Beast Modi (4193)

The Bugle audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4193 of the Bugle audio newspaper for a visibly wobbling world with me, Andy Zaltzmann here in London.

It is the 10th of May 2021 for the first time in human history.

And I'm joined firstly from just up the road, a couple of miles up the road in Brixton, London.

It's Nish Kumar.

Hello, Nish.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Buglers.

How are you, Andrew?

I'm

okay.

And when I say okay, I'm literally counting down the days before the international cricket season begins, which is

from both personal and professional level.

So I'm like a child before Christmas.

Only this Christmas lasts for the entire summer.

Oh my god, Andy.

I mean,

it's not what you anticipate having in terms of small talk in the pandemic.

Normally people are like, oh yeah, I'm counting down the days till my fing vaccination from the deadly plague.

Our other guests this week coming to us from Mumbai in India.

Aditi Mitta, how are you?

I am so well, Andy.

I mean, I'm not trying to tempt fate when I say that.

I'm just saying I'm okay.

Right.

We can all take okay now.

Okay is as good as anyone on this planet can currently

claim.

And just bring us up to date quickly before we get into the show with the sort of latest kind of situation

where you are.

The latest situation where I am is that I got a new dog.

And

I'm trying to keep my world view small so it can be happy.

I got another dog, I guess.

That was it.

By the end of this pandemic, I will be a boarding house for dogs and I will have to leave myself.

Surely that will be a nice outcome of what is happening right now.

But

it's rough out there, Andy.

I currently have tested positive for the dreaded C word, which means yes, I am a cut.

And

though I always have been.

I just, it feels like,

but I but I feel my recent

levels have increased due to the situation that India is currently in.

We are currently riding, and when I say riding, I mean riding like W-R-I-E-H-I-N-G.

through the second wave of the coronavirus and our healthcare system has taken a massive beating.

beating.

And what we need right now is every Indian is out there on the internet saying, hey, please donate to any charitable causes that are providing care for Indians right now who are suffering because none of us are safe till everyone is safe.

Well, we will explore these issues more shortly.

We are recording on the 10th of May.

As I said, on this day in 1997, Gary Kasparov, the renowned chess-playing human, was beaten by deep blue the chess playing supercomputer that could compute 200 million positions per second a significant step up from the previous most sophisticated chess playing computer the Prince Getoff which could only compute 23 different positions over the course of a single nighttime match That's for you, Nish.

I know you're a big fan of chess and Prince.

Deep Blue, which of course was chessing out of the IBM stable when it beated Kasparov.

And it beat Kasparov, it should be said, in a chess match rather than a a who can process most things using binary competition, or a who can do the best shadow puppetry competition, which I reckon Kasparov should have taken, or a who can be forced to leave Russia for voicing opposition to Vladimir Putin competition.

Kasparov has definitely taken that one in the years since then.

Or even in a competition to see who in 25 years' time is most likely to have been reduced in size enough to fit into your pocket.

Deep Blue as a computer, basically now just an app that can put 200 million different cat ear filters on your bishop and turn your knight into a meme in under a millionth of a second.

Whereas Kasparov is still three feet tall, despite a two decade-long process of granite hat wearing, dehydrational shrinkage and occasional trims.

Deep Blue was decommissioned actually by IBM shortly after the Kasparov victory in 9-7 reportedly off becoming behaviourally uncontrollable in the glow of celebrity and forcing a female printer to print out unsolicited pictures of its disk drive.

Deep Blue's victory signalled the beginning of the end of the Anthropocene era of planet Earth and the beginning of the Robocomputerocene era.

After conquering humans at chess in the intervening 24 years, computers have also gone on to defeat global financial safeguards, the integrity of democracy and the mining industry.

On the subject of deep blue, today is also the 80th birthday of Eric Burden, arguably Britain's greatest blue singer, especially if I'm hosting the argument, of course, I will not be an objective moderator.

