Nationalise Human Trafficking

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4233 of The Bugle, the world's foremost insight into the still twitching heart of humanity.

Is it really that?

Who writes this garbage?

I am Bugle chief writer Andy Zaltzman.

And it it is the 15th of June 2022 here in the shed of Inviolable Justice, as it is in so many other parts of the world right now, including the two parts of the world from where my guests today join me, no doubt, as excited by England having won one of the most dramatic test matches ever played in the almost two and a half thousand match history of international cricket from New York City, where I imagine the celebrations are still in full swing.

It's Josh Gondelman.

Hello, Josh.

Hello, Andy.

The listeners can't see me, but I have my shirt off and the word cricket painted across my chest.

It is mania over here.

And from London, Rhea Lena.

Rhea, I mean, I imagine you've spent the last five days as gripped by the test matches as I have been in my literally professional capacity.

Oh, very much so.

I'm also sitting here with my shirt off, but I don't understand the sport, so I put goal across my chest.

But in my defense, I am shorter than Josh, so it didn't affect cricket should

be.

I have unexpectedly broad shoulders from hearing my voice.

You wouldn't guess it, but they're very broad.

I was up late last night celebrating said test match till the wee hours,

as it should be celebrated with drunk friends in Chinatown.

So

I feel that cricket's proud of me.

Cricket bet.

Andy, is cricket proud of me?

Absolutely.

It's proud of everyone.

It loves it.

My dog was barking all last night.

I kind of barely slept.

I bet she was celebrating the cricket match as well.

We're all celebrating it.

That's quite possibly it was just a New Zealand dog.

We don't know.

Anyway,

let's move on from that.

We are recording.

On the 15th of June, 2022, on this day in the year 1215, King John of England whacked his seal on the Magna Carta, or to call it by its technically correct name, Biggie the Big Chart.

Of course, Magna Carta, the inspiration of today's superstars of 13th century legislation-themed hip-hop, such as Biggie Charts, MC Rules, and the feudal funkster.

King John, of course, notoriously right up there in the shittest ever English monarch's chart, and he plonked his wax one on the 63-clause charter of assorted gripes in the year 1215 to try to pacify a plague of bleating barons and chantering churchmen.

And like so many great parts of the glorious history of this nation, it didn't work.

It mostly aimed to benefit the already rich and powerful.

Our view of it today is largely based on incorrect historical interpretations of it from long after it happened, and no one today really knows exactly what it entailed, but we still like to bang on about it, so it is true, true British history.

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

And this picks up on last week's Jubilee celebrations.

As part of the Jubilee celebrations, there was a sketch of Paddington Bear having tea and sandwiches with the Queen that was broadcast as part of the celebration.

However, we of the Bugle have been exclusively told that Paddington's lines in the sketch actually had to be dubbed in after filming by an actor because the bear himself went, shall we say, off script.

And in a world exclusive, we have access to the outtakes from the paddington has tea with the queen sketch please ma'am is there anything you can do to help the threatening to send me to rwanda cat

well you can have my hat if i can have your hat cart

no soy paddington me ama pastuso soy de peru y si me gusto defecara en el bosque cat cart

Well if I were you, Betsy, I'd get medieval on the fing lot of them.

Slap on your armour, pop on your horse, trot down to Parliament and say, you've had your f ⁇ ing chance losers.

I'm pulling the plug on this place.

You, you, you, tower.

Rest of you, f ⁇ off.

Let's get Britain back to basics.

Cut!

But then again, Liz, I'm a bear, so I tend to get a bit feisty and fighty.

Anyway, happy to be your wingman, Liz.

Oh, cut!

Cut!

Is it just me, or are you also terrified of wombles?

Don't know why, Madge, but they just give me the f ⁇ ing creeps.

Can't stand the rubbish holding pointy-snouted weirdos.

Cat!

Would you believe it?

The other day, Madge, can I call you Madge?

Cat!

This guy comes up to me and he's like, are you that one out of the wombles?

Oh, Jesus, cat!

And I'm like, if you call me a fking womble again, mate, I'll show this f ⁇ ing marmalade sandwich so far up your f ⁇ ing.

Sorry, mom.

Milk and two sugars, please.

And maybe another slice of that lovely Battenberg.

Are you still single?

Cat!

Cat!

What part of stick to the f ⁇ ing script?

