Nazi Game Shows

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4234 of the universe's leading and only audio newspaper for a visual world.

I am Andy Zoltzman, here in the second half of the solar year.

It is the 22nd of June 2022 as we record.

So yesterday was midsummer for, well, I mean

a democratic majority of the world.

It is midsummer and I respect democracy and people in the southern hemisphere are frankly wrong.

So are we at the halfway point of the solar year?

Or simply a metaphorical tipping point into a spiral of the unavoidable encroachment of darkness?

Or has it merely just been the one time of the f ⁇ ing year that your f fing henge that you all spent all that money on actually works?

History

will be the judge.

Joining me

to see in the second half of the 2022 solar year, I'm joined by Nish Kubar and Neil Delamere.

Hello, both of you.

How was your midsummer?

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Neil, hello, Chris, hello, buglers.

First things first,

it's very hot in my house.

I'd say it's f ⁇ ing boiling.

And so for the first time, I am bugling trouserless.

And I'm interested to know whether that allows me to fly through the bullshit in a more aerodynamic way.

I'm still wearing underpants.

But I'll be honest with you, it was a close run thing.

It was a very close run thing.

As it is,

I'm wearing a t-shirt and underpants.

And I'm interested to know whether this allows me to fly through the bullshit

more aerodynamically

prepared for a fast movement.

Well, this is a massive coincidence because I watched John Cena's new show last night, and bugling trouserless was John Cena's signature wrestling move.

Also, I did actually go to a midsummer festival.

Old school buglers will be familiar that just every so often I get a job that nobody really understands what it is, but it allows me to do some wild and cool shit.

And so I'm filming a travel program at the moment with uh Josh Whitticomb because it's legally required that I film the travel show with one white comedian.

So last time it was Joel Dommit, this time uh it's Josh Whitticomb.

And uh I was in Northern Ireland and I met some mummers uh who were kind of uh keepers of ancient Celtic storytelling and they wear wicker baskets over their head and we did it uh we sort of participated in a uh it wasn't actually on the day, but a sort of cod solstice festival.

And they were such nice people and it was a really incredible experience but what it always reminds me of is man white people are into some weird shit like historically historically white people are into some weird and wild shit you're a lot weirder than you allow yourselves to be given credit for

well it's it's time for me to reveal that that mummers thing has only existed since 2012.

We had a particularly poor Trapatoni-led Republic of Ireland team and the North didn't get into it.

Or maybe they did that year.

No, it was 2016.

So now we just do random stuff like that.

You were the first person we've ever tried it out on.

I can't believe it actually worked.

I like the idea that increasingly people are trying to come up with traditions that could feature on British comedian travel shows.

It's interesting you mentioned that the COD solstice there, which is

slightly different to the land-based solstice that we have COD celebrate it.

I think

five days later, due to it taking a little longer for the the seas to warm up.

Wasn't there a big row between the UK and Iceland about when the cod solstice actually was?

I think there was.

And they use henges, ironically, made of fried chipped potatoes.

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

And well, this weekend, the Glastonbury Festival is back, returning for the first time in three years after taking a couple of years off.

I can't remember why.

I think it was because everyone had already heard all the music.

But we look at some of the less high-profile festivals that people will be pitching their tents at around the world this summer, including the Giant Parsnip.

The root vegetable themed festival is back, held this year at the Flobston Manor in West Gruntshire.

Music acts include the Spuds, Hip Hop, Brass Band, Crossover Sensations, Betty Beats and the Tuber Tubers, Mash Metallurs, Potatoes of the Hecatomb, and the controversial agrarian religion rockers, The Coal Rabbis.

The Cabaret Tent sees the Agriculture Culture Wars character at Provocateur Jerry Salem, the Anti-Woke Artichoke, alongside always threatening Dai Kong and burlesque troop the Rara Radishes, plus a quick turn from Sad Clown Funyon the Onion.

And don't miss the horseradish dressar show, that is simply sensational.

Also, another festival that we look ahead to is Shhh!

the self-proclaimed world's quietest music festival, which promises quite literally to rock you to sleep.

The headline slots this year are filled by American anti-thrash stadium stillers, Somnales, Subjudicate, the rising stars of the dull drum and bass scene,

and the 1960s soul legend PP Arnold, finally, finally living up to her initials.

Also, catnap rapper Pause for Thought appears in the hypno-hop tent.

And don't miss the long-awaited reunion of folk duo Muffles and Hush with support slots from Tributaks Tranquilizer Carthy and Mogga Don McLean.

There's the 12-bar snooze blue star, soothing Jay Snorkins, and of course, S-Club 7 are back.

Turns out the S stood for slumber.

Shhh, is of course in competition with the Lullae by Loosa Festival, but it just shows what a market there is for this kind of stuff in our hectic, caffeine-addled, overworked world.

And of course, there's Atwood stock coming up in a couple of weekends' time.

That's a festival based on the works of Margaret Atwood, which is

possibly

a little bit harrowing.

I'd avoid it if I were you.

That section

in the bin.

We are recording, as I said, on the 22nd of June.

Tomorrow, 23rd of June, is the anniversary of a bad day in the life of Henry Hudson, the North America exploration star.

In 1611, on the 23rd of June, his mutinous crew set him adrift in an open boat with his son and seven other crew members in Hudson Bay.

in Canada.

Now, I imagine there were some pretty awkward conversations on on that boat between Hudson, his son, and those seven other crew members, possibly involving the words, well, it's named after you.

You should know your fing way out of it.

But they were never heard from again.

It was pre-Instagram days, of course.

It's not entirely clear what happened.

There was no 24-hour TV news either in those days.

But, you know, it may also have involved the words, boss, by any chance.

Could you name at least some geographical feature after someone who isn't fing you?

This lack of closure over what exactly happened to Hudson does leave open the tantalizing possibility that he might still be alive because Hudson Bay is pretty big, so it's entirely feasible they've just been living low, possibly out of fear of having to explain to their bosses at the East India Company, exactly how things went so badly wrong.

And let's not forget, you know, they're probably living on quite a healthy diet, mostly fish.

And it's possible.

I mean, that would be, I think that would be a good story if,

you know, 411 years on, Henry Hudson turned up wherever he was going.

Sorry, do you need us in this at all?

Not really.

Not yet.

Well, actually, we do now because we are moving on to.

Top story this week.

Democracy around the world is causing trouble in quite a lot of places, particularly France.

It's been a bad election this week for Emmanuel Macron.

Just two months after he retained the presidency, he's lost control of the French National Assembly, the FANA, after an election which left his centrist coalition at the mercy of the left and right wing, the left and right wings of French politics, which both made gains.

Neil, you are

our European democracy correspondent,

as you are Irish, you are still in Europe.

Of course, Britain is heroically, gloriously free of that benighted continent.

How did you enjoy the French election this week?

Well, I can't believe that on this show we're going to be talking about a rail strike, a barrister strike, a health work strike, and a teacher strike.

And it's not in the French part of the show.

This is the bugle switching things up since 2005.

Yeah, so this is a very interesting story because Le Pen's seats, I think this is the most interesting part of it.

Le Pen's seats from the far right have gone from eight to over 80, 89 seats.

So that is a serious result for her.

And some coincidence, because if you look at that on a graph, it goes up at the same angle that some of her friends hold their arms.

It's a ten-fold increase, right?

So if that rate of growth continues, she's going to have about 900 of the 577 available seats at the next election, which is a serious achievement.

Macron doesn't know what he's doing at this stage because, like you said, he won the presidency but lost his majority.

So the French people have spoken and what they've said is we want you to be the president.

And when you are do nothing.

You must do nothing whatsoever.

It's like being elected a pope and then we're like someone said but we're gonna we're gonna phase out mass.

So basically you're gonna be waving and kissing tarmac.

That's pretty much all you're gonna do.

So he has to approach every single bill, bill by bill, by the looks of things.

Or possibly the Republicans, the Conservatives are being described as kingmakers, which in France

is

not necessarily what you'd want.

You will be in power, but we will decapitate your entire family and seize your property.

So, swings and roundabouts.

But I have enjoyed it immensely watching from afar.

Finat is the perfect

word for the situation because Macron has got a nutshot from the French electorate, and finat is the perfect noise to describe what you make when you get hit in the nuts.

It's fina!

Several French newspapers this morning have described France as being ungovernable.

And I guess

I would say plus sachange, mesames, plus sachange.

Yeah, the most concerning thing about all of this is that Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally Party were in a good mood.

And listen, very little positive happens when Nazis are in good moods.

I don't know if we have to say allege Nazis, but I'll leave that up to Chris.

