'm just saying

we've got a lot of checks and no balances.

Well, that would be quite a check and balance, wouldn't it?

If someone came in and went, hey, give me a trillion.

Right.

Right.

We've gone from

to really put a little check yourself before I wreck yourself into checks and balances.

Ice cubify it.

Moving on to the sacking of Nadeem Zahawidi, chairman of the Conservative Party and a cabinet minister

who was most recently, before he was sacked this morning, as we record,

a minister without portfolio, which is a incredibly nebulous job title.

So basically he's a minister who doesn't actually have anything to do,

which is a strange, it's kind of a strange thing to have in

politics.

He's been in four years in government: schools minister, business minister, the supreme row of the vaccine rollout, education secretary, chancellor of the exchequer, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, chairman of the Conservative Party, and minister without portfolio in just four years.

And that shows the almost

unquantifiable levels of irresponsibility in this government.

The fact that these jobs are treated like just a bit of work experience before you off and do something else.

Anyway, so he's been fired over this tax issue and breaching the ministerial code over who he told what and when and this rather sort of complicated tax thing to do with a business of his stroke, his father's based in Gibraltar for tax purposes.

Anyway, there's details online that you can read off about all the tedious details of it.

But

he's been sacked.

And

it's only, I think, only the second sacking stroke resignation since Rishi Sunap became Prime Minister three months ago.

And you think two cabinet ministers in three months would normally be quite a high rate of turnover.

But by recent standards, it has been almost like an ice age of stability.

Well, I think they're just going for it now.

I think they know they've only got 18 months or so left.

So they're just going to get, and whoever replaces them will be done for nicking a load of tools out of a van and a breaker's yard.

And they'll say, oh, I didn't realise it was against the rules and it was just because I was being careless.

And it'll turn out he sent all the tools to the Cayman Islands,

to a garage in the Cayman Islands, where it's legal to store stolen chisels.

And they double in value every half an hour.

And they're just going to do whatever they want.

They're just mad, mad, mad things now.

They replace ambulances with Ubers.

And you'll just have to have a heart attack and lie in the road and type in a postcode and stuff.

And then someone will be going,

I'm sorry, I arrived now.

Yes.

Where are you?

I can't see you.

By Burger King, by Burger King.

And then they'll leave because they get a better job from a woman who's had a stroke.

And then, and it's just everything.

And then all the hospitals will be shut and they'll say we're going to send the patients to Rwanda.

And it's just.

And it's just.

trash in the plate, they don't care.

£3.7 million!

And he was fined another million,

and then the government and the prime minister goes, Well, yeah, let's just move on.

It's supposed to be the party of law and order.

Imagine if you did of any other crime, you have been found guilty of

actual bodily harm and have memed four different people in a pub brawl.

Yeah, but I I mean, that was a couple of weeks ago, Your Honor.

Let's just move on.

Indeed, let's just move on.

Let's not get bogged down.

What the British people really want is to see our plans for a new rail system between Swindon and Didcot.

This is what we were talking about earlier, right?

That it's the consequences for political malfeasance are so low.

And even the way we talk about it is so gentle.

Like, Andy, it's been described as a breach of ministerial code.

That's what you said, which I truly assumed meant like wearing your wizard robe inside out at some kind of parliamentary ceremony or failing to deliver a suitably sad note of condolence to the queen corgis

corgis upon her death.

But he just didn't pay his taxes.

That's not a breach of ministerial code.

That's regular crime.

I've done that crime.

You don't have to use euphemisms when it's regular crime.

That's like saying if he was sacked for magisterial impropriety.

You're like, well, what does that mean?

Oh, he was masturbating on a city bus.

Okay, that's just regular impropriety.

You can just say what happened.

Let's not dress it up.

I guess, in a way, I do feel a bit sorry for Nadeem Zahar, because there were three good reasons that normal standards of behavior should not apply to him.

One, he's an MP.

Two, he's a high-ranking cabinet minister in the Conservative Party.

And three, he's a multi-millionaire businessman.

Now, if he's not above the law,

who is?

And what does that do to the concept of aspiration in this country?

The egalitarian idea that that if any of us work hard enough and are successful enough, we too can be above the law.

Will it only be the

preserve of the aristocracy again?

What kind of country do we want to bequeath to our children?

Where will be the incentive for my kids to strive to be sufficiently wealthy, not to have to worry about the law, taxation, codes of behavior, and basic morality?

It's no wonder that the younger generation have given up trying.

No wonder.

We've got to give them that ray of hope.

Disgusting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

I do think that given the churn of government ministers, there is an argument to say that all government ministers should formally resign before taking office.

So basically, a pre-resignation.

Just get it all out of the way.

You swear your oath of allegiance, whatever you do when you become a government minister.

Then you resign for anything you have done, for anything you may be doing, for anything that you may one day do.

And then you can just get on with it and we have a bit more stability in government.

There's one

lord, Tory Lord, did you see this this week?

Who suggested this is the sort of thing now that they actually discuss

that

when before a student graduates, they should take, I promise I'm not making this up, right?

Before a student graduates, they should take an anti-woke test to see how honestly to see how anti-woke they are.

And if they are sufficiently anti-woke, they get a discount off their student fees.

Wow.

