BONUS: 2020 was Really Bad

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle 4198 sub-episode A.

For actually this week was always scheduled to be a week off, unlike the sub-episode a couple of weeks ago.

I'm very sorry the schedule has been a little on the haywire side of late, but frankly all the news in the world has already basically happened at the moment anyway if you understand what i mean and to be honest i'd probably just be banging on about rugby this week so it's probably for the best that we're not actually recording also i know our core listener demographic is massive donald rumsfeldt fans so it would have been a very very sad show anyway instead we have some choice cuts from our review of 2020 live stream live show choice in the sense that it turns out there were some significant technical issues with the recording entirely appropriate for a year as shit as 2020 in many ways that even sound had stopped working by the end so we've just chosen the bits that, well, sound usable.

We will also have some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers, some offcuts from recent shows, and a dip into pick a year, any year.

No, that's way too long ago.

2009, that'll do.

Why not?

Now, pick an episode, any episode.

No, you can't have a minus number.

81, that'll do.

I used to live in a house called 81, so let's go with 81.

But before any of that, right now, in fact, we'll have some details about our live show in London on the 7th of September at 8pm, taking place at the Utterbelly's new for 2021 London Wonderground site in Earls Court.

Yes, we're doing a show not just at a venue, same upside down purple cow, different location, but in a pun.

It's going to be awesome.

Can you afford to miss it?

Yes, but that's not the point.

Tickets for the Bugle Live and all other shows they're putting on at the London Wonderground at londonwonderground.co.uk.

Right, here now are the sonically usable parts of the Bugle Live review of 2020.

Remember 2020?

But if not, well done you.

With me, Nish, Alice and Nato.

Okay, I've got my three predictions for what I felt would happen this year.

Oh, okay.

I'm nought for three, but it's mixed results on the nature of what me being wrong entails.

I predict there will be absolutely no global pandemic.

Kind of weird that I was even raising that in January.

But swing and a miss from NK47.

Number two, I predict we will no deal Brexit.

Again, swing and a miss, but better news possibly for the country.

And number three, I predict that Quibi will become the dominant player in the streaming market, crushing all opposition and resulting in people shifting their slang for Coitus from Netflix and chill to Quibby and Tents Up Downtown.

Unhappily, wrong on that one as well.

Tents Up Downtown, not to be confused with Tents Up Downtown, which is an entirely different thing.

So, here are my predictions.

As sealed on the 1st of January, 2020

Here they are so I predicted that 2020 would be a year in which the world would shrink in on itself the future would contract the human project would to all intents and purposes essentially stop and we would retreat to little pockets of isolation

introspection and we'd find solace in small acts of community so I was pretty much bang on on that although the reason that I predict that would happen was in response to a giant ethereal horse appearing in the sky speaking fluent Bulgarian so

I got there but

not necessarily for the right reasons.

I also predicted that the US government, the British government would announce the launch of a shark patrol in the North Sea to form a new border between the UK and Ireland.

The Elon Musk will announce the creation of at least three of the following, a transcontinental 400-person capacity pogo stick, a gender-neutral black widow spider, a self-peeling potato, a robot undertaker, a spare Antarctica and a rocket-propelled pelican that could solve the world's air freight problems overnight.

I also predicted that by the end of the year, the UK would not consist of just four countries but 17 as a deluge of EU member states jumped ship to join our glorious casting off of the shackles of mutually beneficial cooperation.

And I would also predict that the human race would lose top spot in the world's greatest species chart.

I did get that one right.

I didn't expect octopuses to be the ones to take over, but there you go.

Strange things have happened this year.

So

let's look at.

I mean, clearly, COVID has been the top story of all the top stories

this year.

Why do you think it happened?

Was it divine punishment from Zeus for the gradual degradation of Test Match cricket?

Or was it a logical result of the last few decades of humanity and its headlong, willfully myopic short-termism?

Or was it just one of those things that no one could have seen coming apart from all the people who did see it coming and said we needed to prepare for it and were rapidly ignored?

I mean, what do you reckon?

Explain what happened with COVID, people.

Well,

if you had talked to my dad, you would know that the reason this year was as bad as it was is because you were happy.

It's a dark insight into NATO's home life.

But because he was happy or because you were happy?

If you're happy, it means that something horrible is about to happen right

so someone was too happy right and it's not clear who right was your dad a big fan of english cricket in the 1990s uh because that was generally

a little moment of happiness and then a crushing uh crushing disappointment well i mean you know my my dad is a is a jew in his 70s so he's he's had the full roller coaster uh

hey listen he's not wrong uh somebody did get too happy aka the guy who had the three-way with the bat and the pangolin.

