THE BUGLE REVIEWS 2022, PART 1

Top story this week, the world is still fed.

We've been away for three weeks.

That has been the top story, really, like for it feels like the last decade.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, welcome to the Bugle's official review of 2022, Part 1.

I am Andy Zoltzmann and over the next 30 minutes or so we are going to explore the first six months of this absolute shit of a year.

There's a lot of Russia, there's of course some royal news, but let's start in January of all places with me, Alice Fraser, James Colley and some optimism for what would surely be a better year.

But rather than dwell on the untimely, pointless agreement from the world's great nations not to nuke each other, we focus on Australia and Novak Djokovic.

Australia COVID tennis news now, and it's been an extraordinary week here in Australia with the legal case surrounding Novak Djokovic, the 20-time Grand Slam tournament winning tennis player

and Joyless Efficiency Monthly magazine's

sportsman of the millennium so far.

It's been really quite hard to fathom this, but I'm in the context of COVID in Australia at the moment.

When I arrived what two months ago now and there were very few cases and now there are in scientific terms

loads of cases everywhere

it's it's been a kind of interesting and curious time to be here

and there's even talk of people having uh pox parties in Queensland to try and catch catch the virus but I mean

As we record, Novak Djokovic has been released back into reality from his incarceration after a judge overturned the government revoking his entry visa.

It's such a bizarre story, this, because Djokovic is clearly, I mean, he's a great sport, a great tennis player, but at the same time, no one particularly likes him, or not many people, or maybe no one particularly likes him, but a lot of people particularly don't like him.

And he's

not had a vaccine, but he has had COVID recently.

And the day after he tested positive for COVID, he was shaking hands with children and receiving an award.

It's a really weird story.

Can either of you make head or tail of it?

I mean, I can't make head or tail of it.

There's two events within it, within this series of events, that delight me.

One, that there were violent protests in the streets of Melbourne, either for or against Novak Dokovich entering.

I'm not sure

why or not whose side they were coming down.

It was just presumably fkwits doing what fkwits do, which is f witting about.

But that his father compared him to to Spartacus

and his family, during a press conference when they were asked about him attending these indoor events in the days after he tested positive,

tried to tried to

divert attention by singing a patriotic song.

Just singing a Serbian country folk song, fun times.

Right.

That's very Spartacus.

Just make a loud distraction until the guards move along.

I wish we'd really liked Spartacus.

He'd have waged war on the Australian government on the the slopes of a volcano, but

he's not done that.

I mean there are elements in which Djokovic and Spartacus are like peas in a pod, but both perform well in an arena.

Both have been played by Kirk Douglas in film portrayals of their lives, the Djokovic

CGI Kirk Douglas movie, due out

in five minutes time.

They both led revolutions.

Spartacus led the the third, I believe, the third servile war against the Roman Empire in the 70s BC, and Novak Djokovic is trying to lead a revolution against medical science and good sense when it comes to COVID vaccination.

Both of them have hair like a Lego man.

I mean, that's not proven with Spartacus, but it's definitely true of Djokovic, so let's assume it's also true of Spartacus.

And both have a marble statue in the Louvre of them with their penis out.

So

it is uncanny.

You can see why

that

Djokovic's father could mix him up with the famous slave revolt leader.

And standing with him is noble, but also ultimately bad for your health.

I think that this situation, so what we need to understand firstly is just how rampant COVID is ripping through Australia right now.

Like all trends, it takes a couple of extra years to get to Australia, but as soon as it gets here, we go for it.

And right now, three out of every four teths are coming back positive, with one of them inconclusive.

No, sorry, that's the ashes again.

But

two James.

I've spent nearly an hour not thinking about the cricket and you've just brought it all back.

Bam.

You will devote his lifetime.

What we do know about this story, though, and all tennis fans know, is tennis has the greatest review system in modern sports.

And that is exactly what has happened to Djokovic here.

He's out.

No, he's in.