That's what, yeah.

That, oh dear.

That, oof.

That should just be a deal.

If you're like anti-woke, you get a discount.

That truly just sounds like

a deal that like Alex Jones would offer on his supplements he sells on his podcasts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

10% off if you call in and say you're anti-woke.

Yeah, yeah.

You can get your brain expanderizer.

Gorilla Ball supplement.

Is it him that's got all the millions or the trillions?

He's lost most of his money.

If he's paid up all his debts, wouldn't that clear most of it up?

He's not.

Yeah, if he paid up his debts, I think our government would be fully funded.

He should just send the money directly to China.

A slight digression.

We have our own scandal right here in New York.

Representative George Santos, who was just sworn into Congress, he's facing new scrutiny because he had their $500,000 was donated to his campaign and he said he donated it from personal funds.

And now he's saying, actually, they were my funds, but they weren't.

personal funds, which is, that sounds, that's definitely cheating talk, right?

Like, oh, I was with her, but I wasn't with her.

It's the same, but it's different.

And

he, there, here's a couple of facts.

He said a month ago, he said, in a week, I'll make everything clear.

And it's been a month, and he hasn't.

And I'm, if you don't know about George Santos, everything he says is a lie.

So I'm really excited for his explanation for this situation.

Not because I think it'll clear up any misunderstandings, but because I think it might be the most masterful work of fiction America has ever seen.

Move over Faulkner, move over Hemingway.

The bar's been set high by your recent ex-president.

Truly.

Lie him.

That would really, really be

in a lie-off.

Santos has never said anything true.

He lied about being a star volleyball player at a college he didn't even attend.

He's inventing new

axes of untruth every day.

And as a New York resident and as an American, I'm disgusted by his presence in government.

But as a writer, I'm completely demoralized by how prolific and imaginative his work is.

Like, whatever campaign, wherever the campaign loan came from, he'll be able to pay it back with the MacArthur Genius Grant he's awarded for his excuse for his work in fiction.

This is the modern policy, like Boris Johnson, who just now, I presume he's just lying just for fun, I could see a shoe.

Yeah, he's probably just wandering around little, going up to random strangers, going, I invented zebras.

I've got to

knob the sheep of Canada I'm yeah I think it's just can't stop

I've got the biggest tomatoes who live four miles four miles

through it I go through it I'm a shop putter

well that brings us to the end of this week's bugle uh we will be back uh next week uh delight as uh as always to have both of you on have you got any shows to plug to our listeners Josh yes I'm gonna be in I have a couple uh live shows I'm in Philadelphia at Helium Comedy Club as the secret headliner, but I can tell you that on February 8th.

I'll probably book some more.

Oh, and I'm in Brooklyn this Friday night.

I'm doing a new material show at Union Hall.

If you want to know more, joshgondelman.com slash schedule.

And if you want updates on what I'm doing, I've got a stand-up special called People Pleaser that you can watch worldwide, I believe, on Vimeo, free for Prime members in the U.S.

And

oh, I have a newsletter called That's Marvelous, where I write pep talks for readers every week.

That's joshgondelman.substack.com.

Sorry for the extensive plugs.

Mark, have you got anything coming up?

Yeah, I'm about to start a tour that I'm terrified of.

I saw half-written and it starts this Saturday

at Derby, but I think there's any tickets about that.

Staff, oh, where am I going?

Stafford, Stratford, Bunaben are the next ones, and then I'll

know.

There's about 50 dates, Mark Steele tour that should get you to it.

And

anyway, I don't know where I'm going.

Yeah,

I did have a whole bloody string of gigs on Neptune, but

now that it's been decommissioned as a planet.

Oh, and then I do my own podcast that Mr.

Zoltzman's very

been on a number of times.

And very much hope that Josh will be on soon called What the F is Going On.

I would love that.

That is a question near and dear to my heart.

You can listen to me hosting the news quiz currently on Radio 4 via BBC

Sounds.

And thanks to everyone who came to my final two tour shows we arranged from late last year.

We will play you out now with the Bugle Wall of Fame, consisting of the great cultural achievements of our voluntary subscribers.

To join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Joseph Hickey invented the fast forward button on video cassette players, prior to which people had to use a special manual spooling device called a crank weasel.

Anders Montanon discovered that stained glass windows really don't work so well at night time.

Libby Witt restored Leonardo da Vinci's culinary classic The Last Supper to its original state, removing the bottle of tomato ketchup, crate of Belgian lager, and copy of Puzzler magazine that had been wrongly added in the 1950s.

Andrew Weewell disproved the commonly held theory that the Egyptians built the pyramids as stadiums for watching Sphinx racing, and Diana Patterson also disproved a less commonly held theory that the Egyptians built the pyramids because they thought they would be effective structures for catching pigeons at any height below about 120 meters.

Darcy Latramoui corrected Albert Einstein, who had erroneously concluded that E equals M C.

Fortunately Darcy was on hand to add the key squared bit that made it work.

Martin McMaster sculpted a surprising number of the works in the Louvre Art Gallery in Paris and he never complains that they're all attributed to other more famous artists.

And Lisa Woolland was the visionary disruptor who suggested putting the cushions around pool tables to stop the balls falling off onto the floor.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you 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.