Bonus Bugle - Cricket beats Covid

Speaker 2 The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Speaker 5 Hello Buglers and welcome to Bugle sub-episode 4159A for Aardvok.

Speaker 9 Aardvok of course the animal famously named after a court case brought back in more Bibley times when a Dutch species technician called Peter van Ard launched a court case against Noah for excluding his new mammal, then entitled the Snoutabout from the list of animals invited to take up residence on his famous ark.

Speaker 5 The snoutabout had been excluded because it was a hybrid bred as a prototype carpet cleaner by Van Ard and therefore not categorised as one of God's creatures.

Speaker 8 Van Ard won the court case, the snoutabout survived and the juddersnitch instead was cast overboard.

Speaker 7 The what you ask?

Speaker 13 Well, exactly.

Speaker 6 The snoutabout then became known after the court case Ard v Ark, Noah having defended the claim as a business rather than an individual for tax purposes.

Speaker 9 Van Ard himself sadly drowned in the ensuing flood before perfecting his new pigeon horse, the ultimate racing machine.

Speaker 5 I digress, if indeed you can indeed digress, without having even begun a journey.

Speaker 3 I am Andy Zaltman and there is no regular bugle this week because I am in a biosecure hotel in Hampshire watching my own private international cricket match.

Speaker 10 Basically, do tune in to BBC radio coverage on the radio or indeed online around the world if you want to hear me actually saying some facts, albeit facts about sport, which is essentially, of course, a fiction.

Speaker 5 But that is as far as I'm prepared to compromise in my personal battle against reality.

Speaker 3 Instead, we have for you this week a bumper crop of bonus bugle material from recent weeks, starting with, from last week, New Zealand news.

Speaker 17 New Zealand property market news now and a replica Wild West town is for sale in New Zealand.

Speaker 5 It's a meticulous reproduction of an 1860s Wyoming frontier town, apparently, but was only built in 2006.

Speaker 16 And I guess the challenge is, you know, the question you've got to ask if you're thinking about buying this property is exactly how much do you want to escape from reality.

Speaker 17 This is a pretend town from 160 years ago in New Zealand, which is to all practical purposes a pretend country.

Speaker 17 That really is.

Speaker 19 You cannot get much further away from reality

Speaker 1 than that.

Speaker 16 James, is there much interest in this property?

Speaker 2 Well, it's proved quite controversial because there's actually legislation in place about being able to buy property if you're overseas, if you're an overseas investor.

Speaker 2 However, that doesn't cover fake cowboy towns.

Speaker 1 Why did they not think of that?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 I feel we should actually use this as an opportunity in New Zealand. We need all the money we can get.

Speaker 2 So if we can just get someone rich enough to buy this thing and move in, and then hook them up with Taika Waititi, that's a film franchise ready to go.

Speaker 22 It's got how many properties has it got? 12 or 14? So, you can have, you can get syphilis and eat tin peaches, just like in Deadwood.

Speaker 2 It's right in the middle of nowhere. That's the weird thing, because we also have towns in New Zealand which are right in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 I don't think New Zealanders actually knew there was a fake cowboy town before the story broke. I think they were just driving past it going, oh, I wonder which, yeah,

Speaker 2 I think I've stayed there before, actually. Yeah, they do good scoms.
Yeah,

Speaker 22 it probably just looks hipster because that's everything, everything hipster is just kind of like retro-nostalgia, right?

Speaker 22 So it just people driving past going, oh, look at that hipster place. That's

Speaker 1 probably a craft beer brewery.

Speaker 22 How much is it for sale for?

Speaker 23 I think it's

Speaker 17 $11.5 million.

Speaker 18 I don't know if that's US or New Zealand dollars.

Speaker 2 I think it's New Zealand, which is about $266,500 US.

Speaker 17 But I mean, I guess why would you buy someone like this in New Zealand, not in Wyoming?

Speaker 5 What are the attractions, apart from the lack of coronavirus, the lack of institutionalized national self-destruction

Speaker 16 and the addition of rugby and cricket?

Speaker 8 I guess the one real selling point is the almost total lack of indigenous mammals, which must be a real attraction to people who absolutely hate the concept of indigenous mammals living in a place to buy somewhere in New Zealand and you've just got a couple of bats to deal with.

Speaker 2 I mean that's the nice thing about the New Zealand desert. Nothing kills you.
You get annoyed.

Speaker 2 You will be irritated.

Speaker 11 Now, obviously, one thing that no one in Britain, or Covidious Albion, as I believe it is now known, could have foreseen before the government attempted to launch its track and trace system months after other countries had already done so was that one of the key aspects of such track and trace systems was that they actually need to work.