That guy got too happy.

He was f ⁇ ing a bat with a pangolin up his ass, and now none of us can go outside.

Okay?

So, in many ways,

in many ways, Mr.

Green was entirely correct.

Well, Andy, I think everything happened this year for the same reason anything happens any year, which is that we've let the old rituals go.

We've lost the real meaning of Christmas, which is eating stuff around the solstice so the sun doesn't die.

We no longer send our extra daughters to serve as priestesses in Delphi.

When was the last time you penned an epic poem in praise of the gods or left your window open so Zeus could visit your wife in the form of a hamster or the mailman, Andy?

Well, I don't know, here's a little picture of Delphi for you though.

Why was that so quickly accessible to you, Andrew?

Well, there is going to be a live sacrifice later in the show to try and make sure 2021 goes better.

The hundred head of oxen that are currently penned into the cricket net in my garden are being very quiet at the moment.

They're all tuned in listening to the show on headphones, but

there will be an offering to Almighty Zeus at some point

later in the show.

Personally, I think one of the reasons the year has been so bad, and you look at the evidence that generally the world hasn't been too bad for much of the last

17

years or so, is that Roger Federer has not played since January.

He's not played a competitive match since January.

And that's just thrown the cosmic balance of the universe out.

Also, I take some personal responsibility.

I do regret now that prayer that I said back in July 2019 when I said, if you let England win the Cricket World Cup final today,

you can do whatever the f ⁇ you like in 2020.

So my bad.

I mean, most of my Faustian packs haven't been up to much, to be fair.

But, you know, I've got a bit of a tab going with the Prince of Darkness over the years.

He has granted me a receding hairline by the time I left school.

I can't can't remember what it was for that, but it really came off Trump's.

He's given me the ability to tell the difference between a goat and a bench.

And also, he granted my wish for global democracy to gradually crumble in a swamp of vested interests.

So, you know,

it is partly

my fault.

There was this extraordinary headline, Nish, from the Daily Telegraph just a week or so ago about COVID, saying the mutant virus has sealed Britain off from the world.

But is it all it's cracked up to be?

This is what listeners.

This is what we've been waiting for.

Brexit might not deliver, but the virus is going to do it as well.

I genuinely never thought I would have something in common with COVID, Andy, but it turns out we've both had spicy write-ups in the Telegraph.

I mean, I can't explain why any of this happened because I simply don't understand science, and that's not my fault.

That's just part of a wider campaign I have to dispel stereotypes about people of Indian origin.

But I can tell you why I think possibly the virus has had a disproportionately bad impact in the UK and the US.

And that is maybe it is not a good idea to elect the human incarnation of a scam email as your prime minister or president.

Is that possible?

I guess it's possible,

Nish.

Nate, you might have a view on this, having had a particularly aggressive scam email over the last

four years.

I mean,

any regrets now that you personally voted for Trump so many times back in 2016?

I do feel some amount of regret that I voted for Trump 11 or 12 times in 2016.

But

the fortune from the child of the Prince of Burundi was too sweet to turn down.

He couldn't pass up the opportunity.

I mean, I do think with Boris Johnson, and we've seen

he's dealt with

the virus in an almost infinite number of different incompetent ways.

And fundamentally, Nish, we keep being told Boris Johnson is not a details person.

Now,

as a prime minister dealing with A, the infinite complexities of Brexit, and B, the even more infinite complexities of COVID, that is about as reassuring as having a squeamish surgeon or a lifeguard with armbands on, a doctor's certificate saying they're excused from swimming due to extreme hydrophobia and a disconcerting tendency towards Moes.

I think we all were doomed to fail this test.

I don't want this talk about, oh, we're going to beat the virus.

The virus has played us off the park.

The vaccine might get a sneaky little consolation goal, but that's about it.

It's almost like the skills that you need to acquire power in this age of disinformation and complete insanity are not the skills that you need if you want to use that power at all.

Widesleep.

Yes.

Well, you say this as someone who's from a couple of demographics that have done relatively well in dealing with the virus.

A, you are a woman, and B, you are not from Britain or America, and you're not a natural despot.

I think that's fair to say.

So, I mean,

what have you personally brought to the global fight?

Well, as somebody who packed for six weeks to come back to Australia and has been here since March,

what I have packed is my sense of fate being on my side, really.