But

what I will say is:

if you walk down the street and you see a chuckling Nazi, very little good has happened.

Very little good has happened in that situation.

You see a big grin on Hitler's face.

Nothing positive has happened for wider society.

I'm as fair to say France is not entirely content with itself

at the moment.

Have you been watching Allor Law and the policeman in particular?

This episode of The Bugle is sponsored by The Pink Panther.

The turnout was 46%.

Oh, mayor.

And this is the fourth round of national elections this year.

So, I mean, a bit of pencil fatigue is clearly setting in

France.

The new Prime Minister is going to be whoever left the sugar babes last.

That gets very complex philosophically, I think.

A professional of constitutional law, Dominique Rousseau, was quoted as saying, These five years for Mr.

Macron will be all about negotiations and compromise.

And you might be forgiven for thinking, isn't that what all politics should be about in a grown-up world of cooperation for the common good?

But that is not how democracy

works, not how it should work.

Negotiations and compromise are fatal signs of weakness.

And as you said,

this idea that France was going to be ungovernable, the economy minister Bruno Le Maire

said it was not going to be ungovernable, but said it would require a lot of imagination.

And could this be what global politics needs?

This kind of surrealism and whimsical flights of fancy in high office.

Magic benches for all.

A secret portal somewhere in the Dordogne that transports the people of France to a land of giant butterflies that lay eggs maid a foie gras, of singing cheeses and of 1980s rugby.

This could be a brighter future that humanity has been crying out for.

Vote Darlie!

Vote Darly and vote often, preferably whilst writing your vote with a courgette.

A melting courgette.

Vote Darlie, when?

Ah, we've no way of actually measuring time.

I'm offended

because my clock melted.

He's never gonna get any of the things he wants through he wants it to raise the retirement age from 60 62 to 65 and i have to say i thought most people thought that that was about balancing the books i think it's his mates down the pub going you're shagging a pensioner and he's like not for long

of the uh one of the positive stories so another block of seats uh big block of seats was won by the new uh leftist coalition uh they won 131 seats and they are they are calling themselves noopes which is not a great name because it does sound like slang for a sexually transmitted disease.

Although, we do have to remember this is France, and that is seen as a positive thing.

It stands for the new ecological and social popular union, and I think that it's very welcome that they've won a lot of seats, but that is the kind of opinion that normally leads to me being described as a communist in the Daily Mail.

But

one of the

opinion leads to that description.

I like bread.

Oh, commi!

One of the MPs who's been elected is Rachel Kiki, who's been elected

and who has vowed to dance in the assembly if she succeeded in winning that, which I am hoping that she is going to be held to that standard.

But anyway, she defeated the former sports minister.

She was actually a former hotel chambermaid.

And she said that she hopes this will give other chambermaids the confidence not to undervalue themselves.

Now, first of all, we need to nip this this in the bud.

Everybody knows that if you have experience of actually doing a job in the real world, that has no place in politics.

That is not the route we want.

We want people to come into politics either because their parents were politicians or because they went to an elite university and then worked for a think tank that has investigated the possibility of burning the poor for fuel.

That is the true route into politics, not this experience of actually doing a working class job.

I mean burning the poor for fuel, I think, is a rather outdated idea though, isn't it?

I mean, surely now we'd sort of try and mulch them down and

do it in a more environmentally friendly way.

When will we finally investigate zero carbon solutions for using the poor as fuel?

If you want to rig a vote though, and it's a closed vote, it can't be that difficult to stop

the woman who used to be the chambermaid, and I think she led the chambermaids' union, didn't she?

Coming into the actual chamber, like a small do not disturb sign on the outside of the French National Assembly, and boom, you get your bill passed.

That's good thinking.

Moving across the Atlantic, Colombia has elected its first leftist president, Gustavo Petro.

He beat off the challenge of Rodolfo Hernandez, who was described as a gaffe-prone media mogul.

Well done, Colombia, for at least paying some attention to what's going on in the rest of the world.

Well dodged, or at least a bullet well delayed.

Folllows a recent trend of win-wings.

It follows a recent trend of wins for left-wing candidates in South and Central America, in Peru, Chile, and Honduras.

Petro ran on a pro-environment, anti-inequality ticket, shamelessly trying to ingratiate himself with the future.

And he tweeted after his victory:

Today is a party for the people.