Speaker 27 The government's much trumpeted track and trace system destined not so long ago to be world beating in their own words has been tossed into the wheelie bin of history alongside other things such as credibility hope and dignity by the government.

Speaker 27 It's announced that they will instead be writing and sending letters to all people diagnosed with COVID asking them to then themselves write a postcard to everyone they think they might have met in the past six months and to parade up and down all the streets within a two-mile radius of their house every day, wearing a special cape, ringing a bell, and proclaiming themselves unclean.

Speaker 3 So they are very much still on top of this.

Speaker 1 Still on top of it.

Speaker 22 Well, they've never really hidden their desire for us to be dead.

Speaker 22 So it seems consistent.

Speaker 1 Yes. I guess so.
That's all you're looking for, isn't it?

Speaker 22 So what's happened is the UK government has decided it's not going to use its own app and is instead going to use the

Speaker 22 Apple and Google model COVID trackers, which I think is nice. It's nice to see the government coming to terms with reality on any vector at all.

Speaker 22 On the other hand, handing even more power into the hands of faux-independent, minimally regulated, ultra-wealthy, non-government monopolies on the infrastructure of information seems a little bit like handing your tiny little exotic dance alien into the slimy little paws of Jabber the Hut and making him pinky swear not to drop her into the nearest monster hole when his hemorrhoids flare up.

Speaker 22 But like I said earlier, most governments, not digital natives, do you trust them to build an app competently?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 22 Or it'll be just the kind that keeps crashing constantly before you can even get into it.

Speaker 27 Yes, and this is very much a government that is trying to take Britain back to a pre-digital age.

Speaker 16 I think the current target year is 1854.

Speaker 22 Also, since their plan is for everyone to get COVID, who needs an app to track that?

Speaker 27 Exactly. All you need is a British passport.

Speaker 1 That's what that will do.

Speaker 23 Maybe they'll put it in the water.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 fluoride. Like the fluoride.

Speaker 27 I mean, you might mock that now, but you know, when everyone else has still got COVID in 100 years' time and Britain is ruling the world once again, it's basically smallpox all over again, isn't it?

Speaker 27 You can't unlearn those skills.

Speaker 18 Many people have criticised the British government, but to be fair to them, they have done their best to help this nation get better at cryptic crosswords.

Speaker 9 Or at least they have allowed us to hone our skills at trying to work out the hidden message in ostensibly unintelligible nonsense, such as any piece of government guidance issued in the last few months.

Speaker 16 Quick update on the latest government guidance on COVID here.

Speaker 5 Interesting fact, apparently, the Department for Education updated its guidance to schools ahead of reopening 41 times in a week, which suggests that they're not entirely on top of things.

Speaker 16 The latest government guidelines on when you're allowed to meet people, two people from one household can meet one person from two other households, or an average of half a person from four households, for a period of time defined as x squared over the square root of 3y over z minutes, where x is a coefficient of how fond they actually are of the other people in the proposed meeting on an inverse exponential sliding scale.

Speaker 16 y is the distance they need to travel and z is a numerical value correlating to the extent of panic befuddlement in the eyes of Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Speaker 16 However, no meeting can take place if any of the parties are currently subject to freshly inked tattoos, hangovers, symptoms of excessive apricot consumption, an earworm of the eight 1980s novelty single Agado by Black Lace and or sympathetic feelings towards global protest movements.

Speaker 16 The participants must breathe in for three seconds each in a strict rotation with a buffer of 1.5 seconds between breaths and out for five seconds whilst facing diametrically away from the person and or persons oppositionally triangulated to them in the social triangle.

Speaker 5 All participants and participantresses, participantresses, why do they need to bring gender into it?

Speaker 5 Must hum in Morse code rather than speak to minimize the transition of the virus as well as the transmitter of ideas, hope, and love.

Speaker 16 Cuddles are allowed, but only of scale model sculptures of the other meetinges or holograms there whom of.

Speaker 16 Any grass stood, sat or slouched upon by the meter-uppers must be instantaneously grazed back to a safe length by a licensed goat in full military-level PPE.

Speaker 16 And rules can only, underlined, be ignored if you are in a position of governmental responsibility.

Speaker 18 So we are all clear now on exactly what we're allowed to do and with whom.

Speaker 31 The US has issued some new guidance, which is basically:

Speaker 31 you're going to die, just get on with it.

Speaker 32 At least it's clear, though. At least you know where you stand.
It's the confusion we have to deal with.

Speaker 11 Was it an anagram?

Speaker 6 No one knows.

Speaker 3 Australia news now.

Speaker 23 So just checking, that's America failed state, UK failed state, Australia touch and go, I'd say.

Speaker 32 Well, the big thing that happened in Australia this week was Scott Morrison was told to move off someone's lawn, wasn't it?