Okay, let's take it to Hawkeye.

Ooh, and he's in.

Only just.

This is a big win against the Australian government.

And it was the Australian government's mistake for holding the proceedings on a grass court.

If they had held it on clay or even perhaps synthetic, he probably wouldn't have triumphed.

But

you can be forgiven for thinking that the way into Australia was to break the law.

It used to be.

That was an old policy.

We changed that a short time ago.

And this has turned into a real egg-on-the-face moment for our government, who were hoping to use the story to distract on an egg-on-the-face moment they were having with rapid testing, only for that story to backfire and draw attention to Australia's cruel immigration laws, which is somewhat of an entire factory farm applied directly to the face.

But I feel ultimately, this story, like so many, is a terrible misunderstanding.

You see, Melbourne is the most locked down city in the world.

I myself have done multiple lockdowns in Melbourne.

This wasn't a punishment for Djokovic.

We were trying to show him a little bit of the local culture.

Welcome to Australia.

Here's a spoonful of Vegemite, two weeks stint in isolation, and when you get out you can pat a koala that's almost as diseased as you.

That was issue 4216.

Now we move ahead to February and a bugle recorded a week before Vladimir Putin, absolutely wild with cabin fever we assume, sent his tanks into Ukraine.

Here I am with Neil Delamere and NATO Green discussing the Russian army obsession with the letter Z.

Another possibility is that it marks vehicles where soldiers are having a pre-invasion snooze,

so that the other tanks know not to play music too loudly.

What is weird about this is that Zed isn't a character in the Cyrillic alphabet.

So they're putting a character from a different alphabet onto stuff, which is, I mean, right up there with Ama Tattoo is a Chinese symbol for serenity.

You know,

it's not.

It says f knuckle.

You're an idiot.

So one theory is is that it's for zielinski isn't it that he's kind of public enemy number one amongst some of these the uh the the troops who are going to be invading which one one hell of a heckle for a comedian to feel isn't it well when the scots finally invade england they're going to be driving south with bj written on the side of the lorries which is going to make for some very interesting adventures on the lay boys of the m1 as they drive down

Isn't Zed the name of Bobcat Goldwaite's character in the Police Academy movies?

so

deep cut everybody but uh

police state academy yeah um there's a talk that um

french president emmanuel macron has been trying to hammer out a deal with putin um to lead to a summit with with joe biden it's been reported differently in different british newspapers depending on their attitude towards the continent see if you can guess which of the following headlines is from the Guardian and which from the Telegraph.

Macron paves way for potential Biden-Putin summit or Putin embarrasses Macron again.

You win

£5,000 if you can get that right.

Oh, but you have to pay it directly to yourself in cash.

So

it has been reported that Putin has agreed in principle to summiting the shit out of all this shit with Biden,

followed by more chin wagging with the other leaders.

Macron has said they will work with all stakeholders to prepare the content of these discussions.

Now, that's a strange term.

I mean, I'm a stakeholder in this because I have a stake in the sense that I'm on balance opposed to World War III.

I don't know if I get an invite and

a say in this.

I mean,

how do you see the French involved?

It seems to be kind of competitive,

who is having the most progress going on between various countries.

Stakeholders could be a criticism of the current preparedness of the Ukrainian army.

Work for Henry V at asincourt

always about asian cores it always comes back to that can't let it go who had 20 minutes in who had 20 minutes 20 minutes first agent core no

i've got donald bradbury on 25.

bradman you mean bradman i don't know anything about cricket i reached too far and i failed i should have said graham gooch or someone

Chris, are you raising your hand?

Yeah, sorry.

Andy, I just thought, like, there was breaking news about five minutes ago i don't know if which might be relevant to the in for that just basically saying putin has now or russia now recognizes the independence of the breakaway areas of ukraine controlled by russian separatists and he has apparently told the french and german leaders at one in one of their summits that so i don't know if that is irrelevant in or not well chris what i mean the question i have is how come you were the first with this news.

I mean, how are you getting direct news from Vladimir Putin?

And, you know, I mean, mean, we've seen the Russian influence in elections, as was mentioned earlier on.

And now it appears that they've got a direct line to the producer of the bugle.

I mean, I think there's many buglers who have been part of the show for many years who would assume nothing less.

And I am actually, my background is blurred because I am currently in Kiev.

This means that Putin also has a Chris Skinner P-tape.

I mean, I sold it to him.

I mean, we all have one of those.

I got it in a goodie bag.

Well, if Putin is recognizing the independence of breakaway areas of Ukraine, I'm going to recognize the independence of the rest of Russia as part of the United Kingdom, as all countries used to be.

So, you know, two can play that game, Vladimir.

And if you want to come on the show and discuss it, just drop Chris an email or is he on your WhatsApp group?

Yeah.

What's the name?

What's the name of the WhatsApp group?

Cop invasion bants.

Booting the boot in.

In terms of America's approach to this, NATO, America has defended its decision to not impose sanctions, despite Ukrainian President Zelensky calling for the sanctions to be applied now.

And Secretary of State Antony Blinken on CNN said, The purpose of the sanctions in the first instance is to try to deter Russia from going to war.

As soon as you trigger them, that deterrence is gone.

So essentially what he's saying is you have to wait until they go to war.

Otherwise, you won't be able to deter them from going to war.

When is this all America has now?

I mean, it's.

No, I mean,

America, I mean,

this is why it's promising that there's a summit on offing, is that America's diplomatic secret weapon is Joe Biden getting on the phone with Putin and just saying, come on, man,

until peace breaks out.

That's basically how Joe Biden does stuff.

Operation Malarkey.

Yeah.

Like, there'll be, Joe Biden will launch into some sort of like rambling, incoherent, like folksy tale about growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Biden, and Putin will agree to peace just to get off the phone.

Because essentially, what Blink was saying was that the threat of sanctions is the deterrent rather than the sanctions themselves, which he clearly knows, he knows what's in the sanctions and that they're f ⁇ all use.

So as long as we've only threatened them, Russia might think they're actually quite serious.

But the problem is now he said it out loud.

Russia knows that

the emperor has no underpants on, as the old tale goes.

John Kirby, the Pentagon Press Secretary, said on Fox News, if you punish someone for something they haven't done yet, then they might as well just go ahead and do it as another reason for why America is not.

I mean, I've been advocating this in criminal justice for some time: pre-served sentences where you can put yourself in 15 years in jail, and then you can come out and essentially treat yourself.

It seems to be which came first, the chlorinated chicken or the Fabergé egg?

It's like that experience.

Andy, I'm sure as a parent, Neil, do you have kids?

No.

As a parent, this is like the experience of disciplining young children using counting.

Did you do this where you would start, you're like, you're going to get a timeout if I count to five and then you never get to five?

You just slow down the counting so that you never actually reach five.

That is pretty much the central plank of my parenting strategy.

I mean, I was disciplined using that.

My father would say, I'm going to count to five.

And he'd hit me on two and then shout, never trust anyone.

That's how you make a comedian.

March now.

Buglers and Nish Gumar and Josh Gondrelman join me to reflect on the influence of former comedian Vladimir Zelensky's achievements on our own psyches.

Story this week, well, we reported exclusively last week on the Earth plummeting down the planet rankings in the solar system.

This week, the human race,

while still just about clinging on to the coveted cleverest species in the world title, title, has also gone right back to the top of the stupidest species chart as well.

We've overtaken lemmings, that is a contest that has run and run through our history and will run and run for as long as history continues.

So till next week, Andy.

Quite possibly.

We've got another six to seven days on that.

The two V's, Vladimir Ukraine, and Vladimir Uk

up against each other?

And I will say,

as a Jewish comedian in his 40s whose surname begins with Zed, I've been feeling deeply inadequate this week.

