Call the COP26 (4209)

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers and welcome to issue 4209 of the universe's foremost and only audio newspaper for a visual world with me Andy Zoltzmann recording today

as always on the 18th of October 2021.

I am in London and in a Tricontinental bugle, I am joined by the official representative of all the Americas, past, present, and future from San Francisco.

It's NATO Green.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

It's good to be back.

Welcome back to the show.

How's things in California right now?

Been better.

You know, like a lot of people, I've come through the pandemic feeling some level of depression and anxiety because, obviously, and I thought it would be good to seek out therapy, but this is America and you can't.

Our health insurance system will sound exotic to you as a British person.

You pay for health insurance, and then the insurance companies make money based on not providing the service that you paid for.

It would be like if I bought a plane ticket for a vacation in London and got on the plane, and they said, sorry, motherfucker, you're going to Sacramento.

So, my health plan is called Kaiser, which is named for the pre-World War I German emperor.

And like its namesake, my healthcare bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1930 film All Quiet on the Western Front, in that both involve not getting the healthcare you need, being at the mercy of decisions made by people, rich people far away, and a deep sense of futility.

So when I call Kaiser to ask if I can see a therapist, they ask questions.

Are you on drugs?

No.

Are you considering suicide?

No.

Are you hallucinating?

No.

Are you a danger to yourself and others?

No.

Are you unable to work as a cog in the capitalist machine?

No.

And why are you bothering us?

And I say,

well, I start crying uncontrollably when I I hear Portuguese Fato music for 90 seconds of any Nick Cave song.

And they say, really?

Any Nick Cave song?

Anyone?

Even the Carney?

Yes, the Carney.

And they say, look, you just have nonspecific mid-40s man sadness.

That's what your diagnosis is.

So they said, well, you can talk to someone once a month for half an hour.

That's why I get you on the bugle.

Yeah.

I get better mental health services on the bugle.

And they'll spend the first 10 minutes trying to remember who you are and what your fing problem is.

And the second 10 minutes asking you if you've considered not being such an asshole.

And then 10 minutes to let you beg to be seen again.

And so what I'm paying for is that they have an office filled.

with accountants and actuaries who have run the numbers and have figured out exactly how miserable you have to be before it ends up costing them more money in the long run.

There's like, we don't care if you're miserable as long as you're high functioning.

We will not help you not hit bottom.

Call us back when you're on a freeway median screaming at passing cars about the periodic table of elements.

That's how it is.

It's California right now.

Right.

Okay.

Well, I'm glad I asked.

Joining NATO and me on the bugle this week, chosen as a spokesperson for all 4.5 billion people in Asia, plus that famous continent's fantastic collection of wildlife and mountains.

To speak for them all, it's Aditi Mittal.

Welcome back, Aditi.

Well, I'm slightly reluctant to say any question phrased like, How are you?

But

welcome back to the show.

Thank you for having me.

I am alive, Andy.

Thank you for asking.

In fact, Andy, if you remember correctly, I have always had the personality of someone who is quite nervous, slightly nervous, mostly depressive.

And what I read in previous comments on the Bugle homepage was a failed Alice Fraser wannabe.

Let me clarify.

Let me clarify.

I am not failed.

Okay, I am not failed.

But as I am approaching my 36th birthday, and I have officially shed any semblance of youthful idealism that once kept me alive.

And I am currently trying to cultivate a sort of like cutesy nihilism.

So I'll be like, f you, Andy.

Like, f you, NATO.

But, like, I guess, like, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not you, NATO, because f you is more of a second meeting decorum thing for me.

And as it is in the scriptures of the bugle, Q Chris.

Well, Chris is not on hand to take that tribute.

Ped shall take the mantle.

Ped is standing in for the first time in what we think is about a decade, Ped, since you've lost.

It obviously been part of the Bugle extended family with

Alice.

But welcome back to the Bugle.

It's good to be back.

You alleged It is the 18th of October 2021.

Amazing to think, just 1,005 years ago on the 18th of October in the year 1016, the Danes completed their conquest of England by winning the Battle of Assendun.

I think 3-1 was the final score.

The newspaper reports a little bit sketchy.

The Danes under King Canute, also known as Willy Wetsock, star of the experimental jazz funk band King Canute and the Kinky Newts.

Famous, of course, for saying, I just think if we spell it C-A-N-U-T-E instead of C-N-U-T, we might have less trouble.

The Danes defeated England under their King Edmund Ironside who died six weeks later reportedly.

According to some reports reporting of the reported event, he was stabbed to death while taking a shit.

And in his post-mortem press conference, the former king said, obviously it's disappointing to end that way.

And lamented leaving an unfinished crossword as well as a conquered kingdom.

He also acknowledged the need to, quote, lock the door in future and pledged to get Britain out of Denmark at the earliest opportunity.

So some things in this country don't really change.