I feel like I'm going to take full credit for the luck that has happened to me in my life, refuse to acknowledge my privilege, and demand possibly either anarchy or full libertarianism, because I believe that nature abhors a vacuum.

And what I want is big men hitting each other with sticks.

Which I think is what, on the current trajectory, from test cricket to one-day cricket to T20 to 100 ball cricket I think by 2040 that is what cricket will involve just big men hitting each other with sticks

I think it's fair to say that racial equality has never been one of the planet's top hobbies

I mean obviously it's you know it's hard to to quantify the exact extent to which today's world and societies have been shaped by the legacies of slavery and imperialism and other exploitations and how much simply by the fact that God put Britain on this planet to bring the gift of Britishness to all humanity.

It's hard to sort of separate those

two.

I mean, Nish, it was kind of interesting here when the statues started toppling in this country, and all this talk of, oh, you know, you can't knock the statues down because we've got to learn

from our history.

I mean, there's an old saying that the past is a foreign country.

And ironically, it's about the only foreign country Britain is positive about at the moment.

Look, I'll put my cards on the table.

When

the Black Lives Matter protesters in the English city of Bristol

took a statue of slave owner Edward Colston and threw it in the water, that was the best erection I had in 2020.

That was...

Listen, let's be honest, none of us have been doing our best work.

It's been a very stressful year.

So let's be real.

But when they put that f ⁇ ing disgusting slave owner in the drink, I could have sculpted diamonds.

It was astonishing.

Because

it's very interesting to me that the question that people asked was: Should we have statues?

Should we remove statues of slaveholders?

Well, the question probably should have been, why did we

still have so many statues of slaveholders up?

I didn't know slavery was still an issue we were 50-50 on.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I don't think a lot of us watched Django Unchained and looked at Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Fox and thought, hmm, what an interesting conflict between two equally valid but divergent perspectives.

It's a very strange thing that

we've done this.

Because the thing with statues is that a statue is absolutely a judgment call on a person.

Like, let's face it, we don't even build statues of people we are seven out of ten on.

Like, Mike Myers is not getting a statue because of how bad the love guru was, with apologies to previous co-hosts of this actual podcast.

But

it is very strange.

And the only way I can see the only middle ground because I listen I've a lot of people have accused me of being various things this year and I want to try and reach out with an olive branch of compromise yes I believe we should get rid of all of the statues of people who own slaveholders because I think it's insane that we did it in the first place but I'm willing to reach out and compromise because the problem with the statue is that it is an implicit judgment there is a statue of Robert Clive that is pretty much outside the foreign office in London right the State Department equivalent in this country there's a statue of Robert Clive out there now Robert Robert Clive is better known as Clive of India, and that's all you really need to know.

Because let's face it, the mathematical formula of white guy name plus not white guy country never ends well.

There's no Darren of Ethiopia, but if there was, he'd have been a right.

And the only

way that I'm willing to reach out in terms of a compromise is if we have voice boxes that are linked to motion-sensitive sensors outside the statues.

So every time someone walks by the statue, it goes,

hell, I was a prick.

That is the only compromise that I'm.

Either the statues have to go in the water or they have to start acknowledging what they did.

That's the only compromise I'm willing to make on this.

Nish, there's a statue outside the Queen Victoria building in Sydney of her tiny dog, of a tiny dog that apparently belonged to Queen Victoria.

And if you walk past it, it talks to you and tells you what job it did as a dog.

Thank you.

Precedent.

Well, the defence rests.

In San Francisco, there was a statue of Christopher Columbus that was torn down.

And recently, I went up to visit the site where there's just a barren plinth.

And naturally, I hopped the fence and climbed up on the plinth myself

and had my wife take pictures of me striking dramatic poses

because we are our own heroes now.

We don't need to honor murderers of the past.

And I felt like replacing Christopher Columbus with me, a different white guy who at least was not a murderer, is a form of harm reduction.

It's a gradual, it's a gradual process.

Baron Plinck, incidentally, is, I think, running for Senate in Georgia.

The footballers thing is absolutely incredible because I don't know how aware NATO and Alice are of this, but before every Premier League game at the moment, actually, I think before every football league game in general, footballers are all taking a knee in acknowledgement of the Black Lives Matter movement and they have come in for some criticism

and what I think is interesting is people keep saying well this is you know this is it's not right that people do this.

Let me just fill you in on one of the other things that we often do in football matches.

In the sort of pan-European competition

which is called the Champions League before games footballers have to stand for not the national anthem of a country, which is stupid enough to begin with.

What you're a country, you don't need a fucking theme song.

