4162 - Bond, Boris and Boats

Buglers, it's producer Chris.

I also do a podcast.

It's called Richie Firf Travel Hacker and involves people thinking about doing things that they could do when they could travel and other things like that.

It's a sex plane eunice!

And it features cameos from the likes of Andy.

Who knows when, if ever, aeroplanes will fly again.

And Alice.

No reason.

Just

met a guy recently.

Just listen to it.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welkie on top.

Sorry, I've mistyped that particular issue 4126 of Deblugge.

I'm all over the place today.

Shame I didn't have

Zooto Krorevd on to deal with these seppling errors.

It is Tuesday, the 11th of August, 2020.

I am Andy Zoltzmann, star of neither stage nor screen, reporting to you live from the shed.

Where let me tell you, it is hot.

It is hot.

It's hot in London and it's hot in the shed, which catches a lot of...

It is as hot as the planet Venus in here, but not as horny, admittedly.

Easily the sexiest planet, Venus, you have to say, the planet of love, which science proves is lethally toxic and impossible to live with.

Readings of that, what you will, the dating industry joining me uh from mumbai india where it cannot possibly be as hot as it is in london uh anuvab pal anuvab give us a what's the temperature check from uh mumbai well um it is cooler than london uh but it is wetter than london we're in the

middle of the monsoons which raises the

important moral question and would you rather be sweating or drowning

don't make me choose.

And from up the road in Brixton,

it's Nish Kumar.

I mean, how hot is Brixton compared to Streatham?

A little

further north.

It's a completely different ecosystem up here, Andy.

We are chilly as shit.

No, it's fing hot.

It's so f ⁇ ing hot.

Over the weekend, Cardi B and Megan the Stallion released a song called Wet Ass Pussy.

And a lot of people have assumed that that's to do with sexual arousal.

I think that song is about it being too too fucking hot in London.

This is a city of wet-ass pussies and soggy-ass dicks.

And let me tell you, those dicks are sad.

S-A-D.

Well, I didn't really understand any of that, but I'm prepared to take you through that.

Andy, I thought you were a huge fan of Megan the Stallion.

Good luck.

Megan the Stallion.

No, no, not

really.

Andy, how are you handling...

Because for non-cricket fans, you're currently in the perineum that connects the anus of the previous test with the ball sack of the next test match.

How are you handling being in this no man's land of cricket?

Well, I mean, it's that kind of language that explains why I'm on test match special and you're not Nish.

Andy, I don't know how closely people are following my career, but there may be other reasons why I'm not going to be invited to any cricket-based events in the near future.

Well, yeah, so we'll.

Andy, sorry, just to cut back to what Nish asked you then.

Yeah.

Why did you not refer to it as a member of Test Match Special as the Gooch?

The Gooch.

Right.

I think it's time to move on.

They shall not take the name of Graham Gooch in vain.

We are in between the first England-Pakistan test, which was an absolute classic one in dramatic circumstances

by England.

And

again, I mean, generally, what England liked to do at the start of a series is

let the other team win in

a sort of indirect apology for some of the excesses of Empire,

which is as close as we're ever going to get to an apology.

But they pulled

they Heimlicked victory from the esophagus of

defeat in dramatic circumstances.

And the hero was a chap called Chris Wokes, who's an England cricketer who's not generally particularly high-profile.

And I don't think I've ever heard in the years that I've been following cricket, I've never heard anyone say anything even remotely negative about Chris Wokes.

I think he might be the nicest man in the history of sport to the extent where there was a sense in which I think he almost looks slightly guilty for having made Pakistan lose, even though it was a personal

and collective triumph

for him.

But yes, I'm back to Cricket Land tomorrow for the game on Thursday, so by the time you listen to this buglers, I'll be in a more comfortable situation than sweltering in my shed.

I will be enveloped once again in the comforting bosom of cricket.

It's the 11th of August 2020, which is the anniversary of just under a quarter of 1% of all the events that have ever happened in history, which is lower than the average day due to summer holidays and things, but still often an influential day of the year, not least, of course, in 1929, when Babe Ruth became the first baseballer to hit 500 home runs.

Not all in one day, it should be said.

But of events that have happened on the 11th of August, they have an HCQ rating, that's a historical consequence quotient, of only 53.61.

That's 1.84%

less influential than the average day in the year and 0.47% lower than even the average day in August, according to statistics that I've just made up.

So you may be asking, what is the point in us recording a bugle on a pointless day like the 11th of August?

I've absolutely no idea.

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

This week, best bond.

Best Bond section here.

Now, a recent poll has showed that Sean Connery is viewed as the best James Bond of all time, the greatest of all time in modern parlance, that phrase generally used as something that's existed for

anything from five to thirty years, slightly longer in the case of Bond.