Speaker 29 Did you see that? He was standing on, he was doing some

Speaker 27 press conference.

Speaker 29 The guy came out of his house and said, can you get off my lawn? I've just reseeded it.

Speaker 33 We've all got problems, Tom.

Speaker 21 That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 29 All our countries have problems at the moment.

Speaker 23 Well, the big news in Australia, Andy, is our economy is suffering its first ever recession in nearly three decades as the nation grapples with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and of course the summer's bushfires.

Speaker 23 The country's economy shrank 0.3% in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter. And like all shrinkage, that's very embarrassing.

Speaker 23 So as I've always said, Andy, it's not the size of the economy that matters, it's how you use it. And I've also said that about my tiny, tiny penis.
Now,

Speaker 23 I'm not too worried because we have a wonderful Conservative government here who is dedicated to getting us out of the COVID crisis with a business-led economic recovery, which is one of those phrases that just makes you feel good, like flexible work hours or open mic night.

Speaker 23 I suppose it'll be refreshing to have a business-led recovery after having so many business-led recessions.

Speaker 23 So, I, for one, look forward to seeing Australian tourism ads with Australia, brought to you by Rio Tinto, and Richard Branson turning every single public library in this country into a private prison for the unemployed.

Speaker 23 We're planning on using the fossil fuel industry to help get our economy back on track, which I think is genius.

Speaker 23 What better way to recover from a respiratory illness than by pumping as much poisonous gas into the air as possible?

Speaker 23 F you, China. If Aussies are going to die by coughing, it's going to be because of our own bloody homegrown dicky-die fing Australia incompetence.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 23 You might be worried, Andy, because the Bank of England has warned Britain could be headed for its biggest economic slump in more than 300 years.

Speaker 23 It expects GDP to fall by 14% over 2020, which would be the worst recession since a great frost in 1709, a brutal time when it was so cold many Brits struggled to continue to do slavery.

Speaker 23 Of course, Britain's second worst economic slump came in 2001 when Andy Zaltzmann made his solo comedy debut at the Edinburgh Festival fringe.

Speaker 23 Economists have since studied the financials of the show's season at the fringe and marvelled at how Zaltzman's ticket sales and budgetary pressures managed to slide the entire country into simultaneous recession and inflation and deflation.

Speaker 23 The country managed to bounce back, but Saltzman would go on to suffer through almost two decades of wage stagnation and was forced to impose brutal austerity on both himself and his children.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 23 obviously, I'm worried. I'm only 30 years old, so this is the first ever recession that I've lived through.
You guys have been through recessions in your own failed states in the US and UK.

Speaker 23 Any tips to me at all? How do you get through a recession, Andy?

Speaker 14 What do I do, huh?

Speaker 16 Well, can I just pick you up on that last bit?

Speaker 27 We try to avoid facts on the show as much as possible.

Speaker 28 So, can you just don't bring shit like that on this show again?

Speaker 21 Sorry, man.

Speaker 16 I mean, that was, I mean, to be honest, way too close to the truth.

Speaker 29 So,

Speaker 26 well, I mean, the great thing, you say it's the worst ever recession, but you know, worst, I mean, it's the big, biggest ever.

Speaker 32 Biggest good, isn't it?

Speaker 26 That's what we learn.

Speaker 16 And the thing is, the great thing with having a massive recession, we saw this after the 2008 financial crisis, is that you can then manipulate the growth figures.

Speaker 16 So you can say, ah, we are the fastest growing economy in Europe.

Speaker 29 Yeah, that's only just because you

Speaker 26 the economy into a we are the fastest growing economy in Europe.

Speaker 32 Fastest growing. Fastest growing.

Speaker 32 F you.

Speaker 4 On the subject of Australia, we currently have a wonderful bugle intern, Ross, who has concocted a musical masterpiece about Australia for all future generations to enjoy.

Speaker 3 Starting with you listening now,

Speaker 3 who are more of a current generation, admittedly, but of course, you used to be a future generation and never forget where you've come from. Unleash Ross.
Australia.

Speaker 24 Australia.

Speaker 24 Australia.

Speaker 24 Australia.

Speaker 22 We inherit all our arguments from Britain, Andy.

Speaker 20 Australia, Captain Cook, Australia.

Speaker 1 Captain Cook, Australia. Captain Cook, Australia.

Speaker 20 Captain Cook.

Speaker 24 Australia.

Speaker 20 Captain Cook.

Speaker 24 Australia.

Speaker 20 Captain Cook, Australia, Captain Cook, Australia.

Speaker 24 What a

Speaker 23 face who fully sucks like an absolute dog.

Speaker 20 Australia, Captain Cook, Australia, Dog Captