4171 - Evolution Special

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers.

Welcome to the Bugle Live online parts of the Unmute Podcast Festival.

How are you all?

Good.

We can't hear you.

So I assume you just all responded.

We are at best adequate.

It is the year year 2020 after all.

Internet, just some breaking news coming through.

The bookies are already paying out on 2020 winning the rubbishest year of the decade award, and still nine years and two months to go.

And at least four of those years could be under President Ivanka Trump.

So that shows you what a terrible year it's been.

I am Andy Zaltzman.

If you haven't met me before, it's the 24th of October 2020.

This show will also double up as Bugle issue 4171.

I hope if any of you are unfamiliar with the bugle,

what are you doing here?

But welcome to those of you who've heard it before.

We are up against strictly come dancing.

I realise that.

I've been told that reliably.

Personally, I'm not a fan of strictly.

I'd rather watch a coop of Mogadon drugged pigeons do their annual accounts than watch strictly come dancing.

I'd rather watch a slab of concrete interview a plank of wood about its hopes and ambition.

Actually, that might be quite a good show.

The point is, I don't really understand ballroom dancing.

I don't see why you'd want to do something like that without incorporating a ball or a goal or a bat or a fight.

It doesn't really make sense to me as far as I can see it.

Ballroom dancing is essentially rugby for the woke, and I don't approve of it.

But the excitement this year in Britain is that for the first time, there's a same-sex couple on strictly Nicola Adams, Olympic champion, boxer, and woman, is going to be dancing with, wait for it, another woman.

Now, this has rocked British society to its foundation, sceptics saying, where will it end?

Well, it'll probably end with a more tolerant and open-minded society.

But what if it doesn't end there, says Britain?

What if it ends with compulsory homosexuality classes in all schools?

But it will almost certainly not go quite that far.

So anyway, thank you for not watching the social revolution that is unfolding on Strictly.

And instead, coming to the Bugle.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Bugle is so called because it's a cross between Dougal the dog character from the hit children's TV series The Magic Roundabout and the Bible that's where the name comes from but

anyway joining me for this special live show and it's great pleasure to be part of the unmute festival joining me by via the witchic magic of Tim Berners-Lee's internet which whatever you think of it has been a giant f you to the yogurt pots joined by a piece of string communications technology industry and the final nail in the commercial coffin of the gospel writer as a tool of fake news.

But anyway, we're using the internet and joining me from very early in the morning tomorrow in Sydney, Australia.

It's

A.

Lice Fraser.

Have I pronounced that right?

Alice Alice Fraser.

Sorry.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, buglers.

How are you?

They're all fine.

I've checked that out already.

So

I haven't had any complaints.

I don't care about them.

How are you?

Oh, I'm fine.

I'm all right.

I'm yeah, okay.

I mean, it's you know, it's a difficult part of the year for me.

It's an extremely long time until the cricket season begins.

So I'm doing my best to get through it.

How's Australia at

5 a.m.?

I mean, this is my life now, Andy.

My life is waking up at the wee hours and not being able to enjoy any of the bright things that Australia has to offer until the sun comes up.

Just talking to maniacs over the tube.

So, I mean, you, not...

random maniacs, obviously.

Oh, right, okay, thanks very much.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Okay, good.

Just carefully selected maniacs who give you money.

Yep, that's

just pouring my energy into the unforgiving channel of the internet.

Well, that's basically, I think that is a summary for humanity in the last 15 years.

Joining me

from, well, exactly the same time as I am, which is now five minutes past seven,

up

the road from, well, just up the road here in North West Europe, it's Nish Kumar.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, Alice.

Hello, Buglers.

Good to see you all.

Great to be here.

I feel like

we should open with some exciting professional news for you because you've been named as the host of the News Quiz Andy.

You're going mainstream.

That is...

That is correct.

And what I like is you've started that new tenure.

The News Quiz, for those of you who don't know, is an extremely prestigious Radio 4 satirical show and it's a very big deal for Andy.

And it's good to know that it's not going to change him, given that he opened this podcast by saying, if you've never heard of the bugle, what are you doing here?

it's good to know that

you'll not be compromising on your principles um at the opposite end of uh career news uh i've been doing a show for an app called quibby uh for the last six months and uh on thursday i found out that quibby has got under so if i may add to my various and storied cv i could now add app destroyer quibby has spent uh some analysts some analysts believe quibby has spent two billion dollars this year and somehow has still got under.

And all I can think is this whole thing is some sort of weird Brewster's Million style gambit to spend money that was left to someone in a will.

Anyway, I've been delighted to collect my paychecks and in retrospect, it was a bad idea for me

to insist on bonus payments of Rolex watches.

What are you going to do with them all, Michelle?

Well, I mean, right now,

I'm going to have to start selling them, Andy.

I'm going to have to lay them out on the street just to make up the losses.

Either that or I'm going to have to start eating them.

And I don't even think Heston Blumenthal's got a recipe for a watch souffle that's going to be of any use.

Don't say that, Nish.

I know he's almost certainly going to be listening to this and he will be cooking that up in his head as we've also, if you're getting paid $2 billion, Nish.

Now, Andy, I think maybe

there's a slight misunderstanding there.

That was the total expenditure of the hour, not my wages.

Oh, sorry, I

misunderstood.

Misunderstood.