Even more

than usual.

I think, listen, it's been a chastening week for all of us because I saw Sparta in the last, really over the last two to three weeks, there are people on the internet trying to contextualize Vladimir Zielinski for people in the United Kingdom.

And more than one person

has used the following phrase.

This is a bit like what would happen if Nish Kamar was elected Prime Minister.

And I am here to tell you all, it's f ⁇ ing not

because Vladimir Zelensky has refused the offer of asylum in America and said that he's going to stay the country and fight for his people.

And I'll be honest with you, if Putin rolls up on Dover, I'll be out of this f ⁇ ing place so quickly I will leave a pencil outline in the air like a cartoon character.

And if anybody accosts me, I will be doing an Indian accent so offensive people will assume it was coming out of the mouth of Apuna Hasapima Petalov.

Yes, I mean he has set the bar high for what comedians can achieve if they put their minds slightly higher than talking shit on a podcast once a week.

And

we see how it's going.

Better point.

I mean, it's been one of those weeks

as a parent, where

you find your children watching uncertified slasher movies on a stolen laptop after lights out, and you think, well, at least they're not reading the newspapers.

Guys, please, we've taken all the filters off.

Watch pornography.

I would prefer that at this point.

You know, you check their internet browsing history and find that they've been trading illegal guns, steroids, ivory, questionable World War II memorabilia, bushmeat and endangered reptiles in the dark web, and you think, well, it could be worse.

They could be things watching 24-hour news channels.

Or you find your youngest child engaged in the amateur taxidermy of a dead fox that they found in next-door neighbour's bin using your best kitchen knife and your priceless collection of 1930s cricket autographs as the stuffing, whilst posting baseless conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton running a global baby stealing ring.

And you think, well, that is better than listening to an hourly news bulletin.

It's just tragedy on tragedy played out on our TV screens.

Million people have

been displaced already from

Ukraine.

Thousands have died.

Europe as a continent is just trembling, shitting itself as it contemplates its past, its present, and its future.

I've been on tour this week.

And Nisha, I know you've been touring as well.

I think it's been the hardest I've ever found it to

do comedy and to sort of think comedically.

As I was sat in a hotel room in Ipswich watching footage of a

Russian military force shelling a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, I did think this is going to make my customary post-show wank a little bit sadder than usual.

Well, you got to turn the news off before you start that.

That is

a protest.

Also, get off the stage as well.

Family show, honestly.

Looped up by my own tears for humanity.

That's the Nish Kamar story.

In any ordinary weakness, that would be the most revolting image series in my games.

But I guess if you're going to say that, this week may be as good as any.

Yes, listen.

It has been another

very difficult week.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues at pace.

From a British perspective, it's been a somewhat depressing week.

Obviously, the bind that countries like the UK and the US find themselves in is that any kind of military intervention by NATO or any of its allies could be the thing that triggers a nuclear war.

And I found a very, very concerning quote from Nikolai Patrashev, who's a very close advisor to Putin and head of Russia's Security Council.

in 2009 he warned NATO that Russia might engage in a nuclear strike to repel an aggression.

And so one of the principal concerns at the moment is that Russia may use one of its 1 to 2,000 tactical nuclear bombs that it has, which are smaller nuclear weapons and make them more mobile.

Boutique.

I think they've learned as boutique.

Yeah, artisanal nuclear weapons.

Yeah, yeah.

One size.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they come with a happy meal at McDonald's in Moscow.

But Padrashev said, You may have a more impressive military than I do, but I care a lot more and will kill us all if necessary.

And at this point, Russia are a kid who is going to say, if you're going to beat me at football, I'm taking the ball with me.

It's mine, I'm taking it with me.

Except in this case, the ball is everyone's lives.

It is literally in the nuclear football.

That was Bugle issue 4223.

Now let's move forward in time to April.

Nish was back, so was Alice.

And let's assume Russia was still bad and turn our attention instead to Rwanda.