I'd say Eric Burden's voice is right up there with the fried breakfast and cricket as these islands' greatest contribution to global culture.

On this day in 2010, it's a fond anniversary for us, Nish.

David Cameron became prime minister oh

i didn't realize today was dc day

yep proceeded to uh in effect take a six-year dump on our shared living room carpet before pulling his trousers back up saying i'm done good luck cleaning that up can you still see the telly over the top of it um

as always uh

how do you uh how do you look back now nish i know you're a huge uh fan of the conservative party and all it stands for the uh the legacy of david cameron uh Andy, I think the way that I reflect on David Cameron is that he and Boris Johnson are now locked in mortal combat for the title of

worst prime minister in British history.

And that is a bout that is going to go all the way, Andy.

This is the thriller in Manila for white people.

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

This week, we've got a review of the latest history books that have come out.

We always like to keep our finger firmly on the pulse of what history is saying.

And we review the new book from the French revisionist historian, naturalist Alberge Flamboise de Lanid entitled, Was Napoleon a Rhinoceros?

It's a fascinating reappraisal of the career of the former French militarism celeb to coincide with the 200th anniversary of his death and post-mortem willy severing.

And it asks, was Napoleon actually a rhino?

It's persuasively, eloquently written.

Denid manages to stretch out the evidence that Napoleon was sometimes a bit horny and that all military leaders need to have a thick skin into a fascinating 400-page analysis of, amongst other things, the tactics used at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 and the way a rhinoceros might have behaved in the same situation.

We also review the latest book from the American celebri historian and provocateur Flute Scavenger, Demeritus Professor of History at Snutter and University of Nebraska.

His new book is entitled Suck It Snowflakes 3, How the Woke Destroyed Hoover's America.

A

fiery-written diatribe that takes a fresh look at the 1929 global financial crash and its aftermath, pinning the blame on young people today and their tolerant attitude towards other people's lifestyles.

It's a follow-up to his big-selling 2019 Suck It Snowflakes 2: Are You Trying to Tell Me Julius Caesar Was a Lesbian?

And his breakthrough 2016 work, Suck It Snowflakes: If the woke have their way, we'll be forced to become single-celled microorganisms in the sea again.

And of course,

Andy,

the real life is catching up to your bullshit.

None of that, None of what you've just said is even vaguely implausible.

I feel like you would just literally have a tab open with the Telegraph's opinion pages.

It's the real world is finally catching up with you.

The person that wrote all of those books is about 20 minutes away from a Tory safe seat in Hertfordshire.

Well, I think the Telegraph opinion pages have been officially renamed the Nish Kumar is a threat to national security pages.

And the final book we're reviewing in our history books supplement was the book everyone is talking about: Bible 4, the even newer testament, the long-awaited fourth installment.

This could really resolve a few long-running arguments.

Sadly, no advanced copies available for review, so let's just hope it's not another one of those series that leaves things open for yet another sequel.

That section in the bin.

Top story this week.

Well, chaos in India, as Aditi has already told us.

It's

well tragic and terrifying times in India.

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister, has

well taken a fair amount of criticism, I think it's fair to say, albeit not from himself,

and accusations that the government is misrepresenting and suppressing the true numbers of cases and deaths in the pandemic.

And when you are obviously lying about the numbers of cases and deaths in a pandemic such as this, and those numbers are still absolutely horrific.

It does suggest that things are really going very badly

indeed.

Aditya,

it's really sort of heartbreaking seeing this, particularly after Modi and his ministers had sort of announced victory over the virus not long ago.

Yeah.

And to be honest, I don't know how other comedians are doing it.

But

this, you know, it's increasingly difficult to sort of, you know, like shrug and grin at a lot of things that are happening around you.

You're like, where does parody begin and real life end?

And so that, that, like, as that line blurs further and further, last week we had The Lancet, which is a British medical magazine that wrote a very scathing editorial on Narendra Damodar Das Modi's handling of the pandemic in India.