There is a national anthem for the Champions League that gets played and footballers have to stand there somberly acknowledging it.

And the fact that people are willing to acknowledge that as normal behavior and yet taking a knee to acknowledge millennia of systemic racial abuse is weird.

We've gone mad.

Thanks be to 2020 finally ending.

It's lies time now about our Bugle premium level voluntary subscribers to join the Bugle voluntary subscription scheme and make a recurring donation to the show or just to make a one-off contribution to keep the show free, flourishing and independent, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button, like these people have done.

Kate McCarthy likes to think of inappropriate names for new brands of car.

Kate suggests the Mitsubishi Snerd, the Audi Potato and the BMW Sphinxter to get things started off.

If we really want to get people out of their cars to save the planet, explains Kate, we need to stop people wanting to get into their cars in the first place and calling cars names that people people don't want to be associated with, like the Skoda Plague or the Chevrolet Mega Dirge, can only help.

David Wakeling adds that if you really want to dissuade people from driving, there's no use banging on about the planet and stuff like that.

David says, we need an in-car computer that tells people at the start of their journey that wherever they're going is rubbish and they shouldn't bother.

The end of the world is simply too vague a disincentive.

You need to tell people they're about to have a rubbish day out.

That works.

I've tried it myself, says David.

My fellow passengers got quite annoyed with me after about an hour, and we eventually turned back and went home.

Sure I did not last long as a long-distance coach driver but I'd like to think I made a very serious point for all humanity.

Simon Schneider thinks that vegetables are much underrated.

I know people bang on about the internet, the internal combustion engine and the wheel, says Simon, but let's hear it for vegetables.

They might not have the capacity to let people download podcasts or share videos of terrapins dancing to 70s disco classics like the internet does, and they aren't quite as good at getting you from A to B as the old engine-wheel combination can be.

But you can can eat vegetables, and that's awesome.

They help keep numerous species alive.

That's a super effort.

Ace Coggins chips in in support.

Put it this way, says Ace, if you offered me a choice between an internet live stream of a Formula One motor race and a magic unending pan of carrot soup that could feed the world forever, I would, quite unhesitatingly, I must add, choose the carrot soup.

And I think that says it all, frankly, about carrots, Formula One, me, and the human race.

Further evidence that Simon has really hit a nerve with his support for the humble vegetable comes from Steve Jamieson.

You never hear vegetables complain about their lot, they just knuckle down and do what they do and I admire that attitude in this day and age.

Plus I think aubergines have probably got medicinal uses we haven't discovered yet.

Just look at them, they're hiding something, I know it.

They're like whales, but they're vegetables.

Well fruit technically but they're basically a vegetable because you can't have them in a dessert.

And finally, Henry Dawn volunteers to get to the bottom of the medicinal properties of aubergines issue.

I'm not a medical research scientist, says Henry, and I've got the lack of certificates to prove it, but I love eating aubergines, so I'm prepared to be a human guinea pig in any cures, antidotes, or other concoctions that Ace wants to try out.

I've also done it before.

My friend once thought he could prove that potatoes can make you hear in the dark, but I helped disprove that theory.

If anything, my potato headphones muffled all sounds, whether it was daytime or nighttime.

Here endeth this week's lies.

It's archives time, and let's go back to Bugle issue 81.

Chris, have we actually got access to Bugle 81?

But you recorded that link on your own, Andy.

Oh, good.

Well, this is awkward.

Oh, if not, just pick another one.

I've got it here.

Oh, yeah, that'll do.

That was a goodie.

Roll VT

Feature section now, and Central America.

What do you get when you build a sewage outlet next to a string of seaside holiday resorts?

Costa Rica!

Nicaragua!

Yes, I admit I did, but I was thirsty, and I'll buy her another bottle of Spanish mineral water as soon as I've got some cash.

Guatemala, no thanks, I'm allergic to avocados.

Panama, okay, if I must, I will.

The BBC's Andrew Marr is past it as a political broadcaster.

He's lost any gravitas ever since he put tights on for children in need.

There, I panned a ma.

Will that do?

Hey, El Salvador.

No, please don't.

I know we're a bit short of cash at the moment, but we need to keep the door.

Sell the TV instead.

Honduras?

No, you, Honduras.

Oh, Belize.

Stop making jokes based on Central American countries' names.

For Mexico jokes, please refer to Bugle79.

There's a nice little audio footnote, Andy.

While we're away, Andy, Honduras gave the world a good, old-fashioned military cue, and it was heartwarmingly nostalgic to see Central America go back to doing what it does best.