Britain is going to catapult asylum seekers to Africa.

Essentially, I mean, I think it might not involve an actual catapult, but it definitely involves a metaphorical catapult.

A scheme has been announced.

Scheme?

Plot?

I've not got...

scheme isn't very.

Yeah, someone's taking a shit on a piece of paper.

What's the word for that?

What's the Latin word for that?

Policy, I believe.

We will be blasting

asylum seekers to Rwanda of all places in what the government describes as an attempt to crack down on people traffickers.

Tough on people trafficking, tough on the victims of people trafficking.

Now, obviously,

the whole issue of global migration and asylum is complicated, and dealing with the underlying issues is a bit tricky.

I mean, the obvious solution is to end all war, inequality, hunger, suffering, prejudice, and persecution, plus fix climate change, oust all despots, and make life in general better everywhere.

But that's not really a vote winner.

So, instead, we have decided to

fly our asylum seekers

Africa, to a low-grade hotel in one of the world's poorest countries.

Now, obviously, Britain is one of the world's wealthier nations.

It has always been our God-given right to use Africa and whatever the other continents are these days in whatever finger way we need to, as a source of food, source of labour, source of museum trinkets and soft furnishings, a source of things to shoot, ideally with four legs or wings, but history shows we've not always been too fussed about that.

And now

we need to use it as a not very convenient, procedurally problematic, ethically humiliating, environmentally twattish and economically nonsensical pseudo-solution to a problem that we can't be asked to solve ourselves.

Nish, as our resident Pretty Patel correspondent, how have you enjoyed our Home Secretary's latest contribution to the slow death of human hope?

Chris,

get the bleep button ready, my boy.

Get the f ⁇ ing bleep button ready, because this is about to go off.

This is actually a plan that the Conservative Party has trailed repeatedly.

And at a certain point, the sections of the British Commentariat and certain journalists and opinion and editorial writers need to give up on the idea of saying this is fundamentally un-British.

Because ultimately, what could be more British than a plan that is inherently racist and involves the exploitation of a country in Africa?

This is, I'm afraid to say this is as British as the Beatles and flavourless food.

One of the most adult British rap artists of the 1980s today.

Straight out of Richmond.

And if I know anything about the listenership of this podcast, we will be seeing

mocked-up album covers all through the next week.

So

any adult who comes to the UK without authorisation by a trade or plane could be considered for relocation to Rwanda.

Once there,

the veracity of their asylum claims will be settled.

It's a plan that is so barbaric.

This weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who's one of the most important clerics in the Church of England,

has openly criticised it and has used this sentence.

Subcontracting out our responsibilities even to a country that seeks to do well like Rwanda is the opposite of the nature of God, who himself took responsibility for our failures.

Opposite of the nature of God is first of all a review of my 2013 Edinburgh show.

It's pretty stark rhetoric to come

from a Christian,

especially on Easter weekend.

It does also, yeah, Easter weekend, when he basically stood by and watched his son be executed.

I mean, it does suggest that the Archbishop has not read all of the Bible.

God himself some slightly, well, I think, harsh policies.

I mean, to be honest,

if the Conservative government had the logistical capability to unleash 10 consecutive plagues on

people attempting to come to Britain, I think they would do that.

The Conservative Party at this point serves no other purpose other than to deliver.

It is the most effective delivery system in the world for tax cuts and racism.

It's no longer a political party.

That's what it functions to do.

It functions to save millionaires and billionaires money and to execute racism.

And you know,

a few years ago, my friend, the great American comedian Mike Popiglia, asked me, because I had alluded to there being some differences between British and American racism, what I felt those differences were.

And what I would summarise is, I would say this.

The differences between British and American racism are the same as the differences between the British and American versions of the Office.

American racism has a cast of hundreds of thousands.

It seems to be vast and all-encompassing.

British racism is much more subtle.

It's in the pocket, it's all in the gestures.

They might not say all of the words, but they're heavily hinted at.

And crucially, when it comes to racism, as with the office, we invented both of them.

So go f yourself.

Both the Steves, be they Carell or Bannon.

But it's

this the scheme is

currently projected to cost a hundred the initial cost is projected to be a hundred and twenty million pounds That's a figure that could rise into the billions if it runs and runs and runs now Obviously, that is particularly spicy given the events of the last couple of weeks in Britain where the government has essentially told the population that there isn't money to help them with their rising costs of living in terms of the cost of food and the cost of their energy.

And what have we learned from British history?

There is always money for racism.

Whatever is going on, if you want someone to help pay your heating bills at this point, just start screaming racial epithets out of the window and you'll receive it in the form of a bursary to protect your free speech.

As an Australian, can I just say I feel like I am the expert on the export of expats, aka the OG of treating refugees badly.

We have here, just so you know what was about to come down your pipeline, we have what we call the trampoline trampoline rugby ball policy, which is anyone who tries to land in Australia is flung off at great force at a random angle and we pay millions of dollars to make their lives as miserable as possible, lest people think we are a nice place to live, which, by the way, we also constantly advertise that we are.

Well, I may repeat my own joke.

Australian rules immigration very much like Australian rules football in that it is needlessly violent and aggressive despite there being a colossal amount of space and remains baffling to most outsiders.

I don't mind you repeating that joke.

I would rather you didn't have to repeat that joke, not comedic for comedic reasons, but for reasons of, you know, basic human morality.

Moving on to May now, and you know who used to seem immortal back then?

Yes,

the Queen.

Total societal collapse news now and the United Nations has warned that global collapse is becoming more likely in a new report.

A report in which some have claimed was actually watered down before being published but still warns of total societal collapse.

Now, Alice, as our entitle Apps of Human Civilization correspondent, a role which you fulfilled with great dignity over recent years,

I mean, is this really the kind of language that's going to grab people's attention, warning of total societal collapse, rather than, for example, you know, a long-term internet outage.

Is that not more likely to get people to do that?

I think what you need to do is remember the first rule of writing: show, don't tell.

So, what you need to do is have a total civilizational collapse, and then people will

get on board with it as a news item.

That not a single major newspaper picked up on the total civilizational collapse bit of

the UN report.

They instead focused on a bunch of other parts of the report, including, you know, yeah, keep spending money and building up your economies, which is sort of the bit that I don't think we really should be doing.

I haven't been this disappointed since I found out that the art of war wasn't one of those expensive coffee table picture books.

But the report notes that at least four of the nine planetary boundaries are

outside of the safe operating space for temperature.

Sure, that's still five out of nine that are fine, then.

I mean, that's that's a majority, so we're still winning, essentially.

Yes, yes, we are winning, except all of the people in those dangerous places are heading to the places that aren't quite as dangerous, which will make those places more dangerous, civilizationally speaking.

The report lists a bunch of cities that'll be underwater by 2050.

And both where my parents live and where I live

are the first five on that list.

And the only happiness there for me is that I'll hopefully be dead by 2050.

But it's Mumbai and Calcutta are right up there.

One because it's in the Ganges Delta and the other because the Arabian Sea is going to go batshit crazy.

It already has four cyclones in off-season.

So I have chosen well, Andy, in where to live, because they won't exist as places.

Well, I guess if the whole planet's going to have societal collapse, then it doesn't really matter whether you've got anywhere to live or not.

So let's look on the positive side i just want to say it varies for person to person because lately i've i've been in this country now for a month and a lot of people have been complaining

about like a complete societal collapse and it varies because for one person it was the fact that he couldn't get brussels sprouts at the local co-op

and he said in the local paper society is collapsing

and another person i read in the paper missed his flight from manchester to austria because there was a six-hour wait at manchester Manchester airport.

Apparently, there are no people, so there are queues outside the airport.

And he said, Civilization has ended.

He wasn't going to get a refund.

So it is very personal.

And I'm going to lose both the towns I grew up in because they'll be under the sea.

One guy missed a flight, and one guy can't get bus from Sprout.

So I think it varies.

I think it may manifest itself in many different forms.

Fortunately, here in Britain, we don't need to worry about total societal collapse either in this country or indeed the rest of the world because this week we have a jubilee

marking 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II

being on the throne reigning gloriously,

happily and victoriously, I think, if I recall the national anthem, which I'm a bit rusty on.

The

alarming news, the Archbishop of Canterbury has been ruled out of jubileeing

due to COVID, so I don't know if they're going to get the leader of another major religion to step in, which could liven things up a bit.

I mean, it's

it's just so wonderful at the moment.

I'm not sure we've ever needed a Jubilee quite as much as we do now.

Not only is there the total societal collapse of the entire world, but also the absolute devastation of British politics as a functioning entity as manifested by the

current Prime Minister, the various reports into him and the fact that he is still the current Prime Minister and not the formal Prime Minister.

But I mean it's wonderful that you're both here for this Jubilee.

The only reason I came, Andy.

I mean, it's a very exciting time.

The latest tributes include that the DNA of all British citizens is to be rebranded as ENA, standing for Elizabetho's nucleic acid, to pay tribute to the role that the Queen has played in defining exactly how British we all are.

And possible, the government's going to change the

entry requirements for people wishing to move to this country.

They must have at least 50% of the same DNA as the Queen.

Of course, natural-born Brits have a solid 80 to 85% just by birth, whereas various non-Brits at large roaming the unelizabeth, the seconded world, carry a maximum of 3%

of the Queen's DNA.

A course of injections over a couple of decades can actually turn a non-Brit into a perfectly serviceable Brit if they sing the national anthem in the shower every morning during that time and wear union jack underpants on birthdays, Christmases and all days of royal significance.

So, you know, I think that shows what an open-minded nation that we have become.

And if a mere porn walks from one side of the UK to the other one step at a time, when they reach the other side, they turn into the queen.

Yes, they become a queen.

Yeah.

You often hear talks of people walking from Land's End to John of Groats,

from, you know, the tip of Cornwall to the tip of Scotland.

But if you come the other way,

that legislation.

You win.

Yeah.

That was Anuvad Powell and Alice Fraser with me for Bugle issue 4231, aka Q Unit.

Now time for June and I was joined by NATO Green and Hari Kondabolu to discuss America and its relationship with guns.

Is this

actually going to bring about any possible results or will you know the end to America slaughtering itself really rid it of any

you know of its kind of USP as a nation that you know it is more willing than any other country in the world to act against its own self-interest?

Oh yeah.

We're number one at that.

We're very good at acting against our own self-interest.

First of all, the big news this week is that Republicans and Democrats are willing to talk to each other about creating a proposal for gun control.

It's not that they've agreed to anything.

It's simply that they're talking to each other as they're supposed to do as legislators.

And has has been the case for a couple of hundred years.

But they just started talking about it and going back and forth.

And there seems to be a lot of disagreements.

For example, the GOP is still a little wary

about passing any kind of federal legislation or anything that would prevent people, potentially with mental health issues, from purchasing guns.

Now,

the left is worried because that seems to be a lot of the gun violence we see in these mass shootings.

A lot of the mass shootings seem to be by people that shouldn't be owning guns.

But the right's problem is that is a big part of their base, right?

People who would not be allowed to buy guns if there were mental health checks.

And that is such a sizable proportion that to actually bend on that particular issue would be the downfall of the Republican Party.

It's quite a competitive title, Hari, but that is one of the most depressing jokes in the entire history of the Bugle.

Hey, I knew NATO was here.

I knew NATO was here.

I had to come up with something.

The gauntlet's been dropped, NATO.

America, and particularly particularly whiteness, I would say, is a murder-suicide pact with the planet.