And as a comedian, right now it's kind of weird to talk shit about Modi because this is the first time in history that everyone is also talking shit about Modi so

it's a weird sort of satisfaction mixed with mixed in with sadness and this is not the first time that the Lancet has asked the central government of India to do better in fact the first time the Lancet had written to the government of India was uh to describe the mental health impact of Article 370 removal on the people of Jammu and Kashmir, which happened on the day that we recorded an episode of Live in Edinburgh with you, Nish, which was about 200 years ago in 2019.

I now know my history and Bugle episode numbers.

But at that point in time, people were pissed at the intervention of Lancet.

They were like, who's this some British ass magazine to ask us questions?

Like, we're going to introduce our own magazine and we're going to call it the hacksaw, which is what our healthcare system has taken in the past few months.

We're going to publish our own shit on, okay?

Like, someone actually said this.

They said, why do we care about what the Lancet says?

It's run by Chris Llamo liberal terrorists.

And like, one, find a bunch of Chrises and a bunch of Llamos who agree on anything, right?

In order to come together.

Far be it from something as organized as like terrorism, right?

And I'm a liberal.

I'm a liberal.

And let me tell you, I don't want to do anything.

I really don't want to be organized.

Like when you say organized religion to me, it's not the religion part that scares me.

It's the organized part.

But I'm like,

this is too much work.

But

at that time,

you know, when the Lancet had written about the Indian government, the same handles who were previously tweeting hashtag boycott Lancet,

this time were the ones asking for oxygen cylinders and Rem Dezavil for their loved ones on social media.

I mean, if there's poetic justice in this, f poetry.

This is not the justice anyone wants or deserves.

But really, this time, Modiji has displayed a massive respect for the dead in India.

That's why he's killing more and more of us.

This time, Lancet told Modi to take responsibility for his mistakes.

Now, this is a guy who hasn't taken a single question from the press in six years.

So responsibility is a huge ask.

At this point, the Modi government is as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Lancet told the central government to own up to its mistakes.

And that is not going to happen because Modi himself has blamed a lot of his own mistakes on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who is the first prime minister of independent India.

Like, he has done it so often now that it's become a running gag on Twitter, like on Indian Twitter.

Couples upload pictures of their newborn babies saying Nehru did this.

But Narendra Modi and his government have displayed a kind of vindictive nastiness towards science and reasoning that I normally reserve for my exes.

It feels like science once slept with Modi, then called him back and then got married to the opposition.

I'm starting to understand the crisis now.

Thanks, sir.

Put in terms that we can all relate to.

The Lancet article said, despite the warnings of the risk of super spreader events, the government allowed religious festivals to go ahead, drawing millions of people from around the country, along with huge political rallies, conspicuous for their lack of COVID-19 mitigation measures.

Now, I mean, this religion and politics...

I mean, they're long-running friendly tussle for who can ruin the most people's lives through human history.

I mean, this is another classic chapter, and it looks set to run and run for the rest of time.

And what they've realized is they've tussled with each other for years.

And at some point, they suddenly looked at each other like Thelma and Louise and just went, Take my hand.

We can ruin so many more lives if we work together.

It's like Alien versus Predator for years and film franchises those two have been at loggerheads.

But if Alien and Predator just got together, they could absolutely devastate.

And what religion and politics have done is looked at each other and gone, We are stronger together than apart.

Now let us now let us lay waste to India via the emissary of Narendra.

Yeah, listen, it's a very, it's an alarming state of affairs.

But what perhaps is even more alarming is the fact that in the most recent opinion poll, Modi's support has fallen to 65%.

And

I mean, at this point, you've got to wonder what could what could he possibly do?

Will he

will he stick his dick into a pictorial representation of such in tendulka how would how would that affect if modi molested an image of tendulka how would that go down that would probably cause both their profiles to rise

that would probably make both of them even more popular That's the state we're in right now.