I just assumed.

I assumed you were getting the same deal with them as I'm getting from the new Chris.

Oh, I'm getting 1.8 billion, just to be clear.

The rest was just going to Chrissy Teigen.

It's just me and the Teagues.

Nish, this is the problem here.

What you've done is you've said they've spent $2 billion and you can't understand why they've gone under.

The thing that they needed to do, and it's a rookie error, I understand, is they needed to make $2 billion, not spend like I said, I understand it's complicated.

You know what, Alice?

Hindsight is 2020, okay?

And the fact that you need to both spend and bring in revenue is the sort of wisdom we could have used seven months ago at Quibi Towers.

The thing about hindsight being 2020 is hindsight pays 20 and gets 20 and comes out even.

That's how the maths work.

Again, this is all very useful information for February.

This is issue 4171, or as it should properly be known, issue God fondly looking back on a rare victory for his team over hell, or issue for once heaven won.

That's the first pun of the show, but there may be more.

We are recording on the

24th of October.

On this day in 1901, Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

There she is.

It was on her 63rd birthday, actually.

Obviously, she woke up and thought, it's my birthday.

I've had enough of cakes.

I'm not interested in a spa session.

I've had it up to here with stripograms.

I'm going to treat myself to getting in a barrel.

barrel and risking death by doing something that absolutely does not need to be done.

Now, I mean, some people see her as a hero.

I would say, you know, 1901 this happened.

Annie set a very dangerous precedent early in the 20th century for people doing absolutely f ⁇ ing ridiculous things.

Now, I'm not completely blaming 63-year-old Annie for, you know, some of the, let's be honest, much worse stuff that happened later on in that century, but I don't think, I just don't think, I don't think it helped.

Also, on this day in 1946,

Walt Disney testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee, or as it was also known, HUAC.

HUAC was set up in 1938 to investigate people, which is also the noise made by by people under torture to confess to communism.

I think that's where the name came from.

Set up in 1938 to investigate people who might be doing things that did not tally with American values, which, as we know, are guarded very closely by Americans, as I'm sure any of our American viewers and listeners would agree.

So anything that didn't tally with American values, such as communism, fascism, understatement, reacting calmly to an opinion you disagree with, small as a menu option, coming to terms with history, and professional snooker.

They were very, very big on clamping down on all those.

And Disney actually controversially shot some of his former colleagues as communists, including Clara Kluck, obvious spy, surname short for cluster, which is the official CIA summary for the Russian Revolution.

Minnie Mouse, Minnie short for minimum wage, bit lefty,

and

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, another Disney character, obviously relying on luck and the unquestioning support of the state rather than proper American hard work.

Obvious Commie.

And Disney shopped them all.

And that actually, getting rid of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, started a blood feud with the US government.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's nephew was to settle to such devastating effects 17 years later.

Now, Disney promoted his more capitalist characters thereafter, including Pinocchio, Puppet of the Man, and Pluto, which are short for Plutocrap.

I don't know if you're Disney fans, you guys.

I remember as a kid, we weren't allowed to watch the Jungle Book, Disney movie from 1967.

I wasn't allowed to watch it as a kid because my parents said I was too young to watch a balloon movie.

Oh, it was kind of surprising.

Anyway, right, let's be off.

If anyone's not heard of the Bugles, they've immediately turned this off.

That's all right, we're used to that.

And on this day in 1590, John White, the governor of the second Roanoke colony, returned to England after an unsuccessful search for a colony that he'd lost.

He'd lost his family and all the other colonists.

No trace has ever been found of the hundred or so people left behind.

Various theories.

One, they lived happily ever after, never happened to America.

Two, they headed west, ended up in Vegas, making ends meet, doing a cabaret show about the history of Tudor, England.

You can still see it to this day.

Another theory is that it's still being processed by US immigration.

That's possible.

And another theory they did find carved into a tree.

I don't know if you have a graphic of this, Chris, the word

Croatoan, was carved into the palisade of a fort, suggesting that what could have happened that resulted in the disappearance of this colony was that they fought each other to the death after an argument about whether that was allowed as an answer, Croatoan, in answer to the colony quiz night question: what nationality was Davosuka, winner of the golden boot at the 1998 World Cup?

And you know, it was basically correct but misspelled.

Do you allow that in a quiz?

I don't know.

Anyway, they all killed each other.

A bit of history for you.

As always, you don't hear a lot of the buglers going where Davor Zuka in 2020.

You really don't.

Not Davosuka and the Roanoke colony in the same gag.

Anyway,

that's what this podcast brings.

As always, the section of the bugle is going, where?

I mean, I'm just guessing you said in the bin, watching at home.

I hope you're joining in this.

I know

we can't hear you, but we can't.

As long as you don't expect us to pull our weight, Andy.

And as long as none of you at home, assume your video is off and are pulling your weight in, I believe, corporate just trousers.

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

It's going in the bin this week.

A special commemorative build your own set of COVID regulations.

Now we're all getting confused wherever we are around the world about what exactly we are and are not allowed to do.

So if you're not exactly sure what the latest COVID regs are in your area, here's a free British government.

Construct your own COVID regulations kit.

Simply rearrange the following words into an order that suits you best.

Group of, allowed, not exemptions indoors, inexplicable, unless, definitely, perhaps, who needs grannies anyway, as long as no one else knows, trampolining, 12, give or take.