On this day in 1648, NATO, Boston shoemakers and barrel makers formed the first American labor organization, according to my sources.

My people.

Well, Wikipedia, I'll be honest.

I mean, this clearly paved the way for what is it now?

373 years of unbroken fairness for all American workers, didn't it?

We did it.

Mission accomplished, everybody.

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

This week, a walking sticks section.

And well, we've hastily had to rush this one out after the current and eternally future queen of the most united of all possible kingdoms, Queen Elizabeth Ayai, as she's known the second, was allegedly seen using a walking stick for the first time since she was recovering from having booted a giant sea monster in the face in 1994, one of many occasions in which she saved this nation from peril.

After the Queen was photographed with her walking stick, it's become the must-have fashion accessory, not just in Britain, but also in Greater Britain, also known as the rest of the world.

Everyone now wants a piece of what Lizzie's having, of course, and sales of walking sticks have skyrocketed by 78,000%

every day since Her Majestiest of Majesties was seen channeling her inner tripod.

Celebs and world leaders have been seen toddling along with walking sticks, proving once again that E2R brings to UK PLC an incredible, almost...

unquantifiable amount in her role as chief national influencer.

Russian astronaut Arkady Mizhin

even did a spacewalk on the ISS this week with a space walking stick, whilst the International Olympic Committee have pledged to allow pole vaulters to replace their five-metre fiberglass poles with the same model of walking stick as used by the Queen, should they want to.

As part of this news, we also give you a bugle guide to walking sticks, how, when, where, and on whom to use them.

Walking stick etiquette.

Should you apologise after landing your walking stick on someone else's foot on a crowded train, or merely say you're just doing the Queen's work?

At what what point when fleeing from for example a crocodile or a swooping enemy jet plane is it socially acceptable and not unpatriotic to abandon your walking stick we also give you a guide to the different sticks now available since the queen made the walking stick the biggest selling item in the world including the pogo walking stick which boings the user's arm upwards for a more spectacular walk the moon walking stick specially designed for shuffling backwards without your feet leaving the ground and the squawking stick which wards off predators and naderwells alike by making an intimidatingly loud squawk like a pterodactyl cross with a dragon crossed with a mating fox.

The walking stick section, sadly.

In the bin, also in the bin this week, a special feature section on the National Comedy Awards.

After the bugle was nominated in the best comedy podcast category, along with it seems like about 800 other podcasts.

This now goes to a public vote, which you buglers can join in at the nationalcomedy awards.com and which you can vote for the various different categories and you can vote for the bugle if you love democracy and want to be blessed by Almighty Zeus and all the other Olympian gods with an eternally happy life.

Go to the nationalcomedyawards.com and find wherever it is, far down the list of important categories, you find the Bugles nomination.

Top story this week: environment news.

We are now in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow, the global environment summit of the year from the 31st of October to the 12th of November.

What an occasion for the UK this will be.

It's like the London 2012 Olympics of averting environmental Armageddon in that it's going to be a lot of fun whilst it's on, but it's very unlikely to leave any concrete observable legacy.

Or at least it's maybe going to be half like the Olympics.

It's probably not going to be a lot of fun while it's on.

This is, you know, it's been presented to the world as

a hugely important moment if we do want to save the planet, which admittedly is a pretty big if in terms of the economics of it, because we are a loss-making planet and it might be time to just let go.

The world is well used to being in last-chance saloon, and of course, its default reaction is to say, Let's have a lock-in, drinks are on me.

And by drinks are on me, I mean drinks are on all future generations.

Are either of you at all hopeful that this summit may actually result in any form of actual progress?

Yeah, I'm hopeful that

a number of key world leaders are

looking at not attending.

China may not attend.

Bolsonaro from Brazil may not attend.

Russia may not attend.

So their strategy for reducing carbon emissions is to do all of the carbon emissions as quickly as possible just to get it behind us.

Do all the carbon emissions and then we can move on.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like when there are cookies in the house, and my kids are like I walk into the room and they're eating cookies when they're not supposed to be eating cookies.

And then instead of stopping eating cookies, they put all of the cookies in their mouth at the same time.

And then they're like, I thought they were going to go stale.

So I think that's the approach to climate change right now.

You know, even India has said that they, I mean, India has not confirmed, and we're only two weeks away.

And first of all, I have to admit that I did not know about COP before this, which is the full form is apparently Conference of Parties, which kind of sounds like an EDM festival.

Like, I would want to go just to check out who's playing.

But also, there's been 26 of these before.

This is number 26.

Or 25 of these before.

What's been going on there?

Like, what have...

Has it just been world leaders hanging out to measure dick sizes?

Like, because this one's really important all of a sudden.

I mean, of course, because the planet is burning, but didn't they, like, space it out, you think?