But only seven people have played James Bond, which is way fewer mathematically than the people who have not played James Bond.

So I think we're, you know, we're missing out on a lot of talent, assuming that Connery is the best possible Bond of all time.

So to decide this once and for all, on the bugle, we're going to have a competition to find out who would have been the best Bond out of all the people in history who have not played James Bond in a film or even in a local amateur dramatic Christmas production of James Bond and the Beanstalk.

Over the next 127 bugle episodes, we will be giving you, the public, the chance to vote on your favourite Bond who never played Bond from all the people who have ever lived in a series of head-to-head knockout encounters.

We've chosen for you a short list of 128 possible Bonds.

You simply have to vote each week on which one you think would have been the better Bond.

And sometime late in 2022 or 2023, we will then have a final climactic showdown between the winner of our best bond out of all the non-bonds

competition with Sean Connery to find out the real best bond ever.

And for our first round clash, and what a mouth-watering prospect this is.

Who would have been the better bond out of Marcus Aurelius?

or Jesus Christ?

Candidate won, Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Well, he was known for his short, pithy statements, very much like Bond, collated in Aurelius's big-selling Stoicism Blockbuster meditations.

He might need to joke them up a bit and make them a little saucier to fit in as Bond.

But Aurelius, of course, was an all-action hero who, like Bond, was prepared to slay enemies from around the world to achieve his goals, a key Bond character trait.

But would he have been a better or worse James Bond than Jesus Christ, the renowned Messiah who pulled off incredible stunts like Bond, was a fan of gadgets such as the donkey, the fish divider, and the invisible jet ski sandal, and was also a big hit with the ladies.

Also, he was able to escape bond-like from the tightest of scrapes, such as King Herod trying to kill all firstborn children and being dead in a tomb.

Classic Bond.

Also spoke with a lovely, clear British accent, according to the Bible, another key Bond attribute.

So send us your vote for best Bond, Aurelius, or Christ, to the usual address, and we will have another 63 first-round clashes over the next, I don't know, what, 14 months or so.

Also in the bin, a new number puzzle says Lauro, in which you have to guess which number between 1 and 10,000 fits into this gap.

Good luck with that.

Now, Andy, I have a pedantic contestant

contestant question.

Is there any advantage if your name is James Bond and you work in accounting, for example?

I don't know.

I mean, someone presumably has done some kind of doctoral thesis piece of research into this, given that people have done doctoral thesis pieces of research into pretty much everything in the universe now.

So, yeah, I mean, just the nominative determinism of James Bond.

You'd obviously have to have control samples of people who were called James Bond before James Bond became James Bond, filmically, if that makes sense, and work out whether people called James Bond have been more or less dynamic and successful since the film franchise began.

And

then, I mean, anything that helps us stop thinking about reality.

I'm just waiting for the big crunch match: Idris Elber versus Joan of Arc.

Top story this week, world in turmoil.

Well, the world is having a bit of a rocky year.

I don't think you need to be

even a virus fan to acknowledge that.

Eye shelves are collapsing all over the place, and there is protests all around the world.

There have been huge protests in Lebanon.

The entire government has resigned.

Protests in Belarus, Bolivia, Thailand, Siberia, Hong Kong, all over the world.

A fox has stolen 100 shoes in Berlin, as if humanity wasn't suffering enough.

And, well, but perhaps the biggest piece of turmoil, and Nish, you are our global turmoil correspondent.

Of course.

As

you leave a trail of turmoil that you can get.

Yeah, I love observing it.

I love causing it.

I mean, what would you say is the

biggest bit of turmoil facing the world this week?

Well, there's a huge amount of turmoil everywhere, Andy.

I mean, Belarus is not faring particularly well.

The main challenger to Alexander Lukashenko, who's a lady called Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and I apologise for mispronouncing both of those names.

Actually, I only apologise for her name, because he, without wishing to give too much away, seems like a total ⁇

she's refusing to accept the result of the election because he claims he won 80% of the vote.

80%.

That's a big slice of the vote.

And you might be thinking, well, maybe he did win that much.

And you might be thinking, oh, maybe he did win by that much.

But on the other hand, 30 people have been arrested in the capital.

A witness says they saw police officers with truncheons beating protesters.

And a Polish-based broadcaster has said that the internet is mostly unavailable.

And nothing says, I have won fair and square, like beating up protesters and turning off the internet.

Nothing screams, this was a fair fight like that.

That's basically like saying, of course, I'm not a dictator.

All I've done is lock up my opponents and festoon the town square with pictures of myself.

Jesus, this is political correctness gone mad.