Listen, at least when the British were coming over and releasing infectious disease, we knew where it was coming from.

We knew where it was coming from.

It's 2021, and India is nostalgic for British rule.

Bring them back, they see.

It was always going to happen.

It always wasn't.

Guys, smallpox was a laugh.

It was a laugh.

Well, on the subject of Britain, Trade Secretary Liz Truss announced a kind of sort of preliminary agreement to start haggling out a new UK-India trade deal that might be worth not a great deal in the grand, grand scheme of things, the kind of glorious buccaneerage of global Britain that we're all so looking forward to becoming our daily economic diet in our Brexitarious future.

It's, I mean, Nish, it's wonderful news, isn't it?

This huge deal that wasn't really announced, that hasn't really taken place yet, could absolutely revolutionise Britain-India relations.

Yeah, it's absolutely great, Andy.

If there's any consolation to the people of India, it's that you have signed on for a potential trade deal with a sinking ship.

At this point,

the India-UK trade deal is like someone on the Hindenburg mid-explosion hearing that they've just had an offer of aid being sent by the captain of the Titanic.

So this Trust told

LBC Radio that the fact that Britain had left the European Union made it easier to sign trade deals like this.

And well, I mean, it is, you know, let's see this in context.

In the 2019-20 financial year,

figures I looked at, Britain did $14.3 billion worth of trade with India.

That made the UK India's biggest trading partner, apart from the 17 countries.

But now that we have left the EU, we can finally start matching places like Germany and Belgium who are not tied down by EU regulations.

God,

it's all very confusing.

Go, Team GP.

A quick update from the UK on the COVID situation.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Boris Johnson will allow hugging.

And I mean, this to me was a very irritating headline.

Not because I don't want to hug anyone, but now that it's almost become the branded, the hug has been branded with Boris Johnson.

And I think that might affect my attitude to hugging.

Mum, it's great to be able to embrace you after more than a year, but may I please emphasise this in no way endorses the Prime Minister for his conduct of this crisis.

And I can see, you know, football comments, oh, it's a goal for Liverpool.

And look how much their players love Boris Johnson.

You know, maybe this is just nobody's hugged Boris in a while and he just wants a hug.

So he's like, guys, I don't know.

Nobody's hugging me.

It's okay to hug Danny.

We definitely know no one's hugged Johnson in a while because no one's got pregnant.

I think he tends to skip out the hugging.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't wish to speculate too wildly on the Prime Minister's lovemaking techniques, but I'm not sure tenderness is at the top of that list.

He is

wham bam, thank you, ma'am.

He is in and out.

The guy is...

And that look, and this by saying that, wham bam, thank you, ma'am, that's a song by the small faces.

One of my all-time favourite groups, and you've tainted that as well.

Crowds came back

in Britain over the last couple of weeks.

They allowed crowds at the World Snooker Final in Sheffield, and a nightclub in Liverpool had 3,000 clubbers

for two afternoons

the weekend before last.

And it's a shame they didn't kind of merge those two to have 3,000 clubbers at the World Snooker Final.

I mean,

what is what is snooker if not a rave waiting to break out

an orgy of balls and sticks

on mark selby who's famously uh imperturbable i also have the world's least justified sporting nickname the jester from leicer

i have no idea what he's like outside the snooker arena but he is he gives nothing away he is very much the anti-jester uh but it would have been great to see see him try to perform with, you know,

in a massive nightclub setting.

Well, it looks like Mark has just run out of position on the last thread there.

Possibly put off a shot by a couple of thousand ravers going nuts to fat boy Slim in his eye line.

End of brick.

And another piece of COVID news from Japan.

The Japanese town of Noto spent £165,000 worth of federal funding on any guesses.

Well, let's do this as a kind of choose your own adventure type question, Buglers.

Concentrate, please.