And he said these words: may so many sufferings be cushioned in the joy that today floods the heart of the homeland.

And that was an unusually poetic response to an election victory compared with Boris Johnson just singing, I'm horny, horny, horny.

Who wants a job?

Who wants a job?

Compared to Boris Johnson's attempts to change the national anthem to sex bomb by Tom Jones.

Sorry, carry on.

It's a pretty extraordinary thing to see Colombia be faced with the prospect of a nationalist gaffe-prone demagogue with funny hair and go, nah.

And you know why?

It's because the Colombians are f ⁇ ing gutless.

Have the courage to tank your country for comedy value.

Britain did it.

America did it.

And now Colombia's like, ooh, no, we're going to elect someone that wants to make people's lives better.

You're fucking pussies.

Columbia is a nation of pussies.

And you can quote me on that.

And I'm pretty sure there's never been any negative connotations for anyone who's saying bad things about Colombia or Colombians.

I love the way this was reported: that Colombia has elected a former guerrilla to government.

Oh my god.

And everybody in Northern Ireland is going, oh, how very 90-90s of you.

Oh, how very quaint of you.

We're way ahead of the curve on that.

I looked this up.

He was in M19.

Now, I'm not entirely sure of his CV.

I think he went E17,

Combat 18, M19.

Then he got a free transfer to FC20, and now he works in Forever 21.

But one way or the other, he was in M19.

And he takes over the time, and I quote, where Colombia is struggling with low credit ratings, a large trade deficit, and a national debt, which is predicted to end the year at 56.5% of GDP.

56.5% of GDP.

Can I just, can I second niches?

Your pussies?

You'd be grand.

At one point, when the IMF came into Ireland, 125% of GDP.

Imagine getting sunburned to 125% of your body.

That's all of you and a quarter of somebody else.

Like, your brother didn't even go on holidays, and he just wakes up on a couch with one big red leg going, what the fuck is that?

I don't know how Petro didn't, like, how it wasn't even a bigger gap, because he was against

Hernandez, I think, wasn't it?

And he was a lunatic.

He called Hitler a great German thinker.

Can you imagine being that wrong?

Hitler was Austrian.

And then to compound that error, he tried to get out of it by saying, I actually meant Albert Einstein.

And I would say if you can't tell the difference between Einstein and Hitler, that should probably disqualify you from most conversations about global leadership.

However, it probably does guarantee you a lucrative Fox News slot.

I'm not sure.

I mean, where could you possibly not be able to tell that?

Tell that difference.

The

Einstein-Hitler problem.

Andy, are you pitching for a new game show, Einstein and Hitler?

Unless you're just trying to prove that.

Who said the following?

E equals M C squared?

And who said the other following?

They didn't like my painting, so now I'm going to kill everybody.

Wow.

I reckon that game show could run for a thousand years.

Format's got legs.

Only series three, though, to be fair.

I would love to go to Columbia because I met a brilliant Colombian man in the taxi once.

I was sharing an Uber in America, and I got in beside this guy, and I said, where are you from?

And he goes, Colombia.

And I went, went oh I love Colombia well from what I know of it like Valderama loved him Gabriel Garcia Marquez Shakira I'd love to go to Colombia and he said where are you from and I said Ireland and there was a pause and he went I love your butter that's what he said

and I was like really and he went it's addictive and I was like of all the things surely not the most addictive thing that a man from Bogota could possibly come up with

no one has ever smuggled a pound of kerry gold up their hole through customs

Really?

Brexit has made things tough.

The thing about a pound of butter, if you're going to smug lightning up your hole, it slides right up there.

I don't know what condition it's in at the other end, though.

I'm not sure any butter is good enough to be tainted by ass.

Well,

kerry gold, clearly.

His point was welcomed by the U.S.

Secretary of State, who said that it was a good sign that Columbia had been able to participate in a fair and free election.

And let me tell you, a left-wing leader winning power in South and Central America has not always been welcomed by the US government.

If I was Petro, I wouldn't be opening any packages marked as from the CIA anytime soon.

Cigars from Illinois

are well-known part of the cigar making industry.

Castro recommended these.

The Chicago Iron Ore Association.

Fantastic.

Israel is looking ahead now to its fifth election in three years

after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett dissolved Parliament.

His fragile coalition of not one ideologically incompatible party, which is essentially what we have in this country, not even two of them, not three, but eight.