To me, outdoors does not apply, slightly inconvenient because I'm special, responsible, cult, and orgy.

So, that should pretty much cover everything you need with your COVID regulations.

That section in the bin.

Right, we are now, what, 15 minutes into the show?

Ready to start with a top story.

Top story this week: evolution and the state of of the human species.

Well, Nish, Alice, we are, it turns out, still evolving.

I mean, when you look at the state of our species, and we are easily one of the most famous species of all time, of course, take that ring-tailed mongoose.

I mean, you can't help thinking, we're a great species.

We've compensated for our shortcomings, you know, a lack of horns, a lack of lethal fangs, lacerative claws, venomous snout pendages, the works, by using our superior brains to work out many and wonderful other ways of killing things and each other.

That's the mark of a special species.

But it turns out we're not finished.

Scientists have discovered that we're still evoluting, we're developing new arteries and we're losing teeth.

Nish, I know you're a massive fan of human evolution

and you've very much benefited from it yourself as a modern human.

Oh I'm using my opposable thumbs right now.

Look at that.

Sensational skills.

Yeah, Andy.

This is big news.

And I was very glad to read this story because, I'll be honest,

every other piece of evidence I've been confronted with every time I open a newspaper or turn on the news is suggesting that humans are very much evolving in the opposite direction.

So on a day when 5,000 people march through London to protest for their rights to kill old people by breathing them to death with disease, it's hard to not see this as a positive, a badly needed positive sign.

So the evolution piece of evolution in question are we might be losing our wisdom teeth, which does feel a bit on the nose as metaphors go.

But the other piece of evolution is that we're also getting an extra artery in our arms.

We're getting an extra artery.

Now, here's the big question.

Listen, I'll be the first person to admit it.

I have absolutely no idea about science in open defiance of every racial stereotype.

I refuse to be another statistic, okay?

So I've determined to be the only Asian who doesn't understand a single f ⁇ ing thing about any science whatsoever.

But all I can speculate wildly on is that this extra artery is to get more blood to our hands so we can post on the internet with more strength and venom.

That's exactly why we're evolving these arteries, right?

These are posting vessels.

I mean, this is one of the common misunderstandings about evolution, Nish, that everything that evolves happens sort of purposively and that it meets a need rather than sort of being a randomly selected process.

It's more of an artery and not a sciencery.

Let's just let that hang there.

Thank you.

I mean, that's the only joke I have for this section.

Social media is causing other evolutions.

Social media thumb, getting much better thumbs, getting also reversible skin for 100% more tattooable skin area.

Gradually developing additional forehead musculature that is evolving quickly to enable the next generation, one or two down from us, to have even deeper frowns.

They're going to need to have one thinking about the state of the world.

The human bile duct now goes straight from the gallbladder up into the mouth for use in presidential campaigns.

And personally, I mean, there's a few things I'd like to see.

I'd like, you know, a protective bit of protective skin on the end of the male

appendage.

I think that would be really useful.

And I can't fully understand why there isn't one for a

family show.

One of the interesting aspects of evolution is that another scientific report I was reading, and I'll do my, I researched this show intensely, Bugler, I hope you realize that.

That at least five times in the history of evolution, something has evolved from something that was not a crab into something that is a crab.

Now, yeah, there we go.

Five different times you've had something evolving into a crab.

This is according to the crab-bothering boffins who give a shit about shit like this.

And I mean it's a classic scientist.

I mean, well done for working it out.

Instead of finding out crucial stuff like how many octopuses it takes to change a light bulb or how many quarter pounders a T-Rex could have theoretically eaten before vomiting and whether Neanderthals had X-ray vision or could pee around corners.

But this is important science.

Five times having he's evolved into a crab, mostly from other crustaceans or crusties, if we're still allowed to call them that.

Unless the PC lobby have stopped us calling them that as well.

But obviously in the context of human evolution, the crab is something to aspire to.

Would you not think, Alice?

I mean, I know you're a flamingo sceptic, and I don't know if this.

No, I love a crab.

I feel like crabs, evolution-wise, are the

crabs are the table chips of evolution.

Like, no matter what you get, you're going to get a thing of chips for the table.

That's what crabs, that's the function of crabs.

Just for safety, you want to have some chips there in case whatever else you order is not good.

I can't remember now if British people call them fries or not.

Hot chips.

Well, it's near enough.

I mean, the context, you know, it's very environmentally friendly.

The crab seldom takes flights.

We're still, you know, the big clacky snapper arms,

give it a couple of generations, I think they'll be very, very, very handy.

And, you know, I think social media has made us, we're not physically developed into crabs yet, but I think maybe, again, this is social media-ish.

You know, we are developing a spiritual hard shell and big clacky snapper limbs for making abusive comments and a pathological fear of embracing views that do not coincide with our own, which is very much a crab attribute.

I mean, when did you last hear a crab use the words actually Genevieve?

You might have a point.

Well, and also

we're evolving the ability to only move side to side and not progress forwards.

But other than that,

there we go.

One of my favourite things I read about this in terms of animal evolution is that some elephants have now evolved to be tuskless because we keep on chopping their tusks off.

Now, some might see that as a damning indictment of humanity's inability to coexist with other creatures on this planet.