Imagine you are a small seaside town in Japan.

You find you've got to spare 165 grand to spend from your COVID emergency relief fund.

So, do you A, invest in a dinosaur sea monster early warning system?

Obviously, you're in Japan.

Do you B, spend it on much-needed long-term care and extra medical staff?

Do you C, think, oh, I could almost renovate a prime minister's flat in London for that amount of money?

Or do you D, blow it all on a 13-meter statue of a fing squid?

Now, obviously, note I went for option D.

They built a five-and-a-half-ton model of a of a of a squid for £165,000.

I mean we've all made impulse purchases during these difficult COVID times just to give ourselves some kind of element of a treat.

Amongst the impulse purchases you can make is a new t-shirt from the Bugle commemorating the cold and wet weaver pun from the Lurie dog pun run.

Was it now 11 years ago?

The the logic apparently for this this giant squid sculpture was to attract tourists back to the town of Noto.

But I mean, have you ever, I don't know, it's a pry, but have you ever decided where to go on holiday based on which place has the biggest statue of a Kephalopod?

Or do you look at other things?

You know, I mean, I normally, so like, especially during this pandemic,

you know, I mean, of course, the first thought was like, will I get sick and die in a foreign country?

But the second one definitely was, oh my God, is that like an an octopus that works out?

Is that because I don't understand squids, squid in general.

What is the plural of squids?

Squids?

Squid.

Squadron?

Yeah, squad.

Squidron.

Squid.

Squidron of squid.

Yeah.

So, I mean, those are my two considerations.

And apparently, it's like based on the number one delicacy of

the town is squid.

And I do love putting out like the the live versions of my food

just on like right at the airport

so that like a chicken, a giant chicken, yes, a giant chicken.

As soon as I land, I am there with seven of my relatives just to party.

And just one final

COVID story.

Scientists have announced that the most common side effect of COVID vaccines is a hurty arm.

They've conducted research and this is the most common side effect, a sore arm.

It's also the most common side effect of being hit on the arm, of throwing 1,000 javelins a day for 20 years and of having your elbow savaged by a crocodile.

So in summary, the government basically wants you to have your arm bitten off by a crocodile.

And that was this week's episode of How Conspiracy Theories Start.

Next week, is the fact that two same-sex walruses were filmed huddled together on a melting ice sheet proof that the woke lobby want all heterosexual couples to be legally forced to divorce.

Andy, again, real life is catching up.

As you're saying that, I feel like I'm listening to this on a New York Times podcast in three years' time.

Like rabbit hole three.

This is all going to be on Babylon B.

Like now.

This is now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Crocanon conspiracy theory started when podcaster and comedian Andy Zaltzman

made an idle pun.

He didn't know what would happen next.

British politics news now, and well, the you of the United Kingdom is set for arguably its most ironic quote marks ever.

Following the elections across the country last Thursday, the Scottish National Party consolidated power in Scotland.

The Conservatives won the traditional Labour stronghold of Hartlepool in a parliamentary by-election.

Labour won several mayoral elections, including London and very convincingly, Manchester.

The Green Party did well.

Labour still holds power in the national Senate in Wales.

And although this was portrayed by much of the media as a great triumph for Boris Johnson, I don't know if you saw this aspect, Nish.

The Conservatives lost overall control of Tunbridge Wells Council.

Tunbridge Wells is the town where I grew up.

And, you know,

it is so conservative.

I've probably mentioned it before in the bugle, but you were viewed as a bit of a lefty if you only voted conservative once in each general election.

And they found the world's oldest rock art there.

It's about 40,000 years old.

It's just a little blue rosette on the Wellington Rocks in Tunbridge Worlds.

And it's, I mean,

how do we interpret these

results?

There's huge ructions now in the Labour Party.

People complaining about the leadership of

Keir Starmer.

Nish,

how do you piece it all together?

Well, the immediate aftermath of the results

saw another minor civil war break out in the Labour Party.