Well, yeah, I mean the first 25 certainly didn't get the the amount of coverage this one's getting in in britain at least because uh we are the host and therefore i think if the environment is saved then britain owns the planet again i think that's how it works i think top one was in 1600 or something uh and we did pretty well that one as well did they they spent like easily the first 14 of the cop meetings just playing the name game uh and doing icebreakers so it took a while before they got into the work of talking about climate change.

There was a real sense of urgency around just like building a sense of community among the diplomats.

Like number 20 was all trust falls, right?

It was just trust falls.

Well, that's basically how we're approaching the environment, I think.

It's just one giant trust fall in which we're just letting ourselves fall backwards and we're assuming that scientists of the future will catch us before we smash to the ground.

President Jiji said, unlikely to attend, he might, according to reports, send a terracotta environment minister instead.

Classical technique.

No doubt Zhi will come up with a decent excuse, perhaps that he's got a piano lesson or that he's too busy repressing dissent or that he can't be asked given that he'll do what he wants anyway.

Or maybe he's just trying to cut down his own personal carbon footprint.

It would of course be hypocritical of him to have spent so long reducing the carbon footprint of the Uyghur Muslims by interning them in prison camps only to then swan off to Glasgow on a gas-guzzling aeroplane.

So give him some credit for that.

Other team news for COP26, the Pope has been ruled out after after recent tum-tum surgery, but has promised to add an extra prayer for the environment every night as part of his bedtime catch-up with his boss, who is, it's fair to say, a bit of a hands-off type CEO right now.

Abraham Lincoln will not be attending after sadly being assassinated in 1865.

And luckily, Scott Morrison of Australia is going, much to the delight of all of his many fans on both sides of the equator.

There was a UN study about Australia: that Australia, of all 194 UN member states, Australia is dead last

in carbon emissions.

You have to work at last.

You don't just slide into last.

Being last, last of 193 countries is like, it means that Australia is below petro states like Saudi Arabia and whatnot.

It means that Scott Morrison is personally walking around Sydney putting every car neutral and just idling it.

Well, it appeals to his core voter base, clearly.

And I like the way that you started off as lost of 194, and then you said there was 193

countries, which suggests that one of those countries has since sunk underwater due to.

I can't keep track of the number of countries.

I'm an American, and it's my.

It was 193.

I misspoke.

I just fact-checked it.

There are 193 UN member countries.

How can we trust anything you ever say again, Mate?

I know, but some of us still believe that Andorra is a put-on.

So

a consensus does seem to be building that the time for saying that something must be done is slowly and regrettably coming to an end.

And the time for saying what must be done is upon us, which should buy us another few decades before the time when we actually have to do that stuff finally comes round.

And it's come at a bad time.

It's for Boris Johnson, the host leader of the summit, as opposed to the ghost leader of the nation.

The rest of the time, his standard role in times of crisis these days.

Because the fact that the time for just saying stuff is now at an end, that moves him out of

his comfort zone.

He's saying something without showing his working or responding to basic questions about feasibility, cost, logistics, detail, or viability comfort zone.

It could be a very difficult couple of weeks for Johnson.

And for Joe Biden, NATO, who's made quite a big play of

his climate agenda, It appears that things aren't going too well because the modern world has yet to find a crisis so severe that it can prompt an even temporary outbreak of maturity in the U.S.

political system.

I mean, it appears that his agenda is going to be the latest policy to repeatedly crack its skull open on the immovable granite rock face of American political twattery.

What exactly has been the problem for Biden and his plans to sort of phase out coal and gas?

Problem is, Joe Biden may not be able to pass a bold climate agenda and phase out coal and gas because of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

And I have to tell you, as an American leftist, who Joe Manchin is trying to, you know, is blocking it and has demanding all manner of concessions.

And Joe Manchin at this point is so upsetting to American leftists that you actually need a trigger warning to talk about him.

People

like their eyes roll back into their heads.

And he's a senator from West Virginia, and people act like, well, of course, West Virginia, because they have coal there.

Like, West Virginia is all coal, just edge-to-edge coal there.

All West Virginia is is toothless hillbilly singing bluegrass and eating coal and then shitting out coal.

That's all that happens there.

But as it happens, coal only makes up about 5% of the economy.

And West Virginia is the second poorest state in the United States.

So how's that working out for you, Joe Manchin?

So even the coal miners union supports not doing coal anymore.

And why is that?

Surprise, surprise.

The coal miners union was like, what's that you say?

If we switch to renewable energy, we can stop dying of the black lung and undermine cave-ins?

That seems like a losing proposition.

What's the hold up, Bob?

On the subject of coal, Aditi, India is having its own coal problems.

It's running out.

What exactly has happened and what are the implications?

That's right.

We are being shafted of our coal supplies.

We apparently have only two weeks of coal left right now.

And that is primarily because demand rose in Europe over the past summer because it was quite cold.