Do you not understand, you furry f ⁇ ing idiot?

Are you talking to me or her?

Top story this week, America is still fed.

Josh,

as our

American correspondent,

this week, just bring us up to date with exactly what's been going on, particularly with the 6th of January hearings into, well, it's essentially a look into the...

Donald Trump's legacy of CAC-sold country that continues to shape and drive the American political agenda.

So we're having some hearings over here investigating the thing that was on live TV.

And if you missed it on live TV, the people doing it were live streaming it from the Capitol, saying, we're doing it, we're storming the Capitol.

And so now we're investigating, I guess, whether that happened.

And so it's kind of a national exercise that's either a confirmation of reality or large-scale gaslighting.

The panel is trying to prove that Donald Trump knew the allegations of election fraud that he leveled, right, that set off this January 6th insurrection

were false.

The panel is trying to prove that he knew he he was lying when he said that there was fraud, which it's hard to prove because, much like Doctor Strange, from what I can glean from the posters, I haven't seen the movie, Donald Trump exists in a multiverse.

One universe that exists, and then another that's whatever he wants it to be.

And those two universes are equally real to him.

It's kind of a

regressive reboot of everything everywhere all at once, where an old white man gets to live out all his potential realities.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr testified that Trump became detached from reality, which is how you know Barr is full of shit.

Like, became?

He remained detached from reality and it became a political problem for some of his allies who like to go to fancy parties and eat at nice restaurants, not just a single golf club in Florida.

One witness who was party to these strategic discussions within the White House said that Rudy Giuliani was drunk while advising Trump on election night, which would explain Giuliani's actions that night and over the preceding 20 years and the ensuing year.

And Trump's campaign, this is like kind of the cherry on top, is that Trump's campaign has come out, raised about a quarter of a billion dollars for a non-existent fund.

dedicated to fighting to overturn the election results and investigate fraud.

And that, more than anything, is the crowning achievement of the Trump presidency.

More than any policy,

more than any national mood, it's getting a quarter of a billion dollars to not investigate a thing you didn't believe was happening in the first place.

Trump's presidential library should just be bookshelves full of that $250 million.

Just, here's my legacy.

This is all you need to know.

That money was interesting, wasn't it?

That they, I thought that was really interesting.

It was like, who are we?

Who's upset by it?

I'm not sure who's upset by it because the Democrats are like, and you raised this money for nothing.

But it's like, it wasn't your money anyway.

It was money from Trump donors.

And it then went to the, as you said, to that invisible fund, the non-existent official election defense fund, which then gave the money to Save America PAC, who then gave it to various associations, organizations associated with Trump, like the company that organized the rally that then ended up being the riot, and the Trump Hotel Collection.

And given that many of those donors were at the rally and probably stay at his hotels, it's just the circle of life, isn't it?

It's so funny, too, that the track the money went on is so traceable, right?

It's like the money laundering equivalent of like spraying Febreze on the armpits of a t-shirt.

Like it's not laundering, it's just

slightly less objectionable, I guess.

I mean, Trump seems very, very cross about everything.

He described the inquiry as a kangaroo court, which I think was probably an insult to both the concept of justice and all marsupials.

He kept on banging on about voter fraud, which would be a legitimate gripe, to be fair, if it had happened.

And he said that America is in a nosedive, and I don't think that's right.

I think America is still trying to force itself back out from the nose-shaped crater in the ground in which Donald Trump left it last last January.

He dismissed the congressional inquiry as a pretext to prevent him running for president again in 2024 or indeed 2028 or if he wins either of those elections in the election that will follow that in maybe, I don't know, 2056 or

something.

And this thing about Barr saying that he'd become detached from reality, I would think that would be a thoroughly mutual decision.

I imagine reality couldn't wait to get sh shot of the shithead quick enough.

I I find it fascinating.

He kind of does numbers the same way that our politicians do numbers in terms, you know,

if it's not too soon to bring it slightly over to where we just had our own vote over here, where even though it was the largest rebellion against the sitting prime minister, they still said that was a victory.

And here's Trump going, oh, it's voter fraud, even though he has never won the popular vote.

So never in the life of America has America ever said, yes, we want you, definitively.

So who are we defrauding?

The Electoral College, apparently.

The Electoral College needs to, the Electoral College needs some help.

It needs to learn how to count.

It needs to understand common sense.