Can a man not even randomly arrest people he doesn't like the look of and have them killed whilst at the same time insisting on his picture being in all post offices without being called a dictator?

This is cancel culture gone mad.

I mean another slight clue to his style of leadership is well just the very fact that Tikhanovskaya was his main rival.

She's now fled to Lithuania for the safety of her children.

But she'd only taken over as Lukashenko's main challenger after her husband was sent to jail and two other contenders have also been barred.

So the mere fact that she ended up running against him was

only really because he was well I mean let's look at his leadership style he wears his leadership style unashamedly bushily under his nose I mean there is no way a moustache like that can be an accident you would say at least post 1938 ish

particularly not in Andy Nisha someone who lives in a chaotic democracy

I would just like to read out today's Times of India headline as it relates to Belarus it says

Miss Svetlana says I consider myself the winner of this election.

After which, she promptly fled the country.

And, you know, this wasn't a surprise headline in India.

It happens often.

Another signal as to Lukashenko's

style of leadership is the fact that his secret service is still called the KGB.

Now, that is...

That is a leader who isn't fussed about using a historically tainted brand if it suits him.

A few more details on the man he's been in power for 26 years coincidentally the exact same amount of time that's passed since 1994 when by coincidence the 1994 world cup began ironically actually three days before lukashenko took the reins of the electro donkey of executive power in belarus in the aftermath of the u the s the s and the r of us are flying off in different directions also that was three days after oj simpson's low-speed car chaser bang which does make you wonder if lukashenko knows something and has used that power to maintain his grip on the handlebars of power on the kawasaki 350 350 that is high Belarusian office, which Lukashenko, of course, entered on the very day that Brazil beat Russia 2-0 with goals from Romario and Captain Rai, who of course would end the tournament sitting on the bench, watching Dunga having taken over the captain's armad, lifting the famous old trophy.

No wonder it took the world a while to notice that Lukashenko was not entirely a goodie in the grand scheme of things.

Oh, I mean, if you're looking for any further indication that this man is not a good man, here's a little chap that he's praised publicly in the past, a little gentleman by the name of Adolf Hitler.

He said that the history of Germany is a copy of the history of Belarus.

Germany was raised from ruins thanks to firm authority, and not everything connected with that well-known figure, Hitler, was bad.

German order evolved over the centuries and attained its peak under Hitler.

And you know what they say about Hitler, Andy?

Not everything about him was.

No, wait, that's not true.

You know what they say about Hitler?

Everything about him was bad.

Absolutely everything about him was bad.

Lukashenko has been described as Europe's last dictator.

And can we please at least add on a for now?

I mean,

let's be realistic about this.

Or at least add on Europe's last dictator and then add the words who actually has the decency to lay his dictatorial cards firmly on the table, or who actually holds office rather than wielding power behind the scenes, or who hasn't gone into football management or sports administration instead.

His salary, apparently, his salary as president of Belarus is

25,000 euros a year.

Well, I guess.

I imagine there are some absolutely big fucking perks attached to that.

Well, he is allowed expenses of up to 125 million US dollars a month, no receipts needed.

But still, 25 grand a year.

Joshi does it for the love.

He does it for the love.

It is possible that the central auditor of the Belarusian Republic is also Kim.

So there have been big protests against

his government and in the aftermath of these elections police have violently attacked demonstrators and Lukashenko has claimed that the protests were being directed from other countries and has singled out as suspects Poland, the Czech Republic and wait for this.

Britain now.

This is very very flattering that the Belarusian bastardo thinks that we have that kind of club in our bag.

But seriously, we cannot organise a phone line in this country.

Do you really think we can coordinate thousands of protesters thousands of miles away?

We can't get basic medical equipment to frontline health workers in our own hospitals.

There's no way we are trying to destabilise the Belarusian government.

We don't have those skills.

Look, there might be protests in Belarus.

There might be protests in Lebanon.

There might be protests everywhere.

But we all know the real country that is experiencing genuine crisis is the United Kingdom.

Yeah, testify.

Andy, Anafab, you would have no idea what this feels like.

But our country is being invaded by foreigners.

And in India, you just have no idea what that's like.

Never happened.

It's never happened.

We are under one of the most dangerous invasions of all time, by which I mean a small boat with eight defenseless refugees arrived in Kent.

And if that does not spell out the scale of this crisis, and it is a crisis, then I don't know what will.

It is absolutely astonishing what has happened here.

Nigel Farage, the disgraced radio DJ and permanent,

has taken up a new hobby, which is traveling down to the beaches of Kent and making videos on his iPhone.

He posted one online last Thursday, which he called a shocking invasion of the Kent Coast, which was about eight people getting off a dinghy and walking on a beach.

Now, eight people is less than the number of people who, in total, have walked on the moon.

And I don't know if either of you have noticed, but we're not exactly in charge up there.

We are quite far away from declaring the moon the 51st state of North, North, North Dakota.

Now, Nish, I know nothing about invasions,

but just a

hypothetical question.

Say the British were to invade some country, say India, for example.

Not that.

Well, okay, let's set this.

If we're going for science fiction, fine, let's set this.

Yeah, exactly.

Completely hypothetical situation.

Say there were to land, and it is said that a few British people

hypothetically invaded India.

Now, for an invasion, you would need, I would imagine, at least 200 people, 500 people, maybe a thousand people.

Is it possible to invade?

I don't know much about your island.

You know, this English language I've just picked up on Google.

So this is totally hypothetical.

But, you know, I'm assuming India to be invaded, say, in the year 1756, say at a place called the Battle of Plassey, all hypothetical.

You would need at least a hundred thousand troops to invade a country.

Now, you've got sixty million people.

Would eight do?

I mean, as the British Parliament.

Yeah, look, I I look there's a there's a hint of cynicism coming from you here, Anuba.

Actually

if you've got a hundred thousand people and they're all in very smart, bright red uniforms, actually quite easy to spot.

Yes.

Whereas, you know, only eight people in a in a rubber dinghy, actually that's uh that's that's that's a a far greater threat uh to people, you know, this uh I mean it it does slightly make you think actually, when you think of the history of invasions, that it's just another one of those things that's lost their edge a bit, that what we've got is a slow trickle of people turning up in unarmed, inflatable vessels, then asking politely for permission to stay.

It's not,

I mean, the Vikings wouldn't get out of bed for that kind of stuff, would they?

I just wonder, because it is

earlier this week, there was a letter sent to the Home Secretary by 23 Tory MPs and two peers who said that ministers must do whatever it takes to address the attempts for migrants to enter the UK using small boats.

And as a side note, those 25 people, it's not so much a shit list as it is a complete fing

list.

And

the letter specifically referred to invading migrants.

And it starts to make me think, is this part of a deep-seated fear in the British psyche, based on what we have done abroad, that we simply cannot conceive of turning up to a country without invading it?

Why else would you bother making the trip?

So whenever we see people arriving here, for reasons, you know, as diffuse as maybe, oh, I don't know, fleeing persecution or desperately trying to make a better life for themselves, instead of thinking, well, we should extend a humanitarian handout to these people,

we think, you know what, they must be here to get our jewels and put them in their hats.

Because that's what we fing did

for 200 years.

We do need to see this

in context, though, because

it's a massive issue in British politics, the whole issue of immigration, of asylum.

In 2019, there were 36,000 applications for asylum in Britain.

Now, that is way, way, way more

those 36,000.

That is way more than the 165,000 there were in Germany.

It's way more than 151,000 there were in France, the 117,000 in Spain, and it is even, even more than the 77,000 asylum applications applications there were in Greece.

And in fact, if you put all of those together and do the maths wrong and don't count anyone with legs, arms or a head in those other countries applying for asylum, we actually took 100% of all the asylum seekers to all those countries combined.

This is an invasion of...

You can mock it all you like.

It's an invasion of Home Office paperwork.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described the crossings as very bad and stupid and dangerous and criminal, which to be fair to him is just him quoting directly from his own Tinder bio.

And human rights groups groups have gone on to describe Johnson's remarks as inaccurate and inflammatory.

But in Johnson's defense, that's what he does.

The man is inaccurate and inflammatory.

If you asked him directions to the local shop, he would manage to tell you to turn left, right, left, right, and left again, causing a confusing circle.

And while he was saying it, he would somehow manage to use the N-word.

Describing Boris Johnson as inaccurate and inflammatory is as pointless at this point as describing me as being brown and shrill.

It's simply simply what we're known for.

It's an inexorable part of our personal brand.

Now, Nish, Andy, as political observers, I have to say in this part of the world, Nigel Farage is not very well known.

So if you were to describe Nigel Farage Nish as a contemporary political analyst, how would you describe him for an Indian audience, say?

Well,

put it this way, Nigel Farage, for the last sort of 25 to 30 years, is basically like a child who has walked into the middle of their parents' dinner party naked and is frantically tugging on his penis for attention.

Now, in that situation, I'm not a parent, but in that situation, I think the best thing to do is don't give him the attention he craves and carry on eating.

What the British media has done for the last 25 years is they've set up a 24-hour rolling news coverage of this metaphorical child's cock and balls.

You know, I learned two lessons here: one about Nigel Farage, two about British dinner parties.