Eight ideologically incompatible parties.

That's collapsed, unsurprisingly.

I mean, that seems too many incompatible parties to be in one coalition.

He's been in power for a year,

but has had to deal with this eight-pronged coalition and a hugely uncooperative opposition, some of whose members were recorded as saying that they would vote against anything if it helped bring down Bennett's government, even legislation to support the disabled and victims of gender violence.

Good one, democracy.

That is exactly how you're supposed to work.

So, essentially, Bennett's government could have tried to pass a bill saying that children should not be forced to eat each other at school.

And Likud, the party of former Prime Minister Netanyahu, would not only have voted against it, but would also have sent truckloads of ketchup and mayonnaise to all schools labeled with the words best serve with raw child.

That was Marcus Rashford's initial plan, I think, wasn't it?

And then he had to be talked down to something a bit softer.

So we could be perhaps see a comeback for the, shall we say, corruption-tainted Netanyahu.

Tainted is not quite strong enough.

He's fully painted in it.

He's absolutely, he's dipped himself like a member of the Blue Man group in pure corruption paint.

Yeah, if by tainted, you mean immersed.

I can't believe it lasted a year.

Eight ideologically disparate parties.

eight entities who talk entirely differently to each other.

Like Snow White and the Dwarves could only make one film, and they got on.

There's only 120 MPs, by the way.

Eight different groups, and then the opposition.

Have you seen the color coding of the Knesset?

It looks like Jackson Pollock just spat up Skittles.

It's just too many colours.

It's amazing.

Joe Biden was there in July, and

it was due there in July and he he's just cycled his bike into a tree to get out of that.

Just there's not cord.

No.

Espionage news now and um uh Neil you are um the Bugle's uh spike.

Oh shit, I shouldn't have said that out loud, should I?

No

damn it.

At least you used my cord name.

That's public domain now.

Andy, I genuinely thought you'd made a mistake there.

You're an underrated actor.

Either that or you consistently make a lot of mistakes.

Of course, I have to wed it out of the Bugle.

And I found it completely plausible.

Let me know the answer to this one.

You are the Bugle's espionage correspondent.

Sensational story involving a Russian spy pretending to be Brazilian for

over 10 years to try to sneak his way into the International Criminal Court.

I mean, you've got to admire this,

even though it failed on day one.

I mean, 10 years building up a false ID that then fails on your first day in the job that you tried to get into with your fake ID.

I mean, that's plenty to work on for your next spy gig, I guess.

But it's a sensational story, this.

Yeah, he went to Trinity College for four years, got a degree, then went to the US, then studied there, got a degree, and day one, he failed.

It's not exactly the born identity, is it?

Is it where you're just having a chat with your fellow GRU officers?

What did you do, lads?

Well, I planted explosives behind enemy lines for the illegal occupation of Crimea.

And what did you do?

Same, yeah, same.

But not really Crimea.

It was Dublin.

And the explosives were, you know, Jaeger bombs.

But, I mean, it was great crack.

One of the other students in this class said, by the way, he couldn't speak Portuguese.

So the line in his legend was he forgot how to speak Portuguese.

He didn't even learn Portuguese.

Yeah, one of the other students in this class said he kept himself to himself and he didn't say much.

So basically, he's hanging around Trinity College, not saying anything.

So his cover is Connell from Normal People.

That's the extent of the research he's done on this.

And he got away with it for years.

But I mean, it is quite difficult to find, you know, if your friend is a spy or your spouse is a Russian spy rather than Brazilian.

So I would suggest you just kind of test them every so often.

So, like,

just bring up in conversation stuff like

and see if they reveal stuff about themselves.

Victor, you know, who would win in a fight, would you say, between Pele and a bear?

And see what he says.

What's your favorite religious landmark?

It's got to be Christ the Redeemer, right?

Right?

Oh, it's Alzheimer's Cathedral.

Whoo, controversial.

And then you leave like unseasoned chicken out, and then before you put it in the oven, you say, I'm putting this in like this.

And if they put Temper Bioano on it, Brazilian, Navichok, Russian spine.

And then if none of that is out of them, shave your pubic hair into a narrow strip and then present it to him.

And if he goes, I see you've got a Transnistrian done.

Russian spy.

No one calls it Transnistrian.

Clearly a Russian spy.

The details that he came up with for his backstory are absolutely spectacular.