It needs to, you know, reality needs to detach from Trump and maybe sit next to the Electoral College for a while.

I mean, they still decide in some places who's going to be president by standing in corners of rooms.

And in some places, it's not even a room, it's a barn.

Just a quick American question.

Is that not how they do it everywhere?

It's the only system I've ever known.

No, no, no.

Here in the UK, all of our barns are now gastro pubs.

I mean, elsewhere in the sort of the after-Trump America, a veteran South Carolina congressman for the Republican Party, Tom Rice, has been turfed out in a primary election by a Trump-endors candidate, Russell Fry, in what was a Trumpist revenge vote because of Tom Rice last year voting to impeach Trump for proudly defecating all over the quivering remnants of American democracy?

So, Josh, I mean, what could at this point heal America?

I mean, are we looking at just full-scale Armageddon and a rebuild from scratch, hoping that you get it slightly less wrong next time?

Or are you looking at, you know, coming back to the mothership, rejoining the United Kingdom for another hundred years, get from back in place,

and then go your own way again?

I think the first part of what you said, I think that could really help.

Just Armageddon.

And I don't know if we need to do the rebuilding part.

I think that might be kind of a better system.

Like, I feel like if you, you know, the works of Cormac McCarthy, The Road, for example, it's like, you know,

it's an apocalypse, but it's...

There's just a fairness to it that we don't have in our current political system.

Britain news now, and now that the jubibliational Elizabethmans and Bunting's patriotistic piñatas have passed, here in the UK, things are getting back to our regular state of realizing quite how unbelievably and unnecessarily shite everything has become under the anti-sense logic, sceptic, delusionist auspices of the Conservative government over the last 12 years.

With Sterling floundering on the international markets and being teased mercilessly by the other countries for being worryingly out of shape, with chaos begetting chaos on various transport networks, with the cost of existing Britishly rocketing up like a late 1950s Soviet dog, and with the Prime Minister fumbling around like a naked man at a funeral wearing a rotating light-up sombrero to take people's attention away from his blooter, the government has resorted to doing what it does best, dealing with immigrants in a more onicial, putrid, but headline-grabbing way.

Rio, this is, I mean, it is an extraordinary story.

We've talked about this over the last few months on

the bugle.

These flights to Rwanda, the first of these much-trumpeted flights to deposit asylum seekers in Rwanda, was left stuck on the runway yesterday after, in an irony of, well, both glorious and depressing piquancy, the European Court of Human Rights intervened and it was unable

to take off.

It's, I mean, how do you assess the situation?

I mean, and to add to this, it was a Boeing 767, capacity 250 plus, and it was rammed to the rafters,

wait for it, and estimated up to seven asylum seekers on board.

It's kind of an extraordinary look at where the British government is in terms of the message it's trying to portray and the incompetence that it cannot avoid.

Yeah, and it's all because obviously

there's a whole ton of human rights lawyers that are appealing on behalf of each individual refugee that is on that flight or not, as the case may be.

I'm not quite sure why they're all appealing.

I mean, I have friends whose holiday to Mallorca was cancelled over half term that would kill Firstit on that flight, but

that's another thing.

But I find

I'm worried and amazed in equal measure.

I mean, for example, Jeffrey Robertson, who's representing the lead case before the European human rights courts, said one of the things that makes Britain great is that we will abide by international courts and international law.

And he says that every time they win and a refugee is saved from being on that flight.

But first of all, Northern Ireland just called, and I don't know that that's how they feel about Britain's reputation for following international law.

But secondly, Boris has just said, well, okay, if they don't want us to, we'll just leave the Convention for Human Rights to force this through.

He will not be, as Boris said in his own words, deterred or abashed.

Although whether he meant with regards to the rwandom policy or whether the journalist was just stuck between him and the bar

is unclear at this point.

I will say,

Boris Johns said he would not be deterred or abashed.

I happen to think he is deterred here.

Good unknown.

Love it.

Oh, a pun from an American.

Hey, there we go.

This is what I bring to the table.

This is beautiful.

I feel like there's a real up and down here, right?

There's like real pluses and minuses.

Like every asylum seeker that's being sent to Rwanda, like, I feel like you could say to them, like, sure, what we're doing to you is a violation of international human rights.

But on the other hand, you get your own row, huh?

That's something.

I bet everybody's on the plane.