And three, by the sounds of things, don't invite me to babysit your kids.

Yeah,

he agitated for the Brexit referendum and he got the Brexit referendum.

And

as the head of the UK Independence Party and subsequently the Brexit Party, he's been a figure from the far right of Britain who's constantly exerted pressure on the Conservative Party, the right-wing party, and who have constantly sort of caved in to his demands largely because they've been trying to sort of avoid stop him from heading them off on the right of the party and costing them votes.

And at this point, his latest shitfest is a very convenient way for the government to use this crisis, a word I'm using absolutely, totally inaccurately, as a way of distracting from its myriad failures, be it its Brexit plan, which is now being castigated by the very ministers who voted for it, or its coronavirus strategy, which now and I believe this is the the official position, hey, at least we aren't America.

And that's pretty much all we've got,

all we've got going for us.

At this point, once again, the Conservative Party is using innocent and defenseless refugees, helpless people who we should be offering a hand to as political footballs.

But they still somehow even do it poorly.

And the thing about political football is that, like real football, we have been quite bad at it for the last 20 years.

And what we now need to do is have a heavy investment in grassroots political football.

We need to start looking at the continent, at some of the more innovative political football coaches that have been operating there for the last 60 to 70 years.

And we need to start looking at how we can rear a new generation of more technically adept, fast, and skillful political football players.

Well, so you so not just lumping it up to the big number nine again.

What made this country great?

It's been a bad week to be British, and

that's something I could have said at any point for the last five or arguably 250 years.

Because youGov,

in conjunction with this, you govid a survey

around migrants and refugees.

And 22% of the people surveyed said that they had not much sympathy, and 27% said they had no sympathy at all for these people.

And you've got to say, at this point,

these basically are now what it suggests: is these are the people who watched Bambi and thought

Bambi's mum deserved everything that she got.

And I imagine, and I imagine she was delicious.

Well, since we're talking about megalomaniac political figures and, as you mentioned, political artworks earlier, Nish, Donald Trump has denied asking

about the feasibility of adding his own face to Mount Rushmore,

the famous American monument with four of the greatest presidents of US history.

Now, he may well have denied it, and it is the kind of thing that could well be, as he claimed, fake news.

However, even if he denies actually having asked it, he did not and could not deny having thought it.

Because

there's no way that he has not

only thought

about that, but probably experienced some form of sexual urge whilst thinking about it and whether it would be possible.

to copulate with a giant stone statue of himself.

He tweeted, this is fake news.

I never suggested it, although, based on all of the many things I've accomplished during my first three and a half years, perhaps more than any other presidency, it sounds like a good idea to me.

Now, I mean,

I think the Bugle has laid its Trumpet cards firmly on the table over the last four years, and

we haven't necessarily been an unequivocal fan of everything that he's done.

But to me,

adding Trump to Rushmore would be like adding Hannibal Lecter to The Last Supper.

If you've not heard of it, The Last Supper, Smash It, pioneering celeb foodie documentary painting by Lenny Peterson, or as he was known at the time, Leonardo Piero da Vinci.

It's like adding a coiling turd to Rodin's The Thinker, or maybe adapting Antonio Canova's famous statue, The Three Graces, by adding Donald Trump to it, complete with an alarmingly priapic cock.

Listen, Andy, this may be the first impulse of his that I've respected, because who amongst us has not looked at an object of great social and cultural significance and not thought I'd like to draw a cock on that?

Also, I feel the Trump Corporation is the sort of company that for a million dollars will allow anyone's face to be carved on Mount Rushmore.

I think more realistic for him is to try to join James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G.

Harding and Franklin Pierce on Mount St Shithead, which

are the worst presidents in American history.

Hugely in favour of

some kind of balance.

I mean, Mount Rushmore, listen,

even the presidents that are on there, sure, there's an Abe Lincoln, but there's a couple of tricky customers on there vis-a-vis massive slave owners.

I'm looking at you, Thomas Jefferson, and you, George Washington.

And there's also, you know, Teddy Roosevelt was a man not without contention.

But I do genuinely think, oh, also, I only found this out recently.

Mount Rushmore is built on ground that had been promised to Native Americans in perpetuity.

So it's like, the whole thing is a bit of a nightmare.

But I do think the only thing that could balance it out is by building some sort of monument to the most dog shit presidents.

Maybe they could even sculpt it out of canine feces.

Just to really

sell the point of it.

Just a stinking mound of dog shit featuring some of America's most useless presidents

and that and that one Trump might get on in fact I'd fast track him to the top of that list

in the other turmoil news as I mentioned earlier on Berlin has been rocked to its foundations by a fox which has stolen a hundred shoes

A stash of the footwear was found by someone who'd had a a sh shoe stolen by the fox.