And so

the supply, the demand for coal went up, and now the demand for coal is really high in India.

And

we are officially, I mean, this is not, as they say, a minor problem.

We are officially two days, two weeks into the supply of coal.

And here's the thing though.

We only realized that we had a shortage of coal after the news said we had a shortage of coal because the announcement of like power cuts and like electricity supply like stopping was not really news.

We're so used to it, we didn't even know it was happening because of coal shortage.

Turns out by the way that India and China are the largest producers and importers and users of coal in the world.

And there is none for us right now.

And so you know what, G, if you're planning to attend that COP, just bring us a large lump of coal.

Bring us a large lump of coal.

We could do with it right now.

That goes out to all buglers.

In fact, if any of our listeners do have any spare coal, please do send your lumps of coal directly to Aditi or indeed to Anavab Pal or Narendra Modi, whichever is your favorite of those three human beings.

I thought you were going to say that one of the premium-level subscribers to the Bugley present

Jim Ping.

I assume so.

I assume he listens.

They all listen, don't they?

Why would they not?

Generally, on carbon emissions, good news, actually, if you are fans of carbon emissions, they have rebounded strongly after a really terrible year for pumping carbon into the atmosphere in 2020.

There was a 6% drop in carbon emissions last year as COVID cruelly stole away so many fun reasons for using fuel.

But the world's richest nations leading the fight back.

It's due to be back up 4% this year.

Carbon emissions are not quite back to the outstanding carbon-emitting form of 2019, but still enough to show the environment who's still fing boss, despite everything.

Like everyone was like, when will things go back to the way they were?

When will things go back to the way they were?

It's back.

We're back on track to just dying on time.

And I, you know, a special you to all Americans from my personal behalf because it's part of my cutesy nihilism.

You know,

I mean, the fact that y'all have let this guy run wild this whatever man child or whatever y'all have let him run wild i mean this guy is this tiny man is making a decision because let's face it also america needs to lead the way in clean energy because it also led the way in dirtying the energy in the first place right and no other country is gonna want to sort of be like oh yeah we'll take the initiative on this You can't tell me to switch off the fan in my bedroom when your toilet is centrally heated, okay so at this point america needs to take this stand and they need to be really bold and i cannot believe it is this one guy you know joe manchin the third or whatever manchin which is also what i call my jawline after 35

but it is absolutely incredible that it hinges on this one man's greed.

I mean, whatever, he's in bed with coal, I guess, which is another euphemism for my sex life.

If you squeeze it hard enough, you can make diamonds.

Family show.

Family show.

Well, this is absolutely staggering that the fate of our planet depends on a guy who comes from

a generation of so unimaginatively men, like Joe, Joe the First, Joe II, Joe the Third.

What about Brad, man?

Brad and Jason.

Come on.

So, this is the root of the problem:

the unimaginative naming of American boy children in the

1950s or so.

Moving on to other India news now.

And well Bollywood has been

rocked at Aditi by the arrest of the son of one of its biggest superstars, Shah Roo Khan's son Aryan, has been arrested and spent time in jail in a in a drugs case.

I mean this it's quite amazing.

Just just explain the story to us and also, you know, the status Shahrukh Khan has in India, which I think is slightly above the status that the Pope has in the Vatican from memory.

Yes.

I am so glad.

I am so glad, Andy.

You know, props to you for knowing this.

Because, you know, if you're listening to this and you don't know who Shahrukh Khan is, I need you to pause this and then take a moment to be ashamed that you don't know who Shahrukh Khan is.

Then open your browser window and type in Shahrukh Khan into the Google search bar.

and the top result will just be the audio of the moaning sounds of 500 million women having an orgasm.

So this guy, this guy, Shahrukh Khan started his career in the 90s at a time.

So you want us to open porn hub?

Yeah, immediately, immediately.

But for those of you who are still listening,

which Tisk Tisk.

Tisk Tusk.

You know, Shahrukh Khan was an actor who started his Bollywood career in the 90s at a time when Bollywood was very inundated with these sort of like angry young men and action heroes and here came along this guy with just this one dimple on his face and he became symbolic of a different kind of masculinity in Indian cinema.

He didn't throw punches instead he teased, he cajoled and he listened and he made himself vulnerable which again is a very low bar for Indian men.

But in Bollywood today, Sharuk Khan is not an actor.

He's a genre.

Okay.

Sharuk Khan is also symbolic of the economically liberal India of the 1990s.

The India that was on the verge of becoming a superpower on par with China.

He's basically Tom Cruise without the crazy, Tom Hanks with good looks, Tom Hiddleston, because he's so, so sophisticated, and Tom Holland, because I would love to be trapped in that web.

And his brand value is more than all of them combined.

Like he's honestly the reason they had to coin the word superstar because star is just not enough.

He's a one-man BTS much before BTS.

Like if you add BTS and then multiply by five, you get half of Shah Rukh Khan, okay?