He claimed that at school his fellow pupils used to joke about his looks and accent and call him Gringo, which is why he did not have many friends.

He also tried to claim that he hates fish, contrary to most other Brazilian people, because he disliked the stench of fish from a port near his home where he grew up.

And he also claimed that he had a real and honest crush on his school geography teacher.

Now, this Daniel Day-Lewis does more prep for his roles.

This guy's background details are so weird.

I think obviously the logic in his head is he's like, well, I'll try and say something really strange so that it'll just...

But it just sounds made up up as

like he may as well have said oh the thing about me is that uh i absolutely love yellow and green because of the brazilian flag i am brazilian

i would love if that's how the dutch police and the dutch uh queen the cia said it to him frankly this uh this sounds made up as

um

i mean his i mean it was you know his cover stories is it had certain holes in it although apparently he did whenever playing football,

as soon as there was a free kick within 50 yards of goal, line it up, saying, I can definitely stick this one in the top corner.

So, you know, it wasn't totally without merit.

What would you put in your

spy legend when you go undercover?

If I needed to pretend to be a Brazilian, Andy, I don't have to look very far.

First of all,

I've been confused on several occasions for a Brazilian by racists.

Secondly, last week at Tuesday football, I absolutely Roberto Carlos won in with the outside of my right foot.

It was a banana shot.

And just because you weren't there, you happen to not be there, Andy, doesn't mean I'm making this shit up.

Right.

Now, I mean, I have seen you play football numerous times, Nish, and it does sound like you are making that shit up.

Just based on a wealth of evidence and the laws of probability.

Probability.

Biology, physics.

This is absolute horrible.

Statistics.

I think we all know if you did anything as a Brazilian footballer, it was Rivaldo.

Somebody went near you and you fell on the ground holding your face.

This is horseshit from a pair of no offense cs.

I scored a real and honest Roberto Carlos style free kick.

I feel that your spy training lacked a little bit

in the interrogation module.

If we slightly poked fun at your abilities and you called the two investigating officers.

I mean,

it should be in the next line of of duty

that's just my that's just my hot Latin temper

you have to be questioned by a of higher rank and both I and Andy fulfill that particular remit

strikes news and well

strike one

strike one strike two and possibly indeed strike three

there's an increasing sense that that the United Kingdom is progressing its national post-imperial dotage status from fumbling vibumbling to outright crumbling.

We're in the middle of a kind of slow-motion self-defenestration that will end, I think, as most of those early defenestrations did, by landing in a huge pile of shit.

And this week, to add to all the other issues at large in the country at the moment, prices going up at the fastest rate for 40 years, the government's ceaseless quest to remove all hope, truth, and dignity from public life and the willful fracturing of the nation and its society that is the price of Boris Johnson fulfilling his childhood dream of being the shittest Churchill impersonation on the circuit.

Well this week we are entering strikesville.

There are rail strikes this week.

Three full day strikes have been called this week, the biggest rail strikes in 30 years that brought the nation to a standstill stroke to sitting on the sofa in its underwear watching daytime T V yesterday because it couldn't get to work.

It's

We are in strange times, Nish.

I can't remember there being such a sort of breadth and range of dissatisfaction at large in this country for a very, very long time.

Listen, Andrew, we're back in the 1970s.

Rail strikes.

Kate Bush is back at the top of the charts.

It's all starting to seem a bit like Kate Bush cast a magical spell to take us back to the 1970s.

She did it via the medium of her song, Running Up That Hill, Appearing in the Netflix Show Stranger Things.

But either way, we've ended up back in the 1970s.

And if you think that's implausible, ask yourself this honestly.

Can you honestly say you don't think Kate Bush has magical powers?

No, you f ⁇ ing can't, okay?

She's some sort of weird witch and she's dragged us back into the 70s.

Yes, the entire country at this point is basically it's very difficult to talk about this without screaming the word c.

And so I'm going to do my absolute level best to do this.

The cost of living crisis has kind of swept through the entire country.

The RMT unions are not even asking for a pay increase commensurate with inflation, right?

It's a pay increase that would not meet inflation.

And yet the government is refusing to engage and the government is now actively trying to blame the unions and the Labour Party, which has, in keeping with the current Labour leadership, refused to take a position on the strikes.

Whatever you think about that decision, it means that the Labour Party cannot itself be blamed for the strikes.