Most of them were described by police as slightly nibbled.

The fox, who shall remain nameless as foxes so often do, apparently favoured a plastic summer shoe.

I'm not sure what you can read into that, but it does maybe suggest it wasn't a fetish thing.

But it does make you wonder, what are foxes up to?

I mean, it is possible they've completed their research into what we keep in our bins and are now starting to analyse our footwear.

And at this rate, they will know everything about human civilization and our points of vulnerability within 300 years, at which point they will be ready to pounce and take over the world.

But I've got some news for them.

Hurry up, you frizzy-tailed felons.

Human civilization will have killed itself long before then.

Conflicting news reports are coming out, Nish Andy, that this particular fox was a fan of Imelda Marcos, wife of uh the dictator of Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and she had an extensive shoe collection, and I think inspired by her this fox is building his own shoe collection.

Which leads me to ask Anish Andy what the fk is going on in Europe?

There are

large ships.

This is exactly why we Brexited.

Exactly.

This is exactly what we voted to leave.

Marauding gangs of shoe-thieving foxes.

This is exactly what the Leave campaign was talking about.

But they sort of ended up saying it with something about Romanians.

But the Romanians were actually metaphors for foxes.

And this was the genius of the Leave campaign.

They saw it coming, and instead of shoes, they said jobs.

But other than that, they were absolutely bang on.

Indian Covid news now, and the government's announced

plans to test a million people a day,

which

sounds like a lot, Anuvab, Anivab, but that would still take four years to test the entire country, so massive is the

Indian population.

Are you excited by this pledge from your beloved government?

Well, you know,

there's some research done on this, Andy.

The United Kingdom tests 192 people for every 100,000 people.

Right now, India Yes, but that those numbers are very good, Anivab.

You have to remember those are world-beating numbers.

And they're world beating because our government told us they were world beating.

Exactly, exactly.

Always good to rely on one source of information as we've learnt in India.

At Pakistan, it's eight for a hundred thousand people.

India right now, thirty six for a hundred thousand people is what we're testing.

Prime Minister Modi, our liberal, wonderful leader, his ambition is to increase this number to a million tests each day.

And one of the suggestions being made is instead of putting a tube up and down your nose and sending it to a lab, it's just to go up to an Indian person, ask them, do you have it?

And

rely on a yes and no answer.

It's worked for a number of other things in India, so why not for a dangerous disease?

Well, one of the ways we, you know, in the earlier days of this crisis, we avoided being put on these lists was we didn't test.

And, you know, if you don't test, you don't have it.

So that's a good way in which we've avoided any conflict in an Indian household.

If you don't bring it up for long enough, enough, one or the other person will die.

Just ask my uncle Suresh, who's not with us anymore.

He doesn't know my mum doesn't love him and he never will.

Britain news now and children will be going back to school.

next month in England if Boris Johnson, our God-given Prime Minister, has his way because there is a a moral duty to do so.

There is a moral duty to get children back in schools.

Those are the words of Boris Johnson.

Boris Johnson started lecturing his country on moral Boris Boris Johnson

told Britain

what its

moral duty was satire.

It is not only dead, it has been cremated and scattered to the winds.

Boris Johnson told us what moral duty,

even in the weirdest of possible weird worlds that our version of the universe has found itself in, to hear Boris Johnson telling us what our moral duty is, that is a new tranche of implausible.

I mean, Nish, I know you, Boris Johnson for you very much, your spiritual guru.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, if you went orienteering with Boris Johnson's moral compass,

you would end up a f of a long way away from where you were trying to get to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'd start in Blackpool and end up in Shanghai.

Absolutely.

But I don't know why you're...

I can't believe that you're reacting this way, Andy.

Of course, Boris Johnson needs school to restart.

His house must be absolutely full of children.

You're talking about a man whose Wikipedia page, as we record this, continues to say children, and the number is at least six.

Boris Johnson's house is basically a secondary school at the moment.

Once he f ⁇ ing needs the schools to open, the guy just needs a bit bit of peace so he can think about how to fudge COVID numbers.

He's probably absolutely overwhelmed.

Also, I think that, you know, Boris Johnson is largely seen as, you know,

his skill is seen as largely sort of reading the British public's mood and anticipating it.

But he has said, as well as their, as Andy says, a moral duty to get children back to schools, he said that he will shut pubs to keep schools open.

And I'm afraid Boris Johnson, his Titanic may have finally hit its iceberg.

Because if he thinks that the British public is going to tolerate pubs being closed to open schools, he has fundamentally misunderstood the mood of teachers, pupils and every single person in this country.