I see us as nature's mews.

Nature is having to move forward because of our horrific behavior.

It's absolutely brilliant.

We're going to see

the next generation of chickens evolving pre-basted in Nando spices.

I see that as a huge positive.

I mean, yeah, I love an urban animal, for example, like animals that have adapted to humanity.

Every other animal meeting with humanity has like fed off or died.

I feel like I saw, you know,

possums that eat out of bins.

I saw a cat the other day in the park with a whole KFC family meal that I think it bought with its own money.

That kind of thing I find very inspiring.

I like the giraffes with a big lamp on them.

COVID news now.

I think that sting was entirely a pro.

That's basically a summary of the year, that musical sting.

Nish, uh, Alice, you're both the Bugle's official, uh, totally, intractably, incomprehensibly confusing, global, literal, and metaphorical physical and spiritual pandemic correspondence.

Uh, what the f is going on?

I'll tell you what's going on, Andy.

Money, money, money, money!

Money!

A lot of people are viewing COVID as a,

you know,

a stop on humanity's progress and a real moment at which everybody's trapped indoors and you know it's having a real negative impact and claiming people's lives.

But those people are cashless hippies

because you should be viewing COVID.

You should be viewing COVID as a huge opportunity to sneak some sweet cream off the top.

Andy, there's been a lot of developments in COVID corruption news.

On this side of the Atlantic, there's a string of investigations is being opened into, and I believe this is the technical parliamentary term, where all of our fing money has gone because we have spent 12 billion pounds on a track and trace system

and at the moment the the track and trace app and system is

effectively tracking and tracing to the same extent as a bloodhound who died in the mid-19th century.

It is neither tracking or tracing shit and we've spent 12 billion pounds on it so far.

And here's the thing Andy people in glass houses but what I would say is 12 billion pounds on the track and trace app makes Quibi look like strong value for money.

Because say what you will about the quality of its output, the output was put out.

Okay, whereas the track and trace app

and trace app is neither tracking nor tracing.

Now, the whole system is being run by Dido Harding, who has some experience in consultancy and also working in the supermarkets,

working on the boards of the supermarkets at Tesco and Sainsbury's and so as such has no fing relevant experience whatsoever although that's not strictly true in terms of COVID because she's also on the board of the Cheltenham horse racing event

which happened earlier this year and was a super spreader event.

So Dido Harding's only experience of coronavirus is potentially being involved in spreading it to a bunch of people.

Therefore, Dido Harding is as fucking qualified to do anything about corona.

Like was the Wuhan back not available?

Could they not get the pangolin?

Could they not have just stuffed a COVID-addled lung on a plinth and had that run the f ⁇ ing track and trace system?

Well, I mean, they probably could have done.

I feel like the problem with track and trace is that track and trace sort of in the common parlance mean exactly the same thing.

So you haven't got a clear brief.

I find this stuff so frustrating because, you know, people say satirists like it when politicians do stupid and ridiculous things.

Actually, we don't like it, and our job is to say how much we don't like it.

But if you're a restaurant critic and you complain at a restaurant that there's a hair in your soup and they just keep bringing it back with more hair until it starts to resemble Boris Johnson's wig, then you start to, it sort of starts to pull a little bit.

To me, it's just so astonishing how incompetent this execution is

and how much people are still sort of arguing about how bad or how good the government is.

Do you know what I mean?

There's people who are still on board with everything that the government is doing.

This government in the UK is better at dividing people than the guy in Human Caterpillar, but it fails to sew them back up to each other.

I don't know if this is an accurate description of what happened in the Human Caterpillar movie.

I haven't seen it.

Is he a hero or a villain?

I don't know.

Alice,

I am going to play the cinephile here and correct you that it was Human Centipede.

I think Human Caterpillar sounds like a much more charming story about a boy who eventually realises that he was a butterfly the whole time.

Hungry, hungry human caterpillar.

Possible sequel.

Possible sequel will probably disappoint the fans of the area.

I mean it seems that essentially with COVID, the government's sort of in a Goldilocks situation where they're trying to solve the COVID enigma.

But unlike Goldilocks, instead of a bowl of porridge, they're trying out different bowls of three-week old chicken vindaloo to find which one gives them the least explosive food poisoning and then instead of finding the most comfortable bed to have a snooze in they're sticking their penises in different electrical plug sockets to see which gives them the least fatal electrical shock until they get one that's just right um i mean admitted we're slightly you know rearranging the goldilock story in certain ways there it's basically an unending game of pass the parcel where each layer of the parcel has a rotting sardine and you don't know what's going to be left at the end but you can hear growling from the inside.

That's the way I see it.

At the moment, I mean, in terms of the corona coronism,

it goes deep, doesn't it?

This goes very deep.

Yeah, it does go very deep.

And the sort of fecal cherry on top of the shit cake is the fact that as we seek greater transparency, one of the things that's going to be a real obstacle to it is the government's anti-corruption champion is a man called John Penrose, who is quite literally married to Dido Harding.

I mean,

it's absolutely astonishing.

They can chat about it out of work.

Consultants are earning six grand a day.

Circo has made, a company has made £410 million,

despite the fact that it's only traced 58% of the contacts it was supposed to have traced.

It is really, really spicy stuff from a nation that at best can handle a medium Nando's.