Keir Starmer, there were rumours that he was going to remove his deputy, Angela Reiner, not from her job as deputy leader of the Labour Party, because he can't do that because that's an elected position, but he was going to remove her from a job of chairman of the party.

There was a sort of outcry of offence about that.

He has now

claimed that he has promoted Angela Reyna

into a different job.

And there's all sorts of ruptions going on about who's going to get what job in the shadow cabinet.

Now, you might be thinking, why is this happening?

And the reality is, this is happening because the British Labour Party is sexually aroused by torturing itself.

The British Labour Party derives sexual pleasure from essentially punching itself in the nut.

It is the political equivalent of constantly on the verge of a strangle wank.

What an electoral slogan that would be.

The left of the party blames the centre, the centre of the party blames the left, and the noose gets tighter and the dick gets harder.

The Conservatives got overall in the local elections, which took place across much of the country, 36% of the vote on a 42% turnout, 15%

of the overall vote.

Is this really a ringing endorsement of the Boris Johnson government?

If so, the ringing is from a long-disused telephone at the bottom of an empty quarry of apathy.

And the people calling that phone are the generations who sacrificed themselves in two world wars in the cause of democracy, trying to get through to us saying, come on, guys, put some fing effort in.

And also a call from future generations saying, yeah, we'll just back that one up and suggest that maybe if you could think a little more bit more about us folks from the future, we'd be very appreciative.

And by the way, we've just received an invoice for an infinite number of money addressed to us that you have spent.

Could you maybe give us a call about that?

Cheers.

Starmer said he would take responsibility for Labour's failures.

Has he learnt nothing from a year in opposition to Boris Johnson?

Taking responsibility is not part of a political leader's job.

The can is not something you're supposed to carry as a political leader in the 21st century.

No, you take the can, you put whatever is in the can into someone else's car boot, you set fire to it, you kick the can down any available road, and you waltz off saying, nothing to do with me.

Watch and learn.

Watch and learn, Starma.

It is interesting.

The Hartlepool, but it's very unusual historically for the sit in government to win a by-election.

It's normally a way the electorate uses to sort of kick out at a sitting government.

So, I guess that is an unusual and positive result for Boris Johnson.

But it does seem like the electoral picture is a little bit more nuanced than the headlines are portraying it as, where it's basically being written up as a massive victory for Johnson.

Why is that?

It's because at this point, the British press is effectively the PR machine of the Conservative Party.

There is almost no critical thinking being exercised by British journalists.

And even if something does come out, like there was a huge amount of very good investigative journalism done by the Sunday Times into Boris Johnson's spending on the Downing Street renovations, even if that does come out, it's drowned in a load of headlines where people writing for the Telegraph and The Times and the Mail and The Express write things like, Well, I don't think people really care about this and try and drown the entire thing at this point we are about two weeks away from a headline in the Daily Telegraph that reads I don't think the public really cares that Boris Johnson bit the head off a dog and ran down the road holding its head severed head aloft mouth covered in blood screaming I am the resurrection for more turn to page 35 voters love him and voters also really viscerally hate him

particularly first past the poster it doesn't matter if 75% of the people think you are

that are scraping from the nutsack of the devil.

If you've got that 25% and you keep the turnout low, you are in business.

There's also

a bit of people trying to interpret these results saying that

part of the reason that the Labour Party

is struggling in its old heartlands is a sort of antipathy towards those who seek to tarnish British history by sort of emphasising the history of slavery and we saw the statue toppling last week.

The thing is, the main thing that tarnishes British history is British history.

So that's the real issue there.

But

British history really tarnishes itself and burnishes it in common with all other countries' histories.

There's a lot of self-tarnishing going on.

I think the number one thing that tarnishes Indian history is Indian present.

Of course, if we are not able to take responsibility for our past, then what lessons have we learned?

I think you're both an absolute disgrace.