And I would like to quote him on himself.

He says, in its immense generosity, India decided that it is I, the Muslim son of a broke freedom fighter who accidentally ventured into the business of selling dreams, should become its king of romance.

The Bad Shah of Bollywood, the greatest lover this country has ever seen with this face.

I mean, like, honestly, that charm, that humility, okay, and those dimples.

Like, honestly, like, he is the king of romance in India, which kind of, I believe, explains our population.

It's Sharuk Khan.

So, what year was his film debut, roughly?

You know, so he debuted.

His film, first film that came out was in 1991.

And this was just one year before, or 1994, which was two years after economic liberalization.

And in fact, side story: I didn't write this down because I hate showing off, but he used to live in the A-wing of my building, like of the building complex.

He used to live in the other building, and my grandmother used to send him lunch

because he had it's true, dude.

I'm not even making this up.

I mean, and everyone has a Sharuk Khan story.

Okay, I mean, like this, this man, like, and the truth is, how this fits into the larger scheme is that as India takes a turn into the hard right, where a largely Hindu population wants India to become a Hindu country.

And Shahrukh Khan is a Muslim man.

His son's arrest has become one of the gauzy curtains that this government is pulling over our eyes.

So we don't realize that we are number 101 out of 117 of the hungriest countries in the world.

There are daily lynchings of minorities.

There is the gross mismanagement of the second wave of the coronavirus.

The unpreparation for the third wave of the coronavirus.

The world's largest protest over the corporatization of agriculture in a largely agrarian economy is going on.

And right now, petrol prices are increasing day by day.

That it only makes headlines now when petrol prices stay the same for two days in a row.

Now, here's what happened.

On October 3rd, Shahrukh Khan's son, the orderly named Aryan Khan, was standing in line to enter a party on a cruise liner where the Narcotics Control Bureau arrested him with a friend and a random lady.

Right, this random lady wasn't even with them.

They found three grams of weed on her and have basically denied him bail since October 3rd, where he is currently in jail on yet unproven charges.

Apparently, one of the incriminating messages that is being legitimately spoken about in court that was retrieved from his phone, where he texted his friend, where he said, we are going to have a blast.

They say that that is an indication of him possibly being a part of an international drug syndicate.

I mean, thank God they didn't have any messages of him saying this is lit or like slay

because that would have taken him on very different charges, right?

At this point, it makes you wonder if the narcotics control bureau smokes all the drugs that it confiscates

in order to cook up these charges, right?

And

look, if you wanted to pull the curtains over our eyes, good job because that is one good-looking kid.

For generations of women who have grown up loving his father father and of whom his son is a spitting image, it has turned us all into cooing, vociferous mothers with how he's being treated, right?

And the larger relevance of this news item, Andy, I'm getting to a point, I swear, is that today...

The biggest superstar in the country, Shah Rukh Khan's son, has very essentially been kidnapped by a national security in full view of the world's largest democracy.

If he's not immune to the hatred against Muslims in India, who is?

This is not a a canary in a coal mine situation because the entire coal mine is on fire.

Well, thanks.

That was

about as comprehensive

a report on that as

we could have hoped for.

I'm passionate.

I apologize.

I fell off the bus when we started talking about 500 million Indian women coming at the same time.

I'll rejoin you shortly.

Well, I mean, I mean, to put those figures into context, you say his film debut is in the early 90s.

And over the course of Shahruk Khan's film career, India's population has risen from about, what, 600, 650 million to 1.3 billion.

So unquestionably, he has done the job for India.

In other Indian news, Tamil Nadu, the southern state, has become the second Indian state to enshrine the right to sit

in law for workers,

retail workers, who often have to work 12-hour shifts and in the past been forced to stand for the duration of those shifts.

Look, I know what long shifts are like.

I'm a professional satirist.

Satire never sleeps.

I'm on call 258, 366 and a quarter.

And although physically I'm allowed to sit down or indeed lie down and have a snooze on the sofa or watch the sport while I wait for the news to break the knees satirizing or go to bed or take a couple of weeks off to go on holiday, I am metaphorically always on my toes.

So I relate to

what these workers have had to go through.

There's a lot of states in India, but only two of them now have the right to sit.

Is this going to cap off there or is the rest of India going to follow suit?

You know, Andy, I have to admit that I am very, very privileged.

I am incredibly privileged.

And so, you know, whenever I need to read one of these stories, I come across like legal victories for worker rights.

I'm always like, wait, what?

We had to demand the right to sit?

Holy shit, how bad has it been going so far?

But I mean, this is a legal victory for women's asses all over the country.

I'm clearly not referring to their husbands.

But it is always a delight when we win the musical chairs of our humanity and we actually find a seat.

You know, this is one of those things where the thing they did a protest where they held the chairs up to their heads and were like, give us seats.