Half of them are like,

they're half thinking, get me off this plane.

And half of them is like, I hope nobody sits next to me.

There's only seven of us.

Get an upgrade.

Get a free upgrade.

I'm going to get some free pajamas out of it.

Oh,

that would be such bullshit.

You know, first class is empty on that plane.

I think you're forgetting that we're paying for it, so that makes us good people.

We're funding this.

We're funding this.

We are using our carbon points to send this empty plane, not just there, but it will be even emptier on the way back when it tries to pick up more people.

That's, yeah, let's ignore that.

I'm really irritated with, you know, they keep going, well, somebody has to thwart the people traffickers, the whole, you know, we can't let the criminals win.

And I'm going, the problem with the government's thinking is that they think that people, that people traffickers care if the people make it or not.

Like, they're not there going, oh, darn it, another 50 we sent over have been sent back again.

That's not really what they're focused on.

They just care if there are people out there with money who wish to be trafficked.

So sending people to the continent of Africa who don't want to be there and wish to be somewhere else, if anything, is just providing them with repeat business.

Think of the Yelp reviews they'll leave for the traffickers.

So are you suggesting, Ray, that essentially what we need to do

is just

realign the way that people traffickers have their end-of-year reviews.

Certainly, I think that at the moment their goals are to make as much money as possible, when really their goals should be get X number of people to X place.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I need to get 100 or 200 people to a safe country such as the UK by the end of Christmas.

And then that's how you review them.

I mean, I think the real way, though, if we want to properly thwart these people trafficking gangs is to actually fill the plane up in Rwanda when it's there with even more refugees and fly them back for free.

That's really what's going to irritate them.

The more people we collect and keep in the country ourselves, the fewer there are out there for people traffickers to take advantage of.

See what I'm saying?

Then once they're here, we're going to train them up, we're going to put them to work contributing to our economy, right?

Making money for us, not for the people traffickers, fill their heads with ideas of gender equality, democracy, socialism, make them so grateful that we were good to them.

They would do anything for us, include provide help to other refugees that need to come over in a safe, affordable, legal manner.

And then that's how you show up people trafficking gang is you know hit them where it hurts with a big old whack of human decency.

Nationalize people trafficking.

That is the message.

That is it.

Essentially, I think that is the three-word logo.

You know how

we had it all the way through the pandemic, didn't we?

So hands, face, space.

Now it's nationalized human trafficking.

That's our new.

That's our new as opposed to the current message from the government, which is f ⁇ right off.

So, I mean, again, it's a new three-word slogan.

We're making progress here.

I think we are.

There's been a lot of dispute over this, that the government's plans have been criticised by, amongst other people, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bugle podcast, and Biscuit found Deputy Queen and 70 years on the bench, heir to the throne, Prince Charles,

who was very, very critical of the scheme recently, and Boris Johnson hit back with his classic logic that

the reason the scheme existed was that criminal people trafficking gangs had to be stopped.

Now, I don't think even the most rapidly Johnson skeptic, Johnson sceptic, would dispute that stopping people trafficking gangs is a good idea, but I think most would side with the Prince in saying that the government's chosen solution of flying a small number of the victims of people trafficking thousands of miles to another country which is already way more densely populated than the UK is not the best solution.

or indeed the only solution just because it is the government's chosen solution because solutions can be wrong, ineffective, or as in this case, not solutions at all.

This is a solution in the same way that if your dog has fleas, it's a solution to shave the fur on your dog's back into the shape of a cock and balls.

Yes, something had to be done about your dog's fur.

Yes, you have done something about your dog's fur.

Yes, people are now talking about it.

So in a way, you're highlighting the fact that your dog has a problem with its fur.

No, it is not therefore a solution.

And I should emphasize the fleas in this metaphor.

Do not represent asylum seekers.

They do not represent anything or anyone.

If they do represent anything, it's people traffickers, but they don't represent anything.

Anything at all.

You know, you said the Archbishop of Canterbury, he said that the policy is immoral and that it shames Britain, but he also said that Prince Andrew is trying to make amends and we should be more open and forgiving with him.

So I'm sorry, what the f does the church?

Well, so this is kind of where I'm at because one of the things the Archbishop said was that the plan is immoral and ineffective.

And if it's immoral, you don't have to bring up its efficacy, right?

Like,

okay, we don't like the moral implications of this plan, but if it was getting the job done, we, as a church, do have a history of looking the other way.

So play on, player.

This flight was supposed to have 130 asylum seekers on board.

But as I said, after legal challenges, that fell to a maximum of seven.

And then after another legal challenge, it couldn't take off.

You would be forgiven for thinking that this might suggest that the entire policy is an at-best quarter-assed, half-digested carrot chunk chundered into the public domain without adequate thought, consideration, or planning.

Because that is exactly what it is at its very height.

Obviously, my heart goes out to asylum seekers who are just being kind of shunted around the world cruelly by various international governments.

Right now, Boris Johnson, right?

My heart also goes out to anyone else at that airport whose flight was delayed because of human rights interjection into the flight patterns.

I've heard a lot of reasons for delays, but if I was on the tarmac ready to travel for business or to visit family, I heard, sorry, we were delayed a few minutes, we have a human rights violation ahead.

I would just be like, me, I'm never getting home, huh?

In other Britain contravening international law news, the European Union is taking legal action against the UK over its planned changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol,

the post-Brexit deal that keeps Northern Ireland in the EU single market and avoids the need for a hard border with the Republic of Ireland by instead having a wet border somewhere in the sea between Great Britain and the island of Ireland, or maybe I can't remember, I think it might be a homeopathic border, or just an imaginary border that exists only in the hearts of true Brexitarious Brits.

The UK government doesn't like the deal because it was cheekily hoodwinked into signing the original post-Brexit deal by itself and after various unsustainable clauses was sneaked into the deal by itself openly and in plain sight.

So it's understandably keen to renegotiate the deal and by renegotiate it wants to renegotiate it with a shredder.

It's

again, I mean Rhea, we've

touched on this on this show for what seems like the last

six years

that I mean no one could possibly have foreseen that the United Kingdom had a land border with the European Union before we voted on this.

This all kind of stems from that unexpected discovery.

I don't know who made it or when, but really, I mean, this all stems from that, doesn't it?

Yes, does it all stem from us forgetting to

respect the Irish?

Surely not.

That's not the way we do things.

Not at all.

This all stems from the changes that the government wants to make to the protocol, which essentially would create a red and a green channel for goods across the Irish Sea.

So if it's going to go into the EU, they have to have a few more checks, and if it's going to stay in Northern Ireland, it can stay in the green channel.

And the EU is obviously upset about this because this isn't what was agreed.

Although I don't know why they're kicking up such a fuss.

If something comes into the EU that they don't like, there is plenty of room on a plane to Rwanda and they can kick it back out again.

But the whole reason, the excuse that they're using to change the protocol is the fact that the DUP are refusing to step into their roles as Deputy First Minister in Stormont because they have a power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland, which I think is fascinating and a really interesting idea.

I would love to see what power sharing would look like in Parliament if Keir Starmer was instead of the opposition leader, the actual deputy prime minister.

In my head, it's sort of like the political equivalent of Morecambe and Wise.

Do you know what I mean?

Like you've just got the big, floppy, silly one and then the short, really serious one.

Except every time Boris jiggles his glasses, the nearest woman gives birth to a baby.

I mean, essentially, part of the problem is it's the DUP that's holding everything up in terms of moving forward with governance in Northern Ireland.

They seem they're clinging to the UK.

That's, I mean, that's always been the position.

The unions are clinging to the UK, despite all signs pointing to, we over here aren't doing very well.

I don't know what it is with Northern Ireland and sinking ships, but

oh, that is a real burn.

110 years.

And it was fine when it left you, I know.

So why is the government

indulging in all these battles?

Well, as we reported last week, we are in the immediate aftermath of the no-confidence votes into Boris Johnson's leadership and his law-breaking and his total lack of any kind of moral compass.

And if he does have a moral compass, it points unerringly to magnetic me rather than North.

The Conservatives have said it's time to draw a line under it.

And they've not so much been drawing a line under it as scrolling over it in marker pen while shouting, I can't see anything on this bit of paper, and then eating the bit of paper.

There's various things that, aside from Rwanda and Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland battle with the old foes, the EU, that the government is doing to try and distract people's attention.

And we have the cost of living crisis as well.

The average cost of filling up a car last week smashed through the £100 barrier.

And to put that in context, that's just the fuel tank of the car as well.

Filling up the whole car with fuel is going to cost you even more than that.

The cost of living crisis is a huge problem, actually.

We're doing our bit to help out our UK listeners with the cost of living crisis by matching the government.

for every piece of useful stuff that it does.

We will match it with an equally useful piece of stuff.

Here's our latest contribution to the cost of living crisis.

If you play this week's episode of The Bugle to a Potato, it might bake itself.

I think that needs to score at nil-nil.

We are hot.

I just want to make because the vote of no confidence, I don't like the name of that because, like, the people they're like, no confidence, Boris Johnson.

And I'm like, relatable.

Yeah,

that's how I feel.

I have no confidence.

They should call it a vote of off because that's what you want, right?

No confidence.

That, yeah, of course, every comedian would vote no confidence.

Yeah, if anything, it's a vote of an excess of confidence.

That's what it is.

It's too much a vote of Boris.

You've got too much confidence, my good man.

The government also announced plans that they will help lower paid workers use housing benefits to buy homes.

Michael Gove,

God rest his mortal soul,

said this would enable more people to, quotes, fulfill an important desire of the human heart.

a desire that has surely been made even more stronger and more lustful by the total f ⁇ ing failure of the government to have anything even slightly resembling a functioning housing program programme for the last twelve years.

Gove, the Secretary of State for Fernie Splodgings sorry for levelling up, I'm getting my completely meaningless words messed up, said that relaunching the right to buy scheme would also encourage more people to purchase their own property.

Now this is a kind of reheated scheme that the Tories

intermittently wheeled out.

Critics have described it as a dangerous gimmick and told Gove to stop wasting time on the failed policies of the past.

And that is I mean to ask the Conservatives to stop wasting time on the failed policies of the past is requiring a fundamental overhaul of everything they stand for.

So I think we need to

set our targets a little more realistically.

That's too much to ask.

It shows that they're getting desperate, doesn't it?

That they're going back to Margaret Thatcher and going, oh, yeah, let's see what she had to offer and bringing this back up again.

I am reliably informed from

a source that shall not be named at Westminster that if this doesn't work, their next plan is to start bombing Argentina.

I don't want to do international comparisons, but conservatives, like the failed policies of the past, that could just be the motto of American conservatism, right?

Every time they're like, the founding fathers said, and it's like, yeah, how's that working out for us right now?

Animals News Now, and well, a landmark court ruling in New York has controversially declared that Happy the Elephant, a longtime resident of the Bronx Zoo,

is not a person.

Josh, this has surely rocked America to its foundations.

The idea that an elephant is not a person under U.S.

law.

I mean, how are you dealing with it?

The fabric of reality for me personally has been torn asunder.

I will say right right off the bat, the court that made this ruling, it's a New York state court, not a New York City court.

But it does sound like something like a stereotypical New York City judge would say, like, look, Buster, stop yanking my chain.

I don't care how big your friggin' packet arm is, that doesn't confer personhood upon it in a legal sense.

Now get out of my courtroom and take your peanut shells with you.

I'm adjudicating over here.

But that's not.

That's not what it was.

It's an official ruling that stated that elephants aren't entitled to human liberties, right?

That freedom from imprisonment specifically in a zoo, although they are, quote, impressive.

That was in the legal ruling, which does sound like one of those weird compliments that you give to someone that you're breaking up with or firing from a job.

Like, look, I love you.

I'm just not in love with you anymore, even though you're spectacular.

I don't know.

Let's just stop having this conversation.

The suit was based on the grounds that that an elephant should qualify for habeas corpus, right?

And it's like, this is America.

We barely extend rights to people here.

Unless you're a very rich element, you're going to face a terrible detention and imprisonment situation.

Unless, like, oh, you're from the Connecticut Dumbos?

My mistake, good sir.

Right this way.

You're out on bail.

I was reading

the case was brought by the Non-Human Rights Project, Animal Rights Organization,

and that Happy has a one-acre enclosure in the Bronx Zoo.

Now, this is New York we're talking about.

Does that not make Happy the Elephant a de facto billionaire?

I think, oh, here's the thing though, Happy is renting.

That's what you don't realize.

Sure, it has a nice apartment, but it's like, is it rent stabilized?

Do Happy's parents pay for the apartment?

Yeah, I think there's a lot to consider there.

And also, I mean, this habeas corpus that you mentioned, not against illegal detention,

yeah, so it's centered on whether this principle should be extended to, quote, emotionally complex and intelligent animals.

Now, for f's sake, America, recent years have proved you don't even have to be an emotionally complex and intelligent animal to be president.

So, to be the resident of a zoo rather than the White House, I don't think it should make that much difference.

But also, I mean, looking at it objectively, Josh, I mean, surely the elephant is one of the most American people in the animal kingdom.

I mean, the elephant notoriously is unwilling and or unable to change.

The elephant not generally aware of what's going on in the rest of the world.

It has very good reason to fear guns after everything that's happened to them, but has never actually come out and spoken against them.

And it has famously very long memory, and a lot of America still hasn't got over 1865.

So I think, you know, the elephant could be the most American animal that you've got.

I mean, it does make a perfect emblem for the Republican Party, which is why they've been using it for years, I think.

That may have counted against it in the court decision.

I think Happy needs to take matters into her own hands and maybe stampede the zookeeper's headquarters, claiming justice fraud.

I have to salute this court case for picking the most ironically named animal.

It's rare that the flourishes around the margins of a legal proceeding are so beautifully, deliciously apt for that proceeding.

Well, I mean, just a little more detail on Happy.

Happy is a naturalized American, having moved from her native Thailand as a one-year-old Pachydermalt, now aged 51.

She's been resident in the Bronx since 1977 and does actually parp her trunk with a distinct New York twang, if you're using it correctly.

Also, big fan of the Yankees, coffee, brunch, and avant-garde music.

Tragically, however, and this is one of her lifelong regrets, she's never been been in one of New York City's famous yellow taxis.

And moved in 1977.

There are some people that still wouldn't consider Happy a real New Yorker yet because she wasn't born here.

You didn't mention that she arrived at Bronx Zoo in 77 with Grumpy.

Happy came with Grumpy.

Oh, right.

Who was far more accepted by the New Yorkers?

That's a fing guy.

Yeah,

I think that's part.

I think that's truly the reason behind this ruling is that they're still upset with Happy because Grumpy was fatally injured in a 2002 confrontation with two other elephants, who, weirdly, were not in the court case.

I don't understand why, but only Happy was in the court case.

So I don't know if this is so much...

I think Happy, I think what's really happening here is Happy is the Karen of the elephant enclosure.

And they're just trying to...

They're trying to make peace.

There's more to this story, is what I'm saying.

I think we need to dig deeper.

The other two elephants were mobbed up, so that's why there was no kind of court proceeding against them.

A quick bit of other Animal Kingdom news.

Monkeys are celebrating this week because apparently monkeypox is going to get a new name

according to the World Health Organization.

Exciting news here in Britain as well because we have pulled away from the competition in the most cases of monkeypox reported in Europe.

It was pretty close a few weeks ago, but we've shown our British superiority by pulling clear of Spain and Germany in the Euro.

We'll take a win now.

Any win.

Any win we will take at the moment.

Ria, you are, as discussed, a qualified virologist.

What is the new name going to be and why are they changing it?

Well, this is exciting for us here in the virology community.

We're excited.

At the moment, the front runner is lowercase H capital MPXV,

which we're all super, super happy about how that flows off the tongue.

We think that's really going to speak to the people.

I don't know what they're doing.

They're focusing on a rename and a rebrand because, at the moment, it's unfair to monkeys, I guess, because they don't,

monkeys are not thought to be the sink of infection.

We think that it's rodents, and so this is unfair to monkeys.

But as we've just established in the happy court case, monkeys aren't people.

Animals are not, you know, considered people.

Neither, if we're going to be honest about it, are refugees.

They are not people either.

So

we're rebranding it

because that, of course, will be the definitive way to scientifically stop the spread is to change the name.

So no longer will we have a monkeypox epidemic.

We'll have a lowercase H MPXV and no one wants to say that, so they just won't talk about it.

A little bit like COVID right now.

They're looking for a name that's not stigmatizing, right?

And I think if you're trying not to stigmatize the name with like a negative feeling, monkey isn't the problem.

It's pox.

There's not a lot of positive poxes out there, right?

When you say a pox upon your home, that's not something Hallmark puts on a housewarming card.

That's a curse, right?

You got to get pox out of there.

But I will say, you don't want to give monkeypox too nice a new name.

You want a little stigma with it because it should sound like something you don't want to get.