But the government is blaming everyone other than itself for this.

Boris Johnson is treating these strikes like one of his own children, and that he's tacitly refusing to accept responsibility in spite of all of the overwhelming evidence.

Well,

some extraordinary things have been said about it.

Tobias Elwood, a Conservative politician,

said that the rail rail strikers were Putin's friend because they're distracting the government from the Ukraine crisis.

I mean, there is no end to

what the Ukraine card can be played with in British politics.

It's absolutely unbelievable.

Yeah.

To an extent, well, I think when British tennis players lose at Wimbledon, next week they're going to say, oh, you know, Ukraine

couldn't think of a backhand.

It's going to spread out from politics into everything else.

I'm going to scroll scroll the word Ukraine on my tax return this year and just hand that in.

I'm just going to hand in my tax return with just the word Ukraine written on the front of it and give it in to them.

I love the fact that Network Rail seems surprised by this.

Like, you're offering 3%.

The union is asking for 7%.

The railway workers.

They mind the gap.

That's literally their job.

Like, travel was difficult.

The buses were rammed.

The traffic was awful.

Nobody got to Hogwarts.

It's getting heated now.

I saw one worker called Thomas the tank engine a fing scab.

So it's getting to a point where, you know, there's a lot of tension.

The A-levels are on.

One of the Matt's questions was: if a train isn't leaving Birmingham at 1pm travelling north, and another train isn't leaving Edinburgh travelling south, how do I get home?

So

I don't know.

Like, Boris Johnson has said that he's going to be in this for the long haul.

Do you think he genuinely has full cabinet approval for all the government's approach to this?

Because he criticised the railway workers for having a 19th-century practices approach.

At which point, surely, Jacob Reese Mogg went, Well, let's not be too hasty here,

let's not let Nanny throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Let's just have an early light and agree to telegram each other on the morrow.

Let's just see how it goes.

But for Jacob Reese Mogg, a 19th-century approach reeks of pandering to modernism.

At the same time, though, there are pay pay rises for some sectors, billionaires have seen their pay go up 9.4% year on year.

So you can see why lower down the economic food chain, people who can't afford to buy that crucial fifth private helicopter or to buy an 18th century warship to submit as their kids show and tell for school or to hire Vin Diesel to act as their bodyguard for the next five years to make life seem more like a movie.

You can feel why people who can't afford those things might think they'd do a slightly larger slice of the half-digested remnants of the leftover pie.

Why aren't you just admitting what happened in 2010 that has caused all this?

Why aren't you saying that the reason that there was a fall in people's living standards was because of the Icelandic volcanic ashtray?

Why won't you admit that?

I got an email from Tory Party headquarters today and they said that's what it is.

Neil, I find this very offensive.

I think what you'll find is that in 2010, David Cameron was very worried about Ukraine.

He was very worried

about the thought he saw it coming, and so he wasn't really able to focus on things like making sure inequality didn't run riot.

The Conservative Party is and has always been very that's why Suez happened.

The profumo affair was just as a result of Tory HQ having its eye on the potential war in Ukraine in 2022.

God, sorry, Suez, I thought Suez was your new nickname for Suella Braverman.

I just don't know.

Wow,

she's gone real street, hasn't she?

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's bugle.

Neil, Nish, thank you very much.

As always, do you have shows or other works that you would like to plug to our listeners?

I'm finishing my tour at the Edinburgh Fringe on dates that are

available to me.

Bit Augusty, Bit Augusty.

Bit Augusty.

22nd of August until the 28th of August at the Assembly in George Square at the end of the fringe.

I too am doing the assembly for Edinburgh.

I'm doing the the last 12 dates.

And I have a new podcast.

It's called Why Would You Tell Me That?

where myself and my friend get experts on about the weirdest things we can possibly talk about that interest us.

So we've done the Norwegian Sovereign and Wealth Fund, we've done the Meyer-Sarinam Toad, and we've done the Mwasswa people who live in China, who live in a matrilineal society.

And we've done Tulip Mania as well, 17th century first Dutch speculative asset bubble.

So all sorts of mad stuff, wherever you go.

Thank you for listening.

Buglers.

I have to go and watch some cricket for the next five days.

We have a week off the bugle next week.

We will put out a sub-episode full of delectable delights.

And then we will return in a couple of weeks to see what the fk is going on in July.

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.