Texas Senator John Corden said that we all agree that deranged, dangerously mentally ill people shouldn't have firearms.

They call this a red flag law.

Now, the average gun owner owns five guns.

If you want five automatic rifles, that is a red flag to me.

I'm just going to start there.

Is that number because

when you have more rifles than limbs, that's going to require you to be using your teeth to fire the fifth of those rifles.

So, is that your

limit for you, Nato?

That's the limit.

That if you

if you have

more guns than books in your house, I'm going to go ahead and call that a red flag.

This bipartisan push now

from the Senate to pass gun control.

You know, there was a school shooting in Texas recently.

It was incredibly tragic.

School shootings are the only form of abortion that Republicans support.

What I've been reflecting on as I think about how our commitment to mass murder in the United States is that mass murder is actually a form of privilege.

And hear me out.

I've spent a fair amount of time in the third world.

I've traveled pretty extensively in Latin America.

There's a lot of violence.

People get killed a lot, but not for such stupid reasons.

Like, in Latin America, if you're a sociopath with an assault rifle, you're given a job.

Like, you're a colonel in the secret police.

You have a purpose.

It might be to exterminate some villagers or fight narcos while being a narcot.

You know what I mean?

But you have a mission.

You don't go murder children because you're a virgin.

That's a waste of bullets.

According to a new poll from CBS, 72% of Americans think mass shootings could be stopped if U.S.

politicians would only try, but 69% thought it was not likely that they would try.

No wonder people are cynical about politics.

We don't think politicians will even try to solve problems.

It feels like we're peasants in the 14th century France just trying to harvest some carrots and hope the Hundred Years' War doesn't raise our hamlet on its way through so we can die of bubonic plague and peace.

Almost half of Republicans think that mass shootings are the price of living in a free society.

And I have a different idea of free, I realize.

That's what I realized is that like, for example, just recently in San Francisco, we had Carnival.

It's one of my favorite events.

It's a parade and street fair celebrating the diversity and endurance of Latino culture in my neighborhood.

And as I stood on the street watching vintage lowriders bounce down the street to a Portuguese version of Daft Punk's Get Lucky while I ate an empanada and Cumbia dancers on stilts walked by while lesbian roller skaters gave candy to children.

I did not think this feels free and it really needs a mass shooting

to just

complete the weekend.

So the Republicans and the Democrats and the Senate are negotiating,

and they're far apart on a few points.

Democrats want a bill to do things, and Republicans want to act like they're doing things without doing things.

And so I've gotten, I was leaked the notes of things that the Republican senators are adding to the gun control bill to reduce the risk of mass shootings without upsetting the gun lobby.

One is a new initiative to teach babies how to use a gun at the same time that they learn to latch onto the nipple

because the best defense against a bad man with a gun is a good baby with a gun.

Requiring children to wear school uniforms of bullet-riddled and bloody clothes so they look like they've already been shot.

Making every third gun out of avocado so that it will go bad suddenly three days after purchase and stick up the house.

And training veterans with PTSD and arming them to be school security.

We're bringing back waterboarding in school.

So during the negotiations, Biden gave a speech about his agenda for gun control, and a Republican senator involved in the negotiations described Biden's remarks as, quote, unhelpful but irrelevant.

Unhelpful but irrelevant sounds like a Yelp review of Christianity.

There's three heathens on this, and we're all enjoying that joke.

We're all enjoying that joke.

We're all going to hell.

So we can laugh about it there as well.

Well, Harry, I think your depressing joke's not even top ten now after that.

If you didn't enjoy the joke, please email jews at thebugle.co.uk.

That was from Bugle issue 4232.

And you can listen to the whole thing on the internet if you want.

We'll be back in just a few days with a surprisingly less bleak part two of our review of the year, which includes some barely believable British political news, Elon Musk, and perhaps the showbiz event of the year, even the millennium, the Bugle's 15th anniversary.

Until then, 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.