Mad Max and Anti Vax (4214)

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4214 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Confused, Apoplectic, Self-Loathing, Crumbling But Still Visual World with me Andy Zaltzman here in Sydney, Australia.

Coming to you live from the Alice Fraser Museum.

Well, it's Alice Fraser's flat, but is a home not merely a living museum of the self?

Something for us all to think about.

I'm joined by the curator of the museum herself, Alice Fraser.

You have not paid the entry fee, please give me $1.50.

I haven't technically flashed photography and I've

strictly observed the bits that you've roped off.

Well, I was the one who insisted that we have bath time before we started the podcast.

Yeah, let me emphasise to listeners that bath time did not involve me.

That involved...

I mean, I'm all in favour of team bonding, but there are certain limits.

As we discussed on the last Bugle six weeks ago, you introduced a new interactive exhibit to this museum, intermittently noisy.

Yes.

How's that going?

Laser Fraser, as I call her, or Fraser Jr., she is,

she had a bath, she needed a bath.

She caused a bath to have to happen.

And joining us from the icy wilds of South London, we can only assume freshly bathed himself, it's Nish Kumar.

You assume incorrectly, Andrew.

I showered yesterday, but all you've got on me at the moment is about six and a half hours of somewhat interrupted sleep.

How are things going in the cold and brutal lands of the north?

Well, Andrew, since you left this hemisphere, everything has gone to shit.

Alright.

Because it wasn't going that well before I left, to be honest.

We'd embraced partial Mad Max Chaos.

Now we've embraced full Mad Max Chaos.

And as soon as this podcast finishes, I'm going to be strapped to the front of a car with my blood going into

whatever that guy's name is, the kid from our Battle Boy.

Nicholas Holt, I think.

Nicholas Holt, that's the one.

We are recording on the 6th of December, it's Monday evening, the 6th of December 2021, just over 36 hours as we record away from the start of the ashes, which is the reason I'm here, predominantly, England's quadrennial attempt to avoid total humiliation on the cricket field in the world's second greatest hemisphere in terms of world snooker champions created, sets of rollerblades manufactured, horses tamed, and polar bears hosted.

For further details on the ashes, do listen to the two-part series preview on the Bugle Ashes Urncast, the new podcast from the Bugle with me and Felicity Ward as we get the old band back together from the Unbelievable podcast.

Nish, obviously, you are

very excited about the impending ashes.

Very excited about the impending ashes.

I slept intermittently yesterday because, frankly, I mistimed a Diet Coke.

Amazingly, and somewhat depressingly, that isn't code for cocaine.

Incredibly, I was doing some of my

mid-range stand-up comedy last night.

And before I saw it, save it when I started next year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll save it when everyone's not worried about a new variant.

I

basically decided, oh, you know what, I'll have a Diet Coke to pet myself up.

And it did work.

The gig was fine.

But unfortunately, I woke up on the hour every hour.

Because I'm a 36-year-old man, and the age is starting to catch up with me, and I'm unable to process caffeine.

But what it is fantastic training for is to me staying up all night watching the ashes.

Listening to the ashes.

What I would say is,

if you're watching me at a gig in the next couple of weeks, and there still are a few in the diary, you're going to get get a very tired and unfocused performance, as opposed to an energetic but unfocused performance.

I was going to say it's good practice for watching a baby, and although Andy insists that he came over for his job doing cricket commentary for the Ashes, I think he came over to visit the baby because the things that he says he loves about cricket-long, boring, you don't know how it's going to turn out-are also true for child-rearing.

And before we started recording, Alice, you were in the middle of telling me that your baby gave Andy a somewhat unfavourable review.

Not his worst one,

just to be clear.

No, no, you have to understand that this in this instance, it's a cultural communication.

It's a compliment, a compliment of the highest order to put person cheese onto your shoulder.

Yes, I mean,

I mean, it took your baby threw, your baby threw up on Saltsman.

Yeah, it did.

I mean, and not just threw up on me, but I mean, it threw up on me, I think, within 30 seconds of you.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I gave you a cloth as well, so she managed to somehow arc over the cloth and come round the side.

It was truly tactical.

We are recording on the 6th of December.

Yesterday, the 5th of December, was apparently World Bathtub Party Day.

So maybe we should have had a bath before the show.

So we thought we'd record today instead because the 6th of December is the anniversary of the Battle in the Bath, the 1956 Olympic water polo semi-final between Hungary and the USSR.

Also known as the Blood in the Water Game.

Yes,

at the Melbourne Olympics.

It crossed the line between sporting event, out-of-control party, and massive politically charged physical and symbolic fights.

If we're going to exaggerate wildly, by the end of the game, the pool was 80% blood, 20% water, and that's even allowing for the proportion of blood that is already water.

Two of the Russian players had been sent off for being a shark, and a USSR goal had been ruled out because an attack submarine was lurking in an offside position.

But Hungary nevertheless won 4-0, and Soviet communism had taken a budgie smugglers-wearing body blow from which it would never recover with the iron curtain coming down less than four decades later.

That this quality's bore.

As always, a section of the bugle.

In fact, two sections of the bugle are going straight in the bin.

In the bin this week, a science skepticism section.

We're jumping on this particular bandwagon to ask: is gravity a hoax?

Did Marie Curie invent cancer to make a profit from discovering radioactive penicillin?

Were the ancients right?

Are there really only four elements, earth, air, fire, and water?

Was Dmitry Mendeleev in the pocket of the element franchising industry?

If vaccines are so great, how come the Greeks built the Parthenon, invented the Olympics, and took vase-based pornography to new heights without them?

And given the low economic productivity of the world during the last ice age compared to now, should we be thanking global warming for giving us more exciting jobs than mammoth spotting, cave prospecting, and dinosaur evasion consultant?

In short, is science shit?

That is our special pull-out supplement in association with the 21st century, because sense is for losers.

And also in the bin this week, Alice.

Alice.

Yes, a how to pretend it isn't Christmas yet section.

I feel like Christmas has crept up on us and we don't want to admit that it's happening.

I certainly don't want to admit this is happening.

Here are some tips on how to pretend it isn't Christmas yet.

Tip number one, no matter what anyone tells you, no matter the temptation, even if the demand is accompanied by bells, don't hark.

Tip two, especially not at good tidings.

Try keeping your headphones in in public spaces.

Once you've harked at something, it is all over.

Put your fingers in your ears and go, la la la la la, but importantly, not fa la la la la.

You might as well put on some green stockings and volunteer as an elf at the local Westfield shopping centre.

Once you've harked at something, tip number three, what do shepherds know about anything, really?

Like, would you get your vaccine misinformation from a shepherd on Facebook?

I think not.

Which brings me to another quibble I have with the Bible, which is the lack of media literacy.

Who are we citing as an authority, a burning bush?

Like, why is that more convincing than anything else?

No one's going, oh, that's nonsense no wait a minute a burning bush told you

I mean why is the burning bush like I mean I guess it was the desert your options are burning bush or burning rock and to be honest I would believe the rock my point is

shepherds

and also I've always wanted to know what shepherds dress up as at Christmas is it children because fair's fair

to be honest I would I would take advice from a burning bush over many serving politicians these days

tip four accept into your heart the truth of Yuletide, two words that don't mean anything anymore being used to mean something that doesn't mean anything except for like 12 days of the year.

Tip number five, is everything in the pear tree?

Like, is it cumulative or is it subsequent?

Are the lords are leaping in the pear tree?

This is why we need the Oxford comma, which is to say, tip six is be pedantic about the specific and rational meaning of Christmas song lyrics.

Drive that shit into the ground like a man on a roof in a sleigh strapped to some actual, real-life, actually heavy reindeer.

Tip number number six, tell your family you're doing a no-consumption Christmas, which is good for the environment.

So instead of buying gifts, you just all give vouchers promising to do nice things for each other.

6A, then do not do those things.

That's the end of my tips.

Any Christmas tips for our listeners?

One word, Hinduism, baby.

It's a hypher dated.

Well, I'm a jubu, so on one hand, we don't like material objects, and on the other hand, we killed him.

So,

you know you see the baby jesus being born and everyone's celebrating you're like oh this doesn't end well

i'll say it this podcast features three of the worst jews of all time and only one of them has any mitigating factors for that

i would say if i have to give any christmas tips the uh one is the importance of knowing the difference between the homophonic words sleigh and slay

um

which caused all manner of problems at easter two is the importance of remembering the true message of christmas which is that if you're in a hotel, inn, or any establishment that rents out rooms and a heavily pregnant woman arrives, especially on a donkey, pretend you're booked out.

Childbirth is a fing messy business.

And also,

don't buy too many presents.

I've spoken from brutal experience there, Andy.

Brutal experience.

There's still a few stains on the bathroom floor.

Final tip: don't buy too many presents.

Kids usually zone out by number three and can't remember what it is when asked years later by, for example, a gospel writer what they got for their first Christmas.

Gold, frankincense, and

those sections in the bin.

Top story this week: Britain being more and more cynical about politicians.

Nish, we're going to do top story as a missing words question for you this week.

Can you guess the missing word in this headline?

Trust in politicians to act in the national interest rather than for themselves has blanked dramatically since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

Can you guess what that is?

Is it cut?

It's not that, no.

I mean, it's along those lines, but

would you say I'll fall down?

Is free fall a verb?

I believe, and I take most of my grammatical cues from Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, free fold is a verb.

Okay, yeah.

Free fell.

That's correct.

Yeah, I mean I've been out of the country for two and a half weeks and in my absence Britain has become more cynical about politicians than ever.

I mean do you think this is justified?

Well, Atteney, without the weight of your satirical bulwark against political excess, this country is...

You were its final defence, and yet you went to Australia to watch cricket, or so you say.

Yeah, it's this is a somewhat disastrous poll result.

Five per cent of voters polled by the Institute of Public Policy Research said they thought politicians were in the job primarily for the good of their country.

Can I just pick you up on that, Nish?

Just the way you said 5%

there.

I mean, that was just very matter of fact, as if this isn't something to be screaming into a void of despair about.

Is this the depth of your own cynicism?

Is it something to be despaired about, Andy?

Or is it a politician finally delivering on their campaign purposes?

Because if there's one thing that was implicit in Boris Johnson's campaign, it will be, I will be sleazy as f and make you all distrust politicians.

Why would we expect anything less from a man who's basically spent most of his life misting the women of Britain in his own jits?

oh oh dear you've just ruined christmas

i think it's the 6th of december that's the kind of phrase that needs at least three weeks before christmas putting the o into aerosol

i can't believe we're surprised that trust has plummeted under the stewardship of captain gismist

I guess it's a two-way street, though.

I mean, I don't know if a poll investigated whether politicians trust voters as well.

I mean from what I've researched I've done that's down from the standard 0.3% to just 0.1%.

So it's a bit of a two-way street really.

The report outlines four major areas of challenge for policymakers to focus on to try to improve political trust in Britain.

These include stop being f ⁇ ing crooks, stop being f ⁇ ing liars, try saying something you mean at least once per term of office or five years, whichever is f ⁇ ing longer.

Four, before you say something in public, ask yourself, is what I'm about to say total and obvious bullshit.

And five, I know I said there were four, but you know, that's the way things go.

Stop pretending not to be lying crooks.

Be at least confident in your true selves.

I feel like the pivotal point in this was that they started calling corruption sleas,

which sounds sort of sexual.

Yes, I think it did used to be a bit sexual, didn't it?

I remember in the 80s, sleaze generally involved some form of leather and parliamentary denial.

Now we're back in the era that I was raised in.

I came of age in the 1990s, the era of Tory party sleaze.

And I miss those innocent days of 1990s Tory Party sleaze because back then it was just all having extramarital affairs and the odd strangle wank that went awry.

Wasn't there an orange involved in some

there was an orange involved.

Somebody was having a time with themselves and had a bit of a strangle at the same time.

It didn't go well.

Let's not delve any further into that.

But

that was old school sleaze.

The only people affected were the wives.

I miss that era.

Right.

Victory sleaze.

Everything has a sort of a nostalgia-fuelled comeback.

And is this, because we saw, you know, Brit Pop coming back into fashion.

Is this really just

the 90s being, once again, the decade we earned for?

Are we at the dawn of the era in which a politician will do a strangle wank in order to win back popular?

Well, Domini, not long ago, Boris Johnson tried to kill David Attenborough.

But when you're trying to kill Attenborough to improve your poll ratings, you know things have sunk pretty low.

One of the worrying elements of it is the trend is on the decline in terms of trust in politicians.

In 2014, when David Cameron was Prime Minister, 48% of voters believed that politicians were out merely for themselves.

That then increased to 57% by May 2021 after two years of Captain Geismist in number 10.

And it slept up to 63% last week in the wake of the Owen Patterson scandal, which has been extensively covered on the Bugle.

Basically, Owen Patterson did some corruption and the government response was to try and make corruption legal.

As far as possible, that's as quickly as I can summarise that entire sorry affair.

The report picked out various things, stagnant living standards.

And I don't see a problem with this because we keep being told environmentally that we can't keep growing, can't have continual growth.

So clearly the government's just running a trial scheme, and if it works out for the poor, then the rich will sign right up.

So, it's very progressive.

Declining expectations for the younger generation, again, not something we should be worried about, they've got avocados and selfies,

don't need hope, income, their own home, or holidays.

Inequality of opportunity and reward, hide-bound devotion to ideology in the face of evidence.

Well, we're still officially a Christian country, so you know, we can't abandon that.

And the effects of austerity on the ability of government and government departments and local local government to function effectively on behalf of the people.

But this is not a huge surprise, is it?

I mean, as the old saying goes, if you hurl a javelin into your own foot three times, it hurts when you take a vinegar foot spa.

Well, I've just got a sympathy sting.

One of the least interesting musical tribute acts I've ever seen.

One of the other stories that

may or may not be affecting Britain's trust in

its polit its political leaders is that Boris Johnson is facing a potential police investigation.

I mean, insofar as the police have said that they're considering complaints from Labour MPs that the Prime Minister and his staff held Christmas parties in breach of COVID regulations a year ago.

And just this morning the policing minister Kit Moulthouse was sort of wheeled out on the morning news shows and he said this, I've been assured no rules were broken.

I don't even know if an event took place, but if it did, no rules were broken.

My favourite thing is some somebody I just saw this as a headline, so somebody was wheeled out saying police don't generally investigate things that happened in the past

That's right, actually Andy, since you've been away analysis will be news for you guys.

We've gone full minority report and police will only, through the use of precog technology, be investigating things that happened in the future or things that happen if they involve minorities.

The report said there was a values gap opening up, which I thought was a rather charmingly British euphemistic way of saying bunch of

there is a values grand canyon opening up.

Are we actually becoming more cynical in this or is that just what the politicians want us to think we are?

All I would say is, are people becoming more cynical or are they just paying attention?

That's such a fine line.

It's very hard to look at the

ocean's 11 of mass c ⁇ that Johnson has assembled at his front bench who have, and listen, this is a personal allegation, murdered all the old people, allegedly, allegedly, I'm trying to clear this

legally, allegedly, allegedly murdered all the old people whilst maintaining steady libidos is the Conservative Party sexually aroused by the deaths of old people.

That's just a question I'm asking.

It's a question I've been asking for a number of weeks.

They haven't answered it.

They haven't answered it.

They haven't answered it.

They haven't answered it.

Hancock saw the death rates, grabbed a butt.

I'm just presenting the information as it's presented to me.

Look, the fact that this has reduced faith in politicians over the last year has shattered my faith in people.

Like, now,

this is your breaking point.

Fantastic point, Alice.

Fantastic point.

Like, who took until this year to really lose faith?

Yeah, they've spent the last year handing up PPE contracts to Willy Wonka.

Oh, come on.

Willy Wonka would have got shit done.

I just don't think he's qualified to deliver protective equipment, Andy.

Doctors are being sent into war zones with masks made of licorice.

Bob, the sentient trash island update.

Now, Alice, last year you took people through on the last post the evolution of Bob the sentient trash island in the paralleled universe from which you are receiving transmissions.

But it appears that it's basically happening in reality now.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a giant wadge of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between California and Hawaii.

It's basically the symbolic 51st state of the USA, I think.

And it's absolutely 600,000 square miles, which is the size of Mongolia or a fifth of Australia or six and a half UK.

Yes, the Great Pacific garbage patch or what the cabbage patch dolls evolve into in the Pokemon universe.

It's floating around what's called a gyre, which where currents come together and they cause this debris to accumulate.

And there are species who are living the libertarian dream on this floating plastic.

Flora and fauna that's usually found only on the coast has made its way into the middle of the ocean where it's presumably building a new society.

They're creating a permanent habitat on these floating trash islands and look

there's a lot of stories that I made up for the last post that are coming true

and I'm not mad about it because it does mean that we're going to see Dwayne the Rock Johnson as the vice president.

I think the only problem with that sentence might be the use of the word vice.

The Great Pacific garbage patch, of course, is what the former England cricket captain Douglas Jardine used to call Australia, I believe, in the build-up to the Lightning series, 1932-33.

The report said scientists are concerned that plastic may help transport invasive species.

And in terms of getting people to give a shit about where plastic ends up, is this the kind of languageness that we need to hear to get the attention of politicians and public alive?

We need to start talking about things coming over here that aren't supposed to be here.

You have our full undivided attention.

Invasive species.

I mean, I'll be honest with you, more than anything else, when I heard the phrase trash island, I was like, no, what have we done now?

What is the United Kingdom pulled now?

Yes, it's, I mean, I think calling it the Great Pacific, I resent the use of the word patch here.

Right.

Because it does sound like something we've deliberately cultivated in the Pacific, as opposed to just a load of rubbish that we've managed to sort of somehow hurl into the sea through a combination of our own negligence and, to be fair to Japan, a tsunami, which is a huge contributing factor to why there's a so let's let's let's leave the Japanese out of this for once.

I'm just applauding the pioneering spirit of all these tiny open ocean species, the little Thor Hyadals of the open ocean.

That's a very funny joke if you did the same year five project as I did.

Well, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, basically, what we're talking about here is bonus habitats for these these

feckless evolutionary layabouts that have

been so dependent on a specific type.

We've given them bonus places to live, and yet we are getting more and more crowded on land, but we're the ones that cop all the criticism.

I don't think that's fair, isn't it?

Yep, and if the important and pivotal cane-toed vote in far north Queensland has anything to say about it, introducing species to where they're not meant to be is only a good thing.

Listen, let's be honest, we're only about six weeks away from somebody in the Republican Party in America suggesting we invade the garbage island to bring democracy and, as a side note, the military-industrial complex to the garbage patch.

I just can't wait for libertarian entrepreneurs to move onto it and try and make it their own.

Like that time they bought a cruise ship.

They bought a cruise ship as a libertarian paradise, and then they realized that they didn't know how to get milk.

The scientists were quoted saying,

It's not an island of plastic, but there's definitely a large amount of plastic corralled there.

So, surely the conclusion is we haven't put enough plastic in the sea yet.

And if we want to create the first human-generated continent, there needs to be more.

I mean, it's not hard to make a lot of plastic into an island of plastic.

All you need is a big lighter

time.

Well, global warming, there we go.

I mean, this is just,

I think, this is great news for the anti-environment lobby.

COVID news now, and an Italian man is facing charges of fraud

because he went to get his COVID vaccine with, any guesses?

Yes, a fake arm.

So, not to lean too heavily into stereotypes here, but he's an Italian.

Surely they noticed he was only talking with one hand.

I mean, it's this is, I mean, impressive.

There was a story back in October about an anti-vaxxer selling 1,500 prosthetic arms online.

But that is inherently very revealing about how dumb they think medical staff are.

Like, if I thought doctors were stupid enough to be fooled by a fake arm, I wouldn't believe them about vaccines.

I think, I mean, trying to detect a vague trace of homeopathic logic in the thinking behind the average anti-vaxxer is like trying to find a lost cuddly skunk in a huge pile of dead skunks.

You're probably going to end in failure, and you're definitely going to end asking yourself, why has it come to this?

What have we become?

And if I do find it, what the fk am I going to do with it?

But I mean, there's an element to which vaccines by their nature are hoaxes themselves.

They're a hoax on the body to make it think it had a disease.

So, you know, they started it.

Surely that's a lot of people.

Double Jeopardy.

Yeah.

Double Jeopardy, right?

Hoax on a hoax.

It cancels each other out.

And also, as I said earlier on, we are, you know, still a Christian country, the United Kingdom, many other America, Australia.

So understandably, there is some scepticism after the jabs that Jesus had on the cross failed to give him immunity to crucifixion.

You're bringing it back round.

You're a terrible Jew, but you're a worse Christian.

The headline here is this story is weird for Italy.

Even Italians think this story is weird.

So basically, Italy is in the process of introducing something called a Super Green Green Pass, which takes effect on the 6th of December and requires people to prove that they're vaccinated to go to cinemas, theatres, nightclubs, and get served indoors at bars and restaurants.

So this has obviously caused some panic in the scienceless asshole community.

And so they've increasingly so people are trying to work out what the best way is for them to not get the jab but still be able to obtain the pass.

So a 50-year-old man, 50 years old,

half a century century on this planet, and this is what this man's accumulated half-century of wisdom has led him to, decided that he was going to buy a prosthetic arm and try and get the injection in his prosthetic arm.

Now, the people administering the jab are professional healthcare workers.

And he thought that he could sneak a fake arm past professional healthcare workers.

And also, La Republican newspaper in Italy actually contacted the healthcare worker who said that they felt offended as a professional

and

because the arm was well made, but it wasn't the same colour.

Like, also, when you stick in the needle and it meets wood, like

although I think we're being uncharitable to this man, maybe what he's trying to do is not avoid getting the vaccine.

Maybe what he's trying to do is slowly assemble a real doll that is immune to COVID.

It's been running rampant in the action figure community and they never are included in any of the official statistics.

Did you just class a real doll as an action figure?

Because it is,

in one interpretation, yes, it gets a lot of action.

I mean, it's an action figure in the most literal sense.

This whole thing is so profoundly offensive because there are people that require prosthetic limbs for actual medical reasons.

And this guy is out there using one because he can't be asked to get a fing vaccination.

Or he can't be asked to chop his arm off either.

Yeah, you know what?

Have the courage of your convictions, you f.

Chop your arm off and then avoid getting...

But it's the equivalent of me getting a wheelchair to the shops because walking offends my beliefs.

Very reminiscent, of course, of when Charles I tried to sneak out of his execution in 1649 with a prosthetic head.

When I took my kids to get their vaccines, they gave him special stickers so you could choose a thing between, I've had my vaccine, I'm not a f ⁇ ing lunatic,

have you seen the people in charge?

I'm pretty confident this is not a massive conspiracy.

And well, I got brave boy when I

took that one along for myself when I had my jab.

But if you try to have a jab with a prosthetic arm, you should get a sticker saying, I'm a f ⁇ ing idiot and I deserve everything that befalls me.

There is concern, though, a legitimate concern, I would say, that the authorities are worried, because what if they do inject a prosthetic arm and the arm then develops bionic powers and the new race of mutant armed semi-robot humanoids takes over the world?

I mean.

Trick, the arm was already magnetic.

This guy's up there in terms of crazy Italians with Caligula.

This prosthetic arm is his, I've appointed a horse to the Senate.

Except instead of the fall of the Roman Empire, it's the entire human race that this is indicative of.

The collapse collapse of humanity.

It took the Roman Empire a long time to collapse after Caligula.

Immigration news now, and the former Brexit Secretary David Davis, a Conservative politician, has said that Home Secretary Pritty Patel's plans to send asylum seekers to another country while their claims are processed may create a facility as notorious as the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

It's not entirely clear if he's saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing.

This is a victory for Australia, is what it is.

The fact that

the notorious prison camp that they're pointing to is not literally the one that's doing exactly the same thing as you're suggesting.

It's very, very funny.

It's a huge reflection of how much of our culture has filtered through an American lens, that the comparison has gone to Guantanamo Bay as opposed to the inspiration for this, which is Australia's immigration policy of and I believe this is a direct quote from the Australian legal system off we're full

I just think British Guantanamo Bay is like normal Guantanamo Bay but the weather's worse and the guards think they're hilarious

have you heard this one oh no

but on a loop for 24 hours like what they did with uh Noriega or something and that has really been large section of the British public's and presses one problem with Guantanamo Bay: insufficient beef eaters.

Britti Patel, when

hearing the accusation that the plans could result in a British Guantanamo, said, obviously it's very flattering to be compared to one of the greats, but we don't want to get complacent and we want to keep improving.

David said Patel's plans were deeply flawed.

The Home Office has also not stated the actual locations that they've got in mind for their offshore asylum processing facilities.

Australia, it's Manus Island and Nauru and New Zealand, I think.

It does suggest that we're holding out for somewhere really good.

Antarctica, perhaps, I believe that's what the Scott expedition was casing out the joint for.

Maybe the International Space Station.

Or, dare I say it, Alice, Australia again.

You know, for old time's sake.

It worked once, and that is why we have that policy.

It's take one, pass it on.

Yeah.

Well, it might work quite well if you get somewhere new that isn't Australia.

And, you know, in 100 years' time or so, we'll have someone else to play play at sports.

I mean, there's a Trash Island just go and be

it is a real return to the Victorian values promised by the Conservative Party.

After their 18-month investigation into the concept of eugenics, they're now back to continent X-ing people they don't want in the country.

Incidentally, Trash Island was the working title for Australia for about 150 years.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

People should not be surprised about about Pretty Patel's potentially in human immigration plans when, by her own admission, her own suggested immigration reforms would have prevented her parents from entering the United Kingdom.

This is a woman who is trying to do the legislative equivalent of inventing a DeLorean so she can deport her own mother.

And yes, I have South Asian parents.

They can be quite irritating, but I've never thought I'm trying to fing send these back to where they came from.

If you can't see yourself in the iPad, Dad, I can't see you.

You know what?

Go back to where you came from.

I'm so fond of your mum, Nish.

I sat next to her in the audience of a bugle once in Leicester Square, and she turned to me about halfway through and like very earnestly whispered, He doesn't mean kill all white people.

I was like, Thanks, Mr.

Scummer.

Further criticism of not just Britain but Europe as a whole and the attitude to immigration has come from Pope Francis, who described the neglect of migrants as quote the shipwreck of civilization, which I think also initially was a Daily Telegraph review of the MASH report.

We nearly adopted it as a working title at one point.

Pope Francis said, it's easy to influence public opinion by instilling fear of the other.

Looks like someone's been studying the history of Catholicism and all other major religions.

I'm just saying, if you're not going to listen to the Pope, if history has taught us anything about popes, if you're not going to listen to the Pope, you better have another better, bigger Pope

and be willing to use him.

Even the head of the Catholic Church thinks this is bad.

That's got to be the headline.

Even the head of what is, let's face it the world's blingiest international paedophile ring is like this is too far

that's what the the origin of the phrase keep it under your hat she came from the catholic church where they have such enormous hats

moving on now to uh human efforts to stop the sun shining news now and um alice you are the bugle's snuffing out all light correspondent um and uh amazon the um tech and retail giant, is apparently trying to turn the sun off.

Is that correct?

Yes, they're donating cloud computing time to run a model on how you could dim the sun.

And I look, I just I mean, I would find this an inspiring piece of science and community and helping one another, except that it never ends with modeling, does it, Andy?

The man who is training up people to be warehouse robots and firing himself into the stratosphere on a delusionally unironically shaped rocket is not going to be finding a merely experimental model of how to go about hypothetically sun dimming if you did indeed want to, for example, turn it down from your volcano lair so you can terraform Mars into bioderms for worker drones.

I don't know.

It's not a comfortable feeling, Andy, knowing that that's the guy who's got his finger on the button of the sun dimming.

Speaking of which, isn't dim sun your favourite meal?

It's right up there, as well as strong evidence from earlier on this afternoon, as I came to terms with having a shirt full of vomit.

But

I mean, it's a strange way of going about it, isn't it?

Because I guess option one, in terms of dealing with global warming, is to change human behavior for the long-term benefit and survival of the planet and our descendants, but it's a bit expensive and it's not an easy sell politically.

So, option two: dim the sun, obviously.

And if you can't find the dim switch, leave the sun as it is, but then dim the amount of hotness coming from the sun to earth in a way that I don't fully understand.

The potential downsides listed include unleashing crop die-offs, and that sounds bad.

A tactic that's a bit tainted by history, if my knowledge of the British Empire in India has anything to go by.

And also, that it would be impossible to stop once started, very much like the advance of short format cricket all over again,

slightly less important.

There is a temptation, you know, to tell yourself you can't just dismiss these people as cartoonish billionaires.

And then you read a story like this and remember that this is literally something Mr.

Burns tried to do in the 60s.

This is absolutely the plot of the two-par Who Shot Mr.

Burns episode.

That he tries to block out the sun.

And

apparently, it's because they're worried about the effects of climate change and in order to sort of reduce

the impacts of escalating temperatures.

The idea is to dim the sun.

And at this point, you realize these people will try anything except anything that might help.

We could reduce our emissions.

Or we could chill the sun.

Yeah, we could stop delivering one packet of q-tips in a box the size of an elephant three times a day to the same house, or

we could turn off the star, we could use less fuel, or I could fly in space for a bit.

I'm not in favour of timming the sun for a bit, particularly while the ashes is on.

Bit more cloud might swing around a bit more for Anderson that won't.

I'm all in favour.

You can view anything through the prism of cricket.

Yes.

So that's one of the things I both admire and fear about you.

To be fair, I feel ambivalent because my special is on Amazon Prime, which people will always point out when I make fun of Amazon.

But also, you can't live in capitalism without being compromised.

Go

this is the title of your Amazon special, I believe, isn't it?

But it's interesting, you know, attempting dimming the sun, dim sun to prevent the want-on destruction of the planet.

It could work, I guess, but

I won't shoe my working or speculate howgow about it.

I am regretting taking you out for lunch

with the noodle planet.

Maybe before next time we'll in more detail when spring rolls round again.

We should have addressed this issue long bow before we did.

I quite enjoyed that one.

I'll email uh the URL so uh you can all Bugler's find your local waste disposal sites to help do your bit for the environment.

I'll post the dump links.

That's it.

Just a bit of chung fun.

I'll take a bout.

I like dumplings so much that I enjoyed that part.

It could be because this people started recording at 10 a.m.

I've loved the time and I haven't had breakfast.

And now I've got a real craving for a dumpling breakfast.

Turkish economy news now.

And Alice, you are, I believe, Emeritus Professor of Turkish Economics at the Thompson Dulle University here in Sydney.

Is that correct?

Yes.

So tell us what's going on in the Turkish economy right now.

So Turkish money has been inflating higher and higher.

Now it's a sixth consecutive month of inflation with no letter of insight.

And the President, Erdogan, has vowed that he will pursue interest rates at, quote, at all costs.

Which...

You know, when a dictator says at all costs, you're in for a surprise.

And the thing about Turkish inflation is that it sounds delicious.

And then when you taste it, you're like, sure, it's good, but Edmund betrayed Aslan for this powdery gummy square.

Even if it has nuts in, you've got to think quite twice about double-crossing the massive fing lion, who, even if he wasn't a barely disguised Jesus metaphor, is still a massive fing lion, you know.

In other words, and Enish, I didn't make time to read about the Turkish economy, but I have been thinking about what sort of reading program I'm going to allow my infant daughter as she develops and whether it will include heavy-handed religious propaganda.

You know, on one hand, I don't want my daughter to feel the sense of betrayal I felt when I got to the end of Narnia as a little Buddhist kid and realized it was Jesus all along.

On the other hand, if you cut patently Christian brainwashing out of the canon of great English children's literature, you're left with some startling gaps.

I never got to the end of the Narnia.

What's the scene like when they how do you crucify a lion?

They get around it.

There's a fudge.

If I had to criticize C.S.

Lewis's Jesus metaphor in one way, I'd say he fudges the crucifixion.

Listen, when has there ever been a problem with hyperinflation and an authoritarian leader?

When has that ever led to anything terrible?

Moving across the Atlantic now, or indeed the Pacific from where we are here in Australia, and massively irresponsible American politician wielding guns news now.

And this week it's Thomas Massey, a congressman from Kentucky, who posted a picture of himself as a Christmas greeting in front of a Christmas tree with his family, and they are all wielding what appear to be machine guns or some form of attack rifles with a message saying, Merry Christmas, P.S.

Santa, please bring ammo.

Now,

I mean, it's not ideal.

I mean,

I think in terms, you know, if I was a Kentucky voter, I'd be a little concerned that this was his view of what Christmas the spirit of Christmas,

particularly given recent shootings in America.

It is as crassly insensitive as you would expect in Republican politics these days.

But it does suggest that these people, Thomas Matte and his family, are the worst kind of gun rights activists because they believe in the Second Amendment right for innocent Americans.

They haven't bought ammo.

Well, exactly.

They believe in the Second Amendment right for innocent Americans to be mown down by lunatics.

But also, they are relying for their ammunition on an obviously fictitious wildlife-dependent delivery service that only operates one day a year.

And I think that's true.

I saw a cartoon being shared around by pro-gun people on social media showing Santa applying for his concealed carry license,

which he shouldn't get.

He's not an American citizen.

Yes.

If he passes the background check, we know the system is deeply flawed.

Yes, unless it's not a DVD of the movie Carrie and he's trying to hide it and the child has oddly asked for it.

There's a Christmas present.

Listen, you guys are just a bunch of pink O commies who don't know anything about the real story of Christmas.

Joseph and Mary turned up at the inn.

The innkeeper said, there's no more room.

Joseph lowered his sunglasses, leant towards the desk, and said, I'll be back.

He then plowed into the inn in his car and then got out and opened fire indiscriminately on all of the inn employees.

Now, some of you might say, Hold on, isn't that a scene from the 1984 science fiction classic, The Terminator?

Yeah, what was that based on?

The Bible.

And then the three wise men turned up and they were packing heat.

Glocks, firing pins, machine guns.

They had them all.

No,

nish, you're better than that.

I'm not.

I've got nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

Oh, now I am concerned.

These people are fing maniacs.

I think that's probably a fair call.

Fair call.

And also, I mean, it's hard to, you know, use your Christmas card is, you know, it's

kind of just a greeting of, you know, saying someone you're

you remember them at that time of year.

But when everyone's holding a machine, it looks very much more like a threat than

a

memento.

People send those cards saying what their family's been doing all year.

I mean, you know, little Timmy passed his grade four violin, and Marjorie learnt how to do a backward roll, and everyone else is

holding guns and about to open fire.

The family all posing together in front of the Christmas tree holding guns.

Like, this is

beyond the pipe.

Like, even for America, this is absolute nonsense.

And it's like, it genuinely looks like a still

from

a sort of satirical comedy from the late 1990s.

Yes.

Let's have a snooker cue in there.

Come on, just look at one of them.

Gun people, I feel, are like the social equivalent of the man who thinks his hat is a personality, but also they can kill you.

Well, back to the pope.

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

Thank you very much for listening.

Don't forget to tune in to the Bugle Ashes Urncast, in which Felicity Ward and I will be charting the hopefully dramatic and not devastatingly, predictably awful for England progress of the Ashes series over the next few weeks.

Don't forget Alice's show on the 9th of December at the Sydney Comedy Store, where I will be performing on the 4th of January, Rhino Rooms in Adelaide on the 14th, and the European Beer Cafe on the 21st and 22nd of December.

Tickets available in the ether or internet.

And I am on tour for years.

Bob Dylan.

Yeah, yeah.

The never-ending tour, baby.

I'm on tour in the United Kingdom, February, March, April, and into May.

And we may have some US dates,

but I haven't got them yet.

That's probably the worst, most useless plug done on this podcast.

A podcast that is a combination of satire and useless plugs.

I will also be on tour in the UK in February and March.

I'll be on tour in the UK in August.

Oh, let's plan ahead.

Thank you very much for listening and don't forget to listen to the BBC Test Match especially if you want to hear me talking actual facts in my other job coverage starting late on Tuesday night in the UK, Wednesday in Australia.

That's it.

Thank you for listening buglers.

I'm not entirely sure when the next bugle will be.

We are coming up to the Christmas hiatus.

There may or may not be another show before Christmas, but there will be something put out on the feed and don't forget, you can listen to the Bugle Ashes Earncast.

In the meantime, goodbye.

You can listen to other programs from the Bugle, including The Bugle, The Last Post, Tiny Revolutions, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.

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.