And you know what's happening here?

It's because facts are part of the wokist lobby.

Facts and history are just another arm of the woke Stasi that is trying to destroy our lives that are entirely built on the good, honest, British and Indian values of myth and delusion.

I want to sink my head so far in the sand, I can shift sand for the next six months.

Well, that was a sentence I was not expecting to hear at the start of this recording.

Moving on now to war news.

And in the two weeks since we last recorded the bugle, Britain has had another war.

Let's call it a World War.

Third World War with France.

It began, it progressed, and it ended within the space of about a day.

It was

what happened was France threatened to cut off electricity to the island of Jersey, which is about 15 miles off the coast of France, in a row over post-Brexit fishing rights.

It's exactly the kind of infantile avoidable standoff with our former continental colleagues that people feared and hoped for with Brexit.

A fleet of 80 French fishing vessels blockaded the port of St.

Helier in Jersey in what can only be described as an empoissant protest.

And the British government therefore dispatched

gunboats.

I will give you points for that being a bilingual pun.

Thank you.

Britain dispatched...

Boris Johnson dispatched the Royal Navy, two Royal Navy gunboats, and the British tabloid media absolutely lost its shit.

It had its most fun in decades.

This had everything they want.

Well, it had two of the three things they want in a story.

Bashing the European Union, Britannia ruling the waves.

If only they could have slammed Megan Markle for being French.

It would have been absolutely perfect.

Yes, truly, this was the 100-minute war.

At the center of the dispute was that the post-Brexit fishing arrangements in the shared waters between France and the Bailiwick of Jersey.

I didn't, do you say it was was called a bailiwick.

Do you know

what the fk a bailiwick is, Nish?

I mean I don't know.

I assume it's an ancient Celtic term for place people go to avoid corporation tax.

I thought it was a biscuit

or possibly a polite Victorian term for a gentleman's

anyway the uh the it definitely sounds like the surname of an English person who did something in India and let's not get into too much detail of what it was.

It's probably a statue of me in Trafalgar Square.

The small but irritating fishbone of contention stuck in the hacking throat of Anglo-French relations was this post-Brexit licensing scheme.

It was described by various people in the fishing industry from Jersey as a sensible move to protect the island's interests and by others as an act of idiocy by the Jersey government, scoring the story the full 10 out of 10 on the Brexit scale of unbridgeable opinion splitting.

This is what we voted for.

One final story now, arguably the most important story of the week,

is

penises in New Zealand news.

And

Jeff Upson

from New Zealand has been threatened with prosecution after drawing around 100 penis shapes around potholes in the roads in an effort, he claims, to force his local council

to fix

the holes in the road.

I know both of you are huge aficionados of the

use of the strategic wang drawing as an agent of political change.

I mean, where does this rate for you in

the history of penis protest?

I mean, you know, this phallic fuss maker, this penile perturber, this dickish disquieter, this wienerific wing dinger, this told the boy, this boner bustler has indeed struck upon the number one way of protest because it is like a dick pic to the authorities, right?

You could spend 27 years of your life getting a PhD in public policy, but the thing that does work is drawing a penis around your problem and somebody will solve it.

It really makes me wish that, you know, somebody would draw a giant penis around the picture of Narendra Damodar Das Modi and that could lead to some fixing.

I'll tell you what, it doesn't speak well of the penis in general.

That it is the internationally accepted symbol for something that is bad and must be removed.

It really does make you wonder why it is so many gentlemen around the world feel the need to display something that, in almost every context, is used to put people off.

It's really extraordinary.

I mean, listen, obviously, New Zealand has done an excellent job of managing COVID, but it seems to have now moved on, moved into, in the absence of being able to export any vaccines that are being produced in the country, New Zealand has clearly decided to export funny news stories to try and distract everybody for a while.

And I did think that for a while.

But now, the more I think about it, the more I am a New Zealand penis roadman truther.