And the next protest is going to be the right to use to like enough toilet breaks.

And I really do not want to know how that protest is going to go.

American News Now and well, NATO, you can give us an update on the

recall vote on California Governor Gavin Newsome.

How did it go and what does it mean?

Last time I was on the bugle was it was in the run-up to the recall and

I did probably, I think I said 17 hours of high quality invective and vitriol about about the recall, and Chris cut it down to about two and a half minutes.

So there's like some lost tapes.

If buglers want to find it, there's like lost tapes floating around the internet somewhere of all of the fire that I unspooled.

But now Newsom handily defeated the recall.

The recall was voted down, and I can return to my true passion of publicly hating him.

All of the people who started hating Gavin Newsom before the recall, like who didn't start hating him until he was governor, as far as I'm concerned, they're like bandwagon Newsome haters.

Like, I have been hating Newsom for 20 years.

I go back, I've been hating Newsome.

I had the mixtape of hating Newsom.

Do you know what I mean?

I hated Newsome with the original bass player.

So now I'm back to it.

So prior to the recall, there were 836 bills sitting on his desk from the legislature awaiting the signature of the governor.

And he didn't do anything until after the recall because he's a coward and thought making decisions would not project the image of equivocating spineless non-leadership leadership that his focus groups told him suburban independent voters crave.

Well, that works on this side of the Atlantic as well, that kind of leadership.

We should just point out for any listeners that the curious banging in the background while NATO is speaking is some kind of construction work rather than Gammy Newsome hammering on your door, wanting to wreak his earthly vengeance on you.

I'm sorry, yeah, there's construction nearby.

So, to give you a sense of Newsom's ideological orientation, we have an eviction issue here in California.

There's rent relief and officially an eviction moratorium, but landlords are ignoring it.

So, Newsom, in his infinite wisdom, vetoed legislation that would provide legal aid to people facing eviction because the symbolic policy was more important than actually accomplishing the thing.

He also vetoed a bill called contingency management, which is the only treatment that is supported by medical evidence to get people off of meth.

And contingency management?

It turns out that the way to get people to stop doing meth is to pay them.

Literally throw money at the problem, and it works.

So he vetoed those two bills, but he did sign a bill to make permanent one of the most popular developments of the pandemic.

No, that's not masturbating on Zoom.

It's cocktails to go.

And I knew that once we had the option of cocktails to go, there'd be no going back.

And so now people will still get evicted, but they can start a GoFundMe to have people send them artisanal small batch cocktails by DoorDash to their tent encampment.

A pumpkin old-fashioned pairs well with meth in the winter, I'm told.

And that's Nuisance, California.

In other American news, NATO, you are our official, quite literally hands-on Bugle American Industrial Disputes correspondent.

Striketober

is in full swing.

I was reading that the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, Sarah Nelson, said Striketober is terrifying the bosses.

And that does sound like a film that some people definitely don't want to see.

What exactly is Striketober?

How's it going?

That's right, Andy.

So, Adida, I don't know if you know this.

I'm the country's only hybrid comedian union organizer.

And

Striketober in America, as you know, Andy, the American leftist calendar, the months are Antifogust, Barricade Ember, Striktober, throw pies at politicians, Vember, and December the chains of oppression.

Those are the months that we celebrate.

As many as 100,000 workers of the United States are either on strike currently or voting to strike across the United States.

Strikes in the United States have flatlined in recent years as the percentage of workers and unions have declined.

But currently, the strike wave is hitting factories, school bus drivers, hospital workers, film and TV crews, many other industries.

After 18 months of essential workers being told that they are essential, they are surprisingly acting like they are essential.

It turns out that when you kill 750,000 Americans from a disease through mismanagement and neglect, you cause a labor shortage, which gives workers bargaining power.

And then because of the pandemic, there was early retirements and workers are exhausted.

Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated story, billionaires got 55% richer during the pandemic or $4 trillion richer.

The world's billionaires almost have enough money.

Almost enough.

Almost.

Always almost as much.

It's like the horizon.

You never quite reach it.

So historians sometimes argue that the bubonic plague caused the Renaissance and the end of feudalism.

So get ready for the Mona Lisa of picket lines, motherfuckers.

What I love about strikes is that they unleash some amount of chaos and like you could sort of can't quite plan and predict what's going to happen.

Like, often, bosses will try to hire replacement workers, which we call scabs, to cross the picket line and work during the strikes.

So, for example, 1,400 workers at cereal factories by the company Kellogg are on strike.

The last time Kellogg went on strike, a scab peed in the cornflakes.

We all contribute in our own ways.

Over the last hundred years, there's been a demonstrable correlation between the frequency of strikes and economic inequality, and the mechanism by which strikes reduce inequality is scabs peeing in the flakes.

So they don't teach that in your economic classes at university, do they?