Otherwise, people won't know it's dangerous.

Like, I wasn't worried about catching chillaxia, but apparently, the side effects are really serious.

What are the side effects of chillaxia?

shalaxia?

Let's dig in.

It's like chronic fatigue syndrome, but more chill.

Is it?

Okay.

It's not just what you get if you smoke too much pot.

I mean, I think we're talking six of one, half dozen of the other.

Of course, human history has been significantly shaped by other poxes.

And amongst the less well-known ones, actually, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, all rumoured to have died from another particularly severe strain, Russian orthopox.

Oh.

Oh

I'm here all week.

Beautiful.

Well, buglers, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

Anything to plug?

Yes, I have a new stand-up special that's out on all the VOD places.

I think it's worldwide, depending on what

platforms you're using.

So Apple TV and YouTube and Amazon for rent and purchase on, it's called People Pleaser, and it's available on Tuesday, June 21st.

And then ongoingly from there, it doesn't disappear on the 22nd.

For the rest of all eternity, you can watch and listen to Josh.

That's amazing.

I like that.

You should call it habeas corpus pleaser.

I do let the audience leave if they feel like they're being unfairly detained.

So that's a good name.

That's amazing.

The fact that you're performing to an acre of people is what i'm impressed with

i am i mean look me up online find me on social uh rielina underscore on most of them would be great i'm also in a show called uh love struck high which is totally not probably what this audience is interested in it's one of those reality dating shows but if you even just set it to run on amazon prime and it looks like you've watched it we have a better shot at a second season and i have a really big tax bill I need to pay.

So if anyone's at all interested in that,

that would be great.

Otherwise, just find me and say hi on socials.

That'd be great.

You can mostly listen to me talking about cricket for the next couple of months.

So we will now play you out with some lies about our premium-level Bugle Voluntary subscribers, the last few from the backlog.

The lies offer has now closed.

The wall of fame, or is it shame or fame, Chris?

It's one of the two.

Officially fame, I guess let's see what comes out of it.

Yeah.

For Bugle Voluntary subscribers, it is

now taking contributions, and we will start unleashing it on the show over the next few weeks.

So, if you do want to join the Bugle Voluntary subscription scheme to give a one-off or recurring contribution of whatever size you want to help keep the show free, flourishing, and independent, go to thebugalpodcast.com and click the donate button.

Here are some of the last lies you will ever hear.

Heath Kilgore does not believe you should ever put something in a fridge that has not previously already been cold.

Heath explains, fridge is an abbreviation for refrigerator, with the emphasis in my book, if no one else's, on the re.

It's not a frigerator, is it?

It's a refrigerator.

People keep saying how the meaning of words is being devalued these days, continues Heath, but I'm willing to bet these linguistic wingers don't bother to make sure that everything they put in their refrigerator has once been cold, before becoming not cold, before they attempt to refrigerate it.

Heath adds to his conclusion, no wonder the planet's planet's on the road to ruin.

Nadika de Saram thinks it was just pure luck that the Romans chanced upon the tortoise formation that was used to such good military effect on the battlefield as they conquered much of the world.

I reckon they were just looking around for any animal to steal ideas from when they realize humans are pretty rubbishly designed for most things involving physical danger, explains Nadika.

It's lucky that the first thing they saw was not a badger, or they'd have spent all their time during battles digging holes, going to sleep and being run over by passing cars.

Doug Finglis is thinking about inventing a new system for categorising awkward silences.

There are at least 12 levels of awkwardness, according to me, says Doug, ranging from slight misunderstanding right through to harrowing realisation of an unbridgeable chasm of the soul.

I personally have detected five degrees of silence frostiness as well.

Then you've got to factor in duration from momentary to lifelong grudge.

Me explaining this to my friend, for example, resulted in an F3 stroke 1520, but then we were watching a play at the time in a theatre, which might have skewed a categorisation algorithm somewhat.

And finally, Crystal Y has always misunderstood the phrase back to the drawing board, having once read the bored bit of the phrase mistranscribed as bored

when watching a film with subtitles.

I assumed it meant that, in the old pre-photography days of policing, says Crystal, that when an investigation was going nowhere, they would have to take another look at the original pencil drawing of the crime scene to see if they'd missed anything, by which time they would presumably be finding the whole investigation rather tedious.

Here endeth this week's lies.

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.