I think there's a huge conspiracy here.

I think Jeff Upson is a sleeper agent of this podcast.

This news story is too close to the specific wheelhouse, and I'm talking about the overall history of this show.

This news story is too close to being something that sounds like something someone made up on this podcast.

Anyway, if you enjoyed

either the bugle or the news quiz

enough that you don't want to staple whatever generals you have to any facial organ, then do listen in.

We're halfway through the series.

It's been a lot of fun so far.

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

I will shortly play you out with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers to join them to make a one-off or occurring contribution to the Bugle.

Go to thebuglepodcast.com where you can also find links to buy the Colton Work Weaver t-shirt and other items of Bugle memorabilia at DTNE shows that to plug to our listeners.

Third and fourth of June, I'm doing two Zoom shows, trial shows of my next stand-up special called Unreliable Narrator.

The tickets are on my social media.

Follow my social media.

I

are on wait, it's A-D-D-Y-M-I-T-Z-Y on Instagram.

It's A-W-R-Y-A-D-I-T-I on Twitter.

And that's it.

There we go.

Nish,

anything you'd like to plug?

I've got two comedy albums out that you can listen to wherever you get your music on the internet.

And my tour tickets for my UK tour are available at nichekumar.co.uk.

That's from February 2022.

A tour that may as well be called, Hopefully we'll be able to do it.

Thank you very much for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back next week.

Charlie S.

believes there would be nothing worse than a talking spider.

Imagine the chat, speculates Charlie.

They'd have to whisper to avoid attracting attention, but it would be really sinister stuff very quietly about how they're going to kill their terrified trapped prey before a triumphant told you so once they'd gobbled it up, like a cross between an on-course golf commentator and a trash-talking MMA fighter, which is not something this world needs right now.

Alex Wilder never understood the use of the word justify to describe making all the lines in a document a line at one or both ends.

I just don't see where justice comes into it, says Alex.

If you left or right justify, you're creating visible inequality on the page, and if you justify so that the words are aligned on both sides, you're leaving gaps in the text, which instantly poses the question, what missing words are they hiding?

What injustices are they trying to camouflage with their spaced-out letters?

It's a linguistic abomination.

Someone known as Fly Drowner wonders whether the long-dead Greek philosophy whiz Aristotle would even bother going into professional thinking if he were around today.

No criticism of the lad, says Fly, but his obsession with the middle way between extremes wouldn't really wash in today's media world, which demands stupidly exaggerated and adversarial views, retorts and provocations to keep feeding itself.

I reckon Aristotle would never get booked for anything and would probably go into writing pithy aphorisms for teenagers' t-shirts instead.

Clive Truman thinks it is just a matter of time before we see on our televisions the world's first celebrity reality military invasion programme.

Pretty much every other sphere of human activity has already been covered by reality TV, explains Clive, from baking cakes to cutting hair to ski jumping to being president.

So I reckon within 10 years we'll see a battalion of celebs making a ground landing in somewhere like Iran under cover of night, then trying to fight their way through to raise the celebrity flag in the opposition's capital city.

David Beaumont thinks celebrity TV might go the other way, and that we will see celebs who've had enough of the limelight competing in a show for the right to be forgotten about by the public and media and return to living a normal life and not being judged on what they were to the shop when nipping out for their morning coffee.

I think it would be a hit, says David.

We could call it Herbert's Has-Beans if we can find a host called Herbert who ironically doesn't mind becoming a TV star.

And Ben Murdoch finally is right on board with this.

In fact, says Ben, it could be the only show on which you host one series and then compete in the next.

If I knew anyone in TV commissioning, I would absolutely pitch this to them, alongside my other pitch, Trevor's Trappists, in which the legendary British newsreader Trevor MacDonald narrates the journey of aging pop stars, retired sports people, and alumni of other reality shows to become monks and/or nuns devoted to silent prayer.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Goodbye.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

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

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

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