John Deere is a company that makes farm machinery, heavy machinery, and they have factories all over the Midwest.

10,000 workers walked out.

The membership voted to strike, not just in defiance of their employer, but their own union leadership.

And John Deere responded by sending salaried office staff to keep production going.

And they didn't manage to make it to 8 a.m.

on the first day of the strike before they had to call an ambulance because somebody crashed a tractor inside the factory, it's where you're not supposed to crash the tractor.

You're supposed to crash the tractor on the Fury Road driving to get water during the apocalypse while you're chasing Mad Max.

So, the John Deere walkout, this could lead to a shortage of tractors.

Either been crashed or not manufactured.

And I'm excited by this because I've invested a lot of money in shares in oxen companies, and it was a long-term bet, but I think it's about to come good.

Good luck.

So, here's my advice:

I have some handy how-to tips for how bugle listeners can prepare for striketober.

If you are in a union and you can strike, definitely strike.

Some people think that you should strike only if you have to.

I disagree.

I think if you can, just do it, make up a reason.

It doesn't matter what the reason is, just do it.

If you aren't in a union, but support the strike, and here are some things you can do to support the strike.

When you drive by the strike, honk.

Workers love it when you honk and support.

The John Deere strike is running 24 hours a day so the neighbors of the John Deere factories will love a lot of late-night honking.

If you walk by a strike, just yell honk, honk, honk at the striker.

That will do the trick.

Bring food.

Striking workers love it, but you got to mix it up.

Usually people send like a lot of pizzas and donuts to the picket line, but striking workers who have been without pay, walking picket lines day and night, outside for weeks, they really will enjoy receiving like an oso buco and polenta, or like a chickpea tagine on the picket line.

So send that.

Also, you can go

to the strikes and scream at the scabs.

I've had these like running, Andy's the sports term scrimmage fights with like these like hired like Iraqi veteran security companies as they're trying to sneak in the scabs across the picket line.

And so screaming at scabs, it's great therapy.

It's the only therapy we have in the United States.

See the earlier rant.

Just let it out.

It's a great way to channel your aggression.

It doesn't even need to be about the issues.

Like I've gone to strikes and been like, your outfit sucks or whatever.

Your hair is dumb.

I really didn't like the Second Matrix movie.

Like whatever it is that worked for you.

Give money to this.

There's usually some sort of strike mutual aid or support fund.

Also, don't fight.

Keep it non-violent.

If there are 10,000 people wanting to have a peaceful strike, don't be that asshole.

Try to keep it calm and then make sure you got to protect the workers who are on strike.

Make sure that if someone is going to get punched or arrested, it's you and let the workers go about their day.

This is like legendary strike story about the Melbourne dock workers that they were on strike and there was a platoon of dock worker drag queens who created a buffer between the striking workers and the police who were doing a choreographed line dance singing, stop in the name of love before you break my head.

Think it over.

There's just a lot of opportunities.

for creativity.

Do bring your synchronized dances, bring your graffiti and your chart awk.

Also, demand your local politicians walk the picket line.

Call your city council and your mayor and say this is not the time for your usual craven both sides garbage.

What are you, Joe Manchin?

Get out there and walk.

The right to strike is wholly like the right to vote in that it's central to democracy, always in danger, and Republicans hate it when black people do it.

One employee speaking to a local radio station apparently said, We aren't asking to be millionaires.

We are asking for fair wages, a pension and post-retirement healthcare.

But But is this where striking workers are going wrong?

That they should be asking to be millionaires because people listen to millionaires.

And that might be the step that they need to make.

I mean, I think, you know, striking workers could take a page from Donald Trump and just tell people that they're millionaires so that people will listen and assume that people will believe them and not do any fact-checking.

That brings us towards the end of this week's bugle.

We were going to have a full UK news section, but we have almost run out of time.

The news here, sadly dominated by the second murder of a Member of Parliament within the last five and a half years.

Sir David Amos, the MP for Southend, killed.

Whilst meeting his constituents, there's been much discussion of the need for a kinder, gentler politics and for a less abusive and polarised society in the UK.

Things which sadly did not emerge after the killing of MP Joe Cox in 2016.

We will discuss the implications of this harrowing event and the prospects for change and progress in public discourse next week with Nish Kumar.

I was also going to tell you about how badly the British government, in everyday parlance, fked up its COVID response, according to its own reports.

Sadly, however, we've run out of time, but I think you can probably imagine the general thrust both of the report itself and the Bugle's reaction to that report.

Just one thing to pick up from it: the chief medical officer for England, Professor Sally Davies, suggested the early complacent response was fostered in part by, quotes, a form of British exceptionalism.

and that exceptionalism has continued to guide us through this crisis.

Any normal government would have resigned, or at least apologised.

Hell, even a bit of an embarrassed blush would be something, but luckily, ours is truly exceptional, and none of that has happened.

That brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Thank you very much for listening.

Don't forget, aside from voting as often as legally possible for the Bugle in Best Comedy podcast at the the National ComedyAwards.com.

But there is also a Bugle live show on the 13th of November at the Odeon in Leicester Square as part of the Podicon Festival.

Nish Kumar will be one of the guests.

Tickets are available on the internet, I've heard, or probably if you go to the Odeon in Leicester Square or just ask anyone nicely in the street, they might write you out one on a bit of paper.

Any shows or other things to tell our listeners about, Aditi?

I've got two specials on Netflix.

One of them is called Things They Wouldn't Let Me Say.

The second one is called Girl Meets Mike.

It's a part of the Comedians of the World series.

I also have another one called Mother of Invention, which is on Amazon Prime, UK, US, and Australia.

And

if there's anyone listening from India, actually, I am doing a series called Adati Mittal Live, where I'm releasing one new stand-up video every month

on Amazon Mini TV, which is only currently available on Android.

I don't know, this is getting really niche right now.

Night

As usual, my albums are available online, and the best way to financially support me as a comedian is to buy them on Bandcamp.

The Whiteness album is the last album.

And also, a live show coming up Saturday, November 6th.

I'm doing a show with Liz Winstead, the co-creator of The Daily Show at the Verdi Club in San Francisco.

Tickets available at talentmote.com.

We will now play you out with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers to join them to make a one-off or occurring contribution to keep the bugle free, independent and devoid of advertisements, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

Having been reminded early in this issue of the Bugle about the story of King Canute, Grant Alpor or Alpof, or to be honest, I'm not sure how you pronounce that surname, wonders what was really going on inside the head of the former monarch when he supposedly tried to prove his humility to his fawning acolytes by commanding the sea not to get his tootsies wet.

Sure, says Grant, he'd have known that the sea would likely be at best non-compliant and at worst actively disobedient, but there must nonetheless have been a moment of slight disappointment when the sea did, as predicted, splosh over his trotters.

Of course, he wouldn't have shown it, being a king, but at that moment he would have known his dreams of space travel were truly over.

Justine Hooks wonders whether Canute's wet toes stunt would work in today's sceptical world.

I reckon he could have had his feet fully submerged and been saying, look everyone, as I said, even I, a great king, can't tell this big wet bastard what to do, give it up for today's worthy winner, the sea, and his online fans would still have claimed that Canute had owned the ocean and that his feet were actually as dry as an overcooked sand sandwich.

Meanwhile, continues Justine, his online haters would claim he'd had both legs bitten off by a nearby shark and drowned to death at at least three times.

Jason Jostock doubts whether in today's political climate Knute would even be allowed to go near the sea with so much as half a trouser leg rolled up.

Maybe if there was a potential advertising deal for waterproof footwear it might be a goer, but politically it's hard to see what a leader like Knut could gain from it.

Showing humility, humanity or vulnerability is absolute electoral kryptonite these days, so I reckon Knut's advisors would just get him to put on a high-vis tabot and a safety helmet and be shown around some big coastal engineering project that might or might not happen before making a statement about investing in flood defences that he clearly doesn't mean.

Meanwhile, Jeff McGilver pities the lot of 11th century news fans from King Canute's time.

Even a hold the monks quills from illuminating the front page story like Canute failing to hold back the waves would struggle for public traction in the 24-decade news cycle they had back then, notes Jeff.

If you were a news junkie, you'd have to wait for some chronicler or other to finally get round to giving a half-assed partial version of events events sometimes hundreds of years later, and even then it would inevitably leave out a load of stuff and make a lot of stuff up as well.

I mean if you were lucky, concludes Jeff, there might be a tapestry or eventually a stained glass window, but you would in all likelihood be dead by the time they came out.

John Bartholomew adds that if Knut were to try his sea-stopping stunt today, it would be most read news on the BBC website for about four seconds before some story about a guy in America swallowing a motorcycle tie knocked it off.

Or, adds John, before you clicked on a story about someone famous wearing something whilst going somewhere, or got distracted by an online quiz about whether the words cucumberance, hagiographicalist, impomprehensible and zincishly are real words or not.

Besides, adds John, even if Canute did stop the sea today, all people would say afterwards was that it proves that global warming is a hoax and the sea levels are fine.

And finally, Andrew Wilmot traces a significant decline in the quality of prominent figures' publicity stunts with large bodies of water.

I mean, says Andrew, just follow the graph from Moses parting an entire sea in what was it now about 1300 BC, dropping down to Jesus toddling along on top of a lake in, let's say, 30 odd AD, to Canute just having a bit of a paddle a thousand years later.

And what do we have today?

Another millennium on?

Nigel Farage standing on a beach shouting at people in dinghies to go home.

It shows how far we've sunk as a species.

Oh well, such is progress.

Here endeth this week's lies.

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.