In another school issue, there's been a big rumpus about how exam grades are being given out.

The Scottish government had announced that a lot of pupils are having their assessed grades downgraded.

So, rather than going with what the teachers had said, they were basing it on algorithms.

This is happening across England as well.

The Scots have now gone back on that.

Their education secretary, John Swinney, said that the result that had been downgraded will be reversed.

He said, We now accept that the concern over grade inflation is outweighed by concern that young people from working-class backgrounds may lose faith in the education system and conclude that the system is against them.

That conclusion has not been reached yet in England, where the government education minister Petrola Carvel Limp said, England as a society is founded on inequality.

It's what made us great as a nation, both in its global pursuit and in the clarity it brings to selecting people for political office.

These whinging teenagers need to accept that.

If they'd wanted fairness in education, they should have come out of someone else's womb and gone to someone else's school.

So it's rather clearer in England than it is

north of Hadrian's Wall.

The problem was they were basing

because the exams had to be cancelled due to COVID and not just due to COVID but also due to having a monstrously incompetent government attempting to deal with the COVID crisis.

They were basing children's grades on what their teachers had assessed.

This resulted in grades being higher because apparently teachers are human with a heart.

Finging hippies.

So they were instead going to they forced teachers to rank all their pupils and would then give them grades based on how pupils from the same schools had done in previous years.

So if you happen to be at a school which had had a coachloads of f ⁇ kwids in previous years, then your entire life prospects are ruined.

However, if you've gone to a school with, for example, lots of high-achieving children from wealthy families, then you're fine.

Now, in many ways, this was merely formalising the British education system as it is.

Various options have been suggested for how to give grades instead.

Trusting pupils' assessment of themselves, which really gives school pupils the same rights that governments have on lying about their own achievements and fiddling the figures to massage political results.

Alternatively, they could just follow the political example and give higher grades to people whose financial backers dump up the most money.

That's basically how it works.

Or since pubs have proved more important than schools, just get kids to go on quiz machines in pubs and receive grades based on how they do on quiz machines.

That might be the fairest way as well as

boosting the trade for the struggling hospitality industry.

The government's inequalities are, Sir Derald Pitchling, whose remit is to ensure that a suitably British level of inequality remains entrenched in society, announced that any pupils whose parents become unemployed when the government's furlough scheme ends will be retrospectively downgraded.

Sir Derrell said, it seems unfair that these kids will benefit where the children of the long-term unemployed do not.

That's all you want in education, fairness and equality of opportunity.

Similarly, he he continued: if any people can prove that they have a close biological link to a hereditary peer, a current cabinet minister, or a major donor to the Conservative Party, they'll be bumped up a couple of grades.

Or if they're prepared to start a YouTube channel posting videos about how great Boris Johnson and Brexit are, they can get an automatic A.

It's basically just rolling out the system we use for the House of Lords, so it's all part of our British Valence trademark and all that.

Team GB.

Team GB.

I'd just like to add that I find that this last system you described very fair.

You know, I've had a lot of experience with that in the third world.

Just Just a small suggestion to make it even more equal: purchasing the question paper for a very high price

works very well in Indian state board elections, examinations,

loads of medical and legal examinations.

You can purchase the paper.

Sometimes, if you know the right people, you don't even have to purchase the paper.

Sometimes, if you don't know the right people and you have a gun and you know where the teacher lives, that is a good solution.

So, you know, academia, there are lots of options that you guys haven't explored in Britain.

Well, that brings us to the end of

this week's bugle.

Anuab, anything to plug to our listeners?

Well, I carry on through the lockdown.

Just to let you know, I think India doesn't plan to come out of the lockdown.

So, this is just going to be a way of life.

So, we're not going to have any gigs anymore.

We're just going to be at home and then just get used to it.

So

my plug is

please,

you know, wish me good luck for my new lockdown life.

Nish?

I'm hosting a show on the app Quibby, which is called Hello America.

And the premise of the show is that it's a British comedian talking about the American news, which I believe has never been done before.

And I'm excited to be a pioneer of this particular form.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

If you want to hear more of me, I'll be spouting numbers into the radio again for the next two weeks.

We'll be back next week with Nato Green and Tiff Stevenson, and we will play you out this week with some lies about our premium-level voluntary subscribers.

To join them, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

And also, you can view our spectacular range of new merch.

Two things available.

Oh, is there a new merch?

There are two things available in the merch.

There are three things.

Three now, isn't it?

The jumpers are on full sale.

I'm taking them off pre-sale, Andy.

All right, okay.

So Christmas jumpers.

Christmas jumpers, t-shirts and socks.

And two different sizes of t-shirt.