Another one of the contracts went to a company called Ianda Capital, and it was to supply a quarter of a billion pounds of

medical protective equipment,

masks predominantly.

Now, Ianda Capital, as the name suggests,

not specialists in providing medical masks.

They are a financial investment office owned by an offshore holding company based in a tax haven that specialises in, and I quote their own website, currency trading, offshore property, private equity, and trade financing.

Result of this contract, 50 million masks that proved to be totally unusable, but a lovely beachfront maisonet in the Cayman Islands.

So, you know, where viruses fear to tread.

They were totally functional as a legal fiction, which is the important part of their job.

Absolutely.

And in other news, the UN has come out, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the ninth Secretary General of the United Nations and the one with the least interesting name in recent memory,

has come out to point out basically all of this corruption that's going on and do the thing that the UN does best, which is sort of concerned finger-waving and tutting about these pressures towards corruption.

And the statement that he makes is sort of so forgiving.

He's like, you know, we understand that in these troubled times, this is a concern for people.

And I feel like it's just,

it doesn't help.

I did call the British government to talk about these allegations of corona coronism, and I got their pre-recorded response, which simply went, Your complaint about institutional malpractice is important to us.

Please hold while we conduct a half-assed official inquiry whose fundings we will then refuse to publish until everyone has forgotten about it or the world has ended, whichever happens sooner.

Rule Britannia, P.S.

When we said we wanted to take back control, what the f did you think we meant?

So, yeah, there's always that to

cling to.

Let's move on now and talk about Marcus Rashford.

Big story this week, Nish.

I mean, do you think Marcus Rashford and Man United football?

Do you think he's better as a left-sided attacker in a front three, cutting into one of his stronger right foot, or as an ultra right winger using his pace to get down the line and whipping crosses, or as a proper kind of old-fashioned centre-forward using his pace to get in behind the centre-backs?

What's your view on that?

Because he seems to divide opinion in this game.

He certainly did a useful job of dividing opinion this week off the field.

And he divided opinion between everyone and the Conservative Party.

And

he really got around the back line of the government, which he unfortunately did not manage to do against a different blue team, Chelsea, earlier on this afternoon.

Which is why, for the first sort of 15, 20 minutes of this, Bueblis may have noticed some slightly wavering attention on my part due to the fact that I was participating in a long-standing noble tradition of this podcast of having half an eye on some sport that was going on.

Anyway,

only half an eye.

So just fill people in on the story of

not been following it.

So the government has refused to extend the scheme that gives free school meals to children throughout the school holidays.

Now, the reason Marcus Brashford comes into all of this is that he's been quite a sort of outspoken advocate and campaigner for the extension of the free school meals programme, especially given the economic circumstances that are facing a lot of families as we live under the pandemic.

And to keep things in footballing terms, you would think that

providing food for children whose families might be struggling, especially in this difficult economic circumstance that a lot of households in Britain find themselves in, would be something of an open goal for a somewhat embattled government.

However, when confronted with that open goal, the Conservative Party didn't do what they should do, which is just calmly get their head over the ball and side foot it into the empty net.

They instead fed it.

They removed the appendages from within their football shorts and they started dry humping the ball, much to the confusion of the referee, the opposition team and the watching spectators.

But they didn't get penalised for it though because

the TV replay showed that the end of those appendages was a quarter of an inch offside, so actually, it didn't then matter what they did after that.

So it was all fine.

That is some hot VAR material.

And I love it.

In response to this, Marcus Rashford didn't do what any of the rest of us would have done, which would have just been like, well, I can't my best and put my feet up and count my billions of pounds that I earn.

He instead coordinated through his social media platforms a massive national effort of restaurants that were giving money at that were going to give free meals out to help supplement people that are struggling.

So we've gone so far in this year from January 2020, Boris Johnson tweeting a picture of himself doing a double thumbs up saying this will be a great year for Britain to October 2020 where a footballer has had to set up a network of restaurants to feed poor children because the government has decided against giving them food.

So it's a really, it's, I mean, it's not been an ideal year.

Imagine that being the summary of Britain in 2020, plus a fing pandemic.

That's where we are as a nation by now.

And one of the other, and a lot of the line of attack from Conservatives seems to be very weird.

Instead of saying, well, look, the thing is, you know, we can't spend the money, or even trying to bullshit us, they seem to be saying, well, this is just woke nonsense from the social justice brigade.

There was a really strange piece of correspondence from the MP Philip Philip Davis.

Now, I actually saw this floating around on Facebook and Twitter and assumed it was false.

Somebody was saying that they had a 16-year-old in Philip Davis' constituency, he's a Tory MP, had emailed him about the free school meal scheme.

And his response was this, thank you for your email, even though you show how intolerant you are to anyone who holds a different opinion to you.

I appreciate that virtue signalling is in vogue, but I'm afraid that I take the rather old-fashioned view that parents should be primarily responsible for feeding their children rather than the state.

Right?

Now I assume that is such cartoonish villainy that I assumed uh it was a joke.

However, the local evening newspaper in the region, the Yorkshire Evening Post, contacted Philip Davis and he said, Yes, I send the email

imagine responding to a sixteen year old who's taking an interest in politics and emailing their local MP and saying, I think it's probably a good idea that people, you know, feed poor children by going, this is leftist nonsense of the highest order.

Paying for food for people who are struggling, go back to San Francisco and put some flowers in your hair, hippie.

One of the restaurants that's involved in the scheme is McDonald's, which is actually going to be donating some money for people to buy meals.

Well, I guess we all know that with Ronald MacDonald, he's not just red of hair, he's also red of goddamn heart.

The Conservative government at this point is so right-wing, they've turned Ronald MacDonald into Shea Guevara.

That's an achievement, Alice.

Well, it looks particularly bad when you've just spent $12 billion

failing to keep old people alive to then turn around and say that you're not willing to keep young people alive because you don't have the money for it.

It's...

I mean,

I feel like part of the anger of the Tories at Marcus Rashford is that he is betraying the class that will never allow him in but expects him to spend his time slavering at their frosted windows rather than leveraging his position to help starving children.

These are, you know, what are his qualifications?

You know, he's a man qualified purely by the fact that he's dragged himself out of poverty by virtue of being good at a skill, and then he has the temerity to tut at the government for their failure to feed the nation's children when they clearly have the money and resources to do so.

It's, I mean, it just frustrates me so much when the job of the government is literally to cultivate the human infrastructure of the nation, and there are very few ways you can pretend that's wildly complicated when there's a hungry child going, please sir, can I have some more?

Well also this this was in a week where our national debt blasted heroically through the two trillion pound mark for the first time.

Go Team GB.

We did it!

Team G trillion.

Team GB.

So refu refusing to to pay a bit of extra money for for meals for school children in these very difficult targets.

I guess that's like going to a triple Michelin starred restaurant, spending two grand a head on food and wine, and then being asked to spend 20 pence to use a toilet and saying, no way am I spending that and just pissing in your trousers.

It seems entirely inappropriate.

Other MPs have also reacted.

Urcival Mattox Gramhorn, the Tory MP for Snutterbridge West,

said, our research shows that plebs don't really count, so it's fine.

They mostly grow up to be lefties and layabouts.

Frankly, the sooner we starve them all to death, the better.

Hashtag get Brexit done.

Now, obviously, I've made up that MP and his words, but at least he had the courage to fictionally say what so many of his other colleagues are actually

thinking.

Reality has now caught up with your bullshit.

And I think the person that

you're about to reference is evidence of that.

I think your bullshit is now being rendered obsolete by this government.

Sorry, go for it.

Yes, well, Brendan Clark Smith, the Conservative MP for Willful Delusion Central, I think, a genuine MP,

he said, where is the slick PR campaign encouraging absent parents to take some responsibility for their children?

I don't know, Brendan.

Why don't you start one yourself and say how it flies?

Do you know what else he said?

I do not believe in nationalizing children.

Is that the one you're about to question?

Yes.

Yes, and lost something everyone can agree with.

Oh my god.

Well, in that case, I say the private sect the private sector needs to fing step up and Shell Oil and Amazon need to start raising our goddamn children.

Also, giving children free school meals at this difficult time, that is nationalising children the same way that hitting an apricot with a ukulele is doing scientific research into splitting the atom.

It is not

nationalising children.

The other part of it is that these Tory MPs seem to be thinking that by please feed the children, we are asking them to go out and hoe the fields and make the sandwiches themselves.

You know, if Marcus Rashford can organize for private companies to give children the food, the government, which has power over private companies, could say, you know, here's a tax.

Instead of throwing food away, why don't you give some of it to children?

And that would be allowed.

They can do that.

It's just so many governments now around the world are just standing there holding all this power and going, I don't know, what am I supposed to do with this?

Like, it's not, it's your problem.

This is your problem.

Perhaps the lowest point in all of this is Ben Bradley,

the

Conservative MP who has sort of spent a lot of time firefighting,

largely due to his own stupid fault.

He's a now deleted exchange on Twitter involved him responding to somebody saying that

I'm going to read this exchange out in full because it is important because of what he's used to defend himself.

He said, At one school in Mansfield, 75% of the kids have a social worker, 25% of parents are illiterate, their estate is the center of the area's crime.

One kid lives in a crack den, another in a brothel.

These are the kids that

most need our help.

Extending FSM, which is free school meals, doesn't reach these kids.

Someone then replied to that tweet saying, £20 cash direct to a crackdown and brothel really sounds like the way forward with this one.

And he responded saying, that's what free school meal vouchers in the summer effectively did.

Now, the reason it's important that all of that gets read out is that he has said that his remarks are being taken out of context.

Now, what I've done there is given you the entire context.

Ben Bradley does not understand what the word out of context means.

He does not understand the meaning of the phrase.

Let me give him a quick guide into what the phrase out of context means.

For example, if I was in a completely hypothetical way to say Ben Bradley's skincare regime involves washing his face with his own semen, it would then be totally out of context for someone to imply that I said that Ben Bradley's skincare regime involves washing his face with his own semen, right?

However, all I'm saying is we cannot rule out the idea that Ben Bradley's skincare regime involves washing his face in his own semen.

Quick Brexit update.

Well, the the Brexit deal,

as turned out, Boris Johnson trumpeted to the nation last year, has turned out to be as oven-ready as a live chicken in a heat-resistant suit on a heavily armoured raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

I guess it is theoretically possible for someone to cook it, but it is marred in logistical difficulties.

It's...

Nish, I mean, we're approaching the end game.

It's all over bar the shouting, apart from the shouting back, the actually putting anything into practice, the decades-long social and economic repercussions the potential breakup of the united kingdom uh and the cold-eyed verdict of history but apart from that it's nearly it's nearly all over isn't it and michael gove um god rest his soul if it is ever located said that brexit is just like moving house

it's a similar moving

moving house which is i mean at some point you might start to think has our estate agent told us everything we need to know about our new property

yeah i mean given that one of the unfortunate downsides of Brexit appears to be that Kent is going to have major lorry queues to such an extent that the government is now exploring a scheme which is going to result in festival Portaloos being put at strategic points down the motorway that leads to

the ferry dock at Kent, where the trucks will get on ferries.

I would say it's like moving house insofar as you've now moved into a house that people advised you against moving into.

And now that you've got there, it turns out you have to shit on the grass

happy time it's also like moving house in that it's a lot easier if you're rich and have another extra house that you can go to

yeah that's the absolute key point

but we're going for an australia style arrangement alice you must be very excited about this we've seen we've seen australia a country in a different hemisphere from Europe and gone this is the this is the model we should be emulating

I mean you know, that means you can look forward to, I guess, shipping your undesirables off to some sort of refugee island, which is what we're doing.

But again, you can't really blame us because literally that's what we are.

Like, we think that's something nice to do

because that is the genesis of our modern nation.

American news now.

Could you have a jingle, Chris?

Well, it's exciting times in America.

We are heading towards the election, four years of Donald Trump's own brand, American Carnage, splattering and spluttering to a decision on the 3rd of November on

whether to renew that contract, maybe with free bonus added carnage, like sort of loyalty points.

It's been an epic tale of bilious anti-competence and obliterative bastardy.

I guess if the ancient Greek journo-poet Homer had written up the Trump years as an epic tale, I think he would have called it maybe the Schithiad.

And you need to write that joke down for it really to work.

But just 10 days to go now until we see

how electorally effective the Trump strategy of the five Ds has been.

The five D's divide, deceive, dismay, incite, to shame, inflame, abominate, and putrefy.

Sorry, I lied about it being five Ds, but that's just the way politics works these days.

And we had the election, the last debate this week.

And I couldn't bring myself to watch it.

I've saved it up, so

I'll watch it when I know the final score.

Did you manage to catch it?

Yes, regrettably, I did see quite a bit of the

debate.

And it was

just a shame that a week before the election, America has discovered that the way to deal with Donald Trump is by actively muting him.

And I think that innovation would actually have been really helpful about half a decade ago.

But the horse has not so much bolted as it's now living in the White House.

And

it was, yeah, I mean, look, it was, you know, Donald Trump, it was a sort of more measured tone from Donald Trump, which is, it means absolutely f all at this point.

It's, he was, you know, it's,

it needs to be, when people describe him as having a more measured tone, it needs to be considered in the same way that Lance Armstrong's Tour de France wins were.

You know, there's a heavy asterisk against that phrase.

And also, they both involve problematic white men who are off their nut on steroids.

Alison?

I mean, yeah, there's fewer than two weeks to go until some level of riots on the streets of America, and everyone's at the edge of their collective seats waiting to find out which team will be setting whose cars on fire.

And Biden has amped up his campaign.

He's more aggressive, he's more intense.

Trump has amped up something.

It's hard to tell what because Trump's amp is always screaming feedback at top volume the moment you switch it on.

Certainly, outside of the debate, he's increased, I don't know if you've noticed that, he has increased the speed of the jump cuts in his stream of consciousness, like the last quarter of a Christopher Nolan film.

I can only hope that all the timelines finally merge until at the moment of apotheosis he comes out with just one coherent speech before exploding into a shower of sparks.

I just, it's astonishing to me that the debate actually, that Joe Biden didn't perform as well as we would have hoped in the debate.

He was very calm, very reasoned, and very technical, which is what you should want in a politician, of course.

But what we do want in a politician, as we have found out, is a man who is firing out water cannons and jet skis from his paws like some sort of japanime

monstrosity charging through the streets of New York.

It's the only language America understands.

T-Shay, Kennison and Jetsky's.

All this American election stuff makes me wistful for the less democratic pleasures of a violent three-day coup.

But you may get your wish, Alice.

Yeah, but you know, those countries, there's like so much build-up to it.

Just like quick, you know, just a sudden coup.

It's quick, it's messy, you don't hear about it until it's over, and then you just have to learn a new national anthem with the other guy's name in it.

That's what I I would take that over whatever insane conspiracy theory Fox News has decided will sway the extremely decided voters of the delusional Midwest this week.

Well, I mean, we've talked a lot about how difficult it is to change people's minds at this stage.

Now, there was a story this week on more and what Trump spends his money on.

And obviously, we have those stories about him spending a lot of money on his hair and makeup and even more money on just his makeup.

And I think it was 50 grand on an endangered rhinoceros to sacrifice at a rally to place the anti-wildlife lobby.

But this week it's turned out that he spent £200,000 on a concentration camp for Uighur Muslims in China

which I didn't even think he'd go that far I mean he didn't pay it directly but it was via taxes to the Chinese government but given that he paid $750 in tax to basically help all the people in America who needed it that's similar he's basically so he's funding concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims but not pencils for American school children.

I'm sure that's what those disenfranchised Rust Belt voters and their pencil-less children were hoping he would do.

But I mean,

we don't know that that's what the Chinese government the Chinese government, if they knew that money was from him, I think they would have diverted it specifically to that.

They might have spent it on Bollards.

We don't know.

But it is a lot more than he spent on America.

But at least, you know, we can look forward.

We can look forward because in two weeks' time, the 2024 campaign effectively begins.

Excitingly.

The most fitting end to all of this is and if it we are indeed and I there's no guarantee of that if we are indeed in the sort of last days of the Trump

regime, in a way it could not have come to a ball fitting Ed that Trump's attorney being caught in a compromising position as part of a prank for a Borat movie.

And in a way,

this is the apotheosis of Trumpism, that Trump's lawyer could be trapped by a comedian prankster from the early 2000s.

Like, the only way it could have been any better is if Trump himself had been caught by Ashton Kuchner and been fully punked.

Chris, have we got time for a couple more, do you think?

Swans.

Swans, swans, swans.

It's not my show, Andy.

If they turn us off, they turn us off.

All right.

Swans news now.

Alice, you are our

Royal Swans correspondent.

There's

a huge story that really, at this delicate time in the relationship between Britain and America, could be the final nail in the coffin of the special relationship.

Yes, the Queen gave Florida some swans and then they bred and there were too many swans so they have sold them

which is a terrible thing, too many swans.

And I feel like this is, everyone's focusing on the fact that that's an insult to sell the swans or, you know, what are you doing with the swans?

I feel like this is the you need to look at the core problem here, which is that the queen brought swans.

Of course she brought swans.

She's the only one who can eat them.

It's the the worst present.

It's like bringing your celiac friend the kind of biscuit you like because you know they'll be in the cupboard for next time you visit.

I just think the solution is not to sell the swans, of course.

The solution, and I'm going to say this, I've said it before in different contexts, but the solution is swan thunderdome.

What you want is to accelerate the evolution process, fight swan against swan in a thunderdome.

Two swans enter, one swan leaves, until you end up with the ultimate pinnacle of evolution, which, as we all know, is a crab.

Well, exactly.

Yeah, that's where it's all headed, clearly.

The swans were donated back in 1957 by Queen.

I don't know how she got them through customs.

You barely get a banana through these days.

For those who've not heard of her, the Queen, 68-time British Monarch of the Year, and nailed on favourite to retain it once again this year, despite a strong bid from Dominic Cummings.

And they're selling these swans

by a lottery.

And our...

Is that a lottery you want to win?

Yeah, we've won the lottery.

Oh, great.

This could completely change our lives.

Yes, it could, darling.

You might want to put some towels down on the sofa.

But please remember, for our American listeners, it's not swans that crap on people's sofas.

It's people who own swans that crap on people's sofas.

Is that what I'm saying?

Anyway.

Nish, you got paid partly in swans by Quibi, I think.

Yeah, yeah, that was part of the problem, Andy.

They blew most of the budget they should have spent on marketing on swans.

And I did suggest that they just write the word quibby and then let the swans roam around the skies.

But it fell on deaf ears.

On the plus side, swan meat, quite tasty.

That's all I'm saying.

That a swan car pacho that would blow your socks off.

I feel like they'd taste angry.

Everything does these days.

It's all done.

It's all done.

That brings us to the end of our participation in the Unmute Podcast Festival do

it finishes today, I think, but hopefully it'll be back n next year.

Do support it and all the other shows that have been on that.

And oh, yeah, there you go, Chris, you can see modelling the gorgeous new Bugle, Bugle merch there cap,

T-shirt,

and other s stuff.

Thalfleth is wearing that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

yeah, we've all got we've all got those.

Surely, Andy, you are the king of marketing.

Thank you very much.

He only remembered the two things I had in front of me.

I'd have been so bad at the generation game.

That's it.

Well, thank you for joining us,

buglers, watchers, and listeners.

It's been a pleasure talking.

I hope you've enjoyed.

We've had no idea whether or not you've enjoyed any of this, which I think is actually the way we do all the shows anyway, so it's made no no difference.

But I do hope you've enjoyed enjoyed it.

Alice, thank you, as always,

and particularly for getting up at such a

godly hours of the day.

Good.

And

anything you'd like to plug before we cut off?

Yes, Andrew.

I have a daily satirical news podcast set in an alternate dimension.

It's called The Last Post.

We also have merch, which is vote Bob for Bob the Sentient Trash Island.

So you better buy that before voting happens so that you can represent at the polls.

It won't arrive in time.

Nish.

Nish, you've still got a um a little time to go before before the plug is pulled on.

Yeah, yeah, we've got two more episodes left, but if I was to translate this into Titanic terms, Winslet is on the door.

She is absolutely

put her clothes back on and she's she is on the door.

Um yes, there's two more episodes of Hello America on Quibi, but um

uh it's listen, it's it's too little too late now.

I mean, maybe if a billion people subscribe to it in the next week,

we can keep this thing afloat.

There you go, buglers.

Get that snowball rolling.

Thanks to Chris, as always, for keeping

this

show vaguely on something near enough a road.

Thank you for listening.

We will be back whenever next time.

We'll be back with a regular bugle next week and back whenever the Unmute Festival has us back.

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.