Toppling dictators in a Woody Allen's banana style.

The Honduras military arrested the president in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, took him straight to the airport, which led to this magnificent direct quote from the front of the New York Times, Andy.

I'm still the president of Honduras, he said, still wearing his pajamas.

There is nothing you can say that cannot be instantly undercut if you are wearing pajamas in a situation where they are not commonly worn.

If you are wearing pajamas when society dictates you shouldn't be, something dramatic has just taken place.

President Zelaya even tried to go back to Honduras seven days later, but his plane was prevented from landing at the airport by the military, so it just had to circle overhead before giving up.

Now, technically, during this, he was in Honduran airspace, so he was president again.

And he could maybe be president in a balloon which never touches the ground he could be the world's first democratic elected airborne leader floating over the people shouting down commands i think that would be a great way to run a country that's basically how tony bless thought he was running britain yeah exactly exactly

it would have been better if he just had the physical representation of how above people he felt now he said that he needs to find other ways of entering the country phenomenal andy this story is about to get even better what he could he could tunnel his way in

He could dress up as a donkey,

try to get through customs, spend a couple of weeks, keep it on the down low, giving children rides on the beaches, and then suddenly throw it off and say, ah, it's me, I'm president again.

What?

I'm going to the airport.

At least let me put my...

Oh, okay.

It's lucky he wasn't a lady president.

Otherwise, that could have been really awkward.

Can he be president in a 90?

I don't know.

I think they're called presidents, Andy.

Now, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias has been leading mediation efforts to resolve the Honduras Shamuzzle.

As you would expect from a country, Costa Rica is officially the world's happiest country, John.

According to the Happy Planets Index, Costa Rica is the happiest nation in the world, the greenest and happiest country in the world.

Britain's only halfway up the Happy Planet Index, 74th out of 143.

And the USA, 114th happiest nation

in the world.

Well, is that just at the moment?

Is that because of the world?

Well, it isn't.

Yeah, they were 34th until you moved there, there, mate.

I'd love to disagree, but you know, you can't argue with numbers.

But the top tenure is dominated by countries from the Latin American region, and the bottom by countries from Africa.

And I think Zimbabwe is really struggling in this particular league.

Understandably, I guess.

But why you might think is Costa Rica so happy?

Well, the answer is it's got loads of birds.

800 different species of bird in Costa Rica.

And I think that's why people are so happy.

In fact, exactly 800.

They operate on a one-in-one out basis.

As soon as a new bird flies into Costa Rican airspace, the current least popular species of bird is hounded out by its fellow birds.

So it's rather.

Self-policing, these 800 species of bird currently include such birds as the winking scutterwing, which winks at tourists before it craps on their shoulders.

The blue-beaked jellybird, that's the wobbliest known bird in the world with a disgustingly foul-mouthed beak.

It's a relative of the parrot, but ruder.

The cheese-plumed honkerbird, its feathers spread out like a slice of cambozola whilst mating, and it tweaks like a claxon.

And also, here's a fact, John, if you ate all 800 species of bird in Costa Rica, you would die eventually, anywhere between 30 minutes and 120 years later.

But by the time you did, you would have grown feathers on 70% of your body.

Here's the thing, Andy, though.

They claim they're happy, but can you truly be happy as a nation if you've never won the World Cup?

They've never won the World Cup.

Never.

But surely that must nag at the back of their minds.

They did all right in 2002 or

they played with a bit of flair.

Got a couple of goals against Brazil.

They did, Annie.

They really won over the neutrals, but that you know, history doesn't recall that.

It's not going to etch their name on the trophy.

It's just going to etch loser next year.

Never won.

Costa Rica, on a map.

Never won it.

So I know what they're so happy about.

Well, it's interesting you mentioned football because obviously in this region, famously, in I think it was 1969, there was a war between Honduras and El Salvador that followed on from a World Cup qualifier.

They went to war.

I think there was a disputed penalty, and a war broke out.

And now, some people say we in Britain take sport too seriously, but I don't think that's ever happened.

I can imagine the next World Cup.

Here comes Rooney with the penalty.

Oh no, he's blazed it over.

Spain are through to the semi-finals, and the RAF will make Madrid wish it was Dresden 1945 by the end of the night because of that controversial offside in the second half.

That's all, Bugles.

We will be back next week with episode 4199, which makes me think I really ought to think about what we do for the 200th post-relaunch episode, which is coming very shortly.

Until then, goodbye.

Hi, Buglers.

It's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.