Or two different designs.

Probably more.

Actually, I mean, how many different sizes are there of t-shirts?

I mean, I'm really underselling this.

About six?

Six.

I mean, let's melt them.

Two different colours of socks.

They're shit like that.

I absolutely love these.

I love these socks.

These are absolutely great.

Awesome socks.

This is someone's waddrel.

So a t-shirt, a jumper, in socks, your sorted.

I mean, you need never need any other form of clothing ever again.

Yeah, and of course, if you're a true bugler, you will philosophically refuse to wear trousers or pants.

And

that's the real creed of the bugle:

tops covered, feet covered, let those genitals breathe.

And there can be no more appropriate way to end the show than that.

Bye.

Ian Young feels sorry for ancient Greek myth star Sisyphus.

Sure, the guy was an entitled prick and a deceitful little shitbag.

He would fit right into the political landscape today.

But for Zeus to punish him by making him continually roll a rock almost all the way up a hill over and over again for all eternity seems a real waste of divine punishment.

Why not get the bastard to paint fences or road lines forever, or continually dredge irrigation channels, or continually plant trees in the Amazon?

Give something back to society.

What use to anyone is the shoving a rock up a hill nonsense.

It is punishment for punishment's sake, rails Ian, and it does not help rehabilitate Sisyphus or benefit society as a whole.

Grant Craig thinks that if anything, the excessive punishment meted out to Sisyphus glamorised him and his crimes.

Sisyphus was punished for cheating death, notes Grant.

And now, thanks to him, everyone wants to have medical treatment to live as long as possible, at vast economic cost to governments worldwide.

Whilst I admire the Greek gods' more flexible use of non-custodial judicial sentencing, continues Grant, something today's prison-obsessed legislators could well learn from, I believe the harshness of those sentences to have been counterproductive in the long term.

James Daly agrees and wonders where Sisyphus is now.

Even though Zeus has long since quit his role as CEO of the Olympian Gods franchise, says James, presumably Sisyphus has no idea about that and is still rolling that stupid boulder up that stupid hill.

Maybe he's come to an acceptance of it and finds joy in simple things like the changing of the seasons, the rhythm of the days and the sound of passers-by going, ooh, ah,

every time he gets near the top and the boulder rolls back down.

He'd probably miss it if he ever had his all-eternity sentence commuted to 4,000 years, time which he has already served, concludes James.

Emily Ditto worries about Sisyphus's mental state should he ever ever be released from his unending boulder-shoving torment.

He'll have no support network, says Emily.

His family and buddies are not only all long since dead, but probably never existed in the first place, and no one really needs boulders rolled up hills anymore either, so it's not like he's picked up any useful skills while serving his sentence.

The Greek economy isn't in great shape, adds Emily, and the jobs market is tough enough for people in their 50s, let alone ex-myth stars who are several thousand years in the tooth.

Steve in Oregon often wonders how many boulders Sisyphus has got through over the course of his sentence.

Obviously, notes Steve in Oregon, which of course has its fair share of both boulders and mountains, it depends on the rock the boulders are made from and the size and steepness of the hill it is being rolled up and then rolling down.

Then, continues Steve, you also have to factor in what type of terrain the boulder encounters on the way and what, if anything, is bringing it to a halt at the bottom.

These could all affect the rate of erosion of the boulders and indeed whether or not they crack into smaller rocks.

Any ideas anyone?

Rebecca Leo pipes up and notes that over the significant portion of eternity that the former king of Corinth has already served, weather erosion could also have been a factor, especially if the boulders are made of a more porous or softer rock.

Also, says Rebecca, let's assume that Zeus doesn't let the boulder erode below a certain size, otherwise what's the point?

So I reckon old Sisyphus has probably got through loads of boulders, like maybe 28 boulders, possibly even up to 35 boulders.

Beeble Beebelstein chips in to wonder whether this whole discussion has been pointless.

The chances are, Beeble blasts, that he's still on the original boulder, which was almost certainly a magic one.

Remember, these Olympian gods could do anything.

They could turn themselves into swans to get their ends away and stuff like that.

I reckon they could come up with a non-eroding punishment boulder, don't you?

And Linda Coletta Fenger has absolutely no sympathy with Sisyphus.

If he's still shoving that stupid rock up and down that stupid hill, he's got only himself to blame.

It is a clear contravention of his human rights, and any half-decent lawyer would not only get him released from that sentence, but win him a a fat compensation package too.

Besides, adds Linda, Sisyphus was a total bastard who tried to kill his brother who also by the way was an utter shithead.

Seriously, you've got to ask questions of the parents.

I don't care how mythical they were.

Here endeth this week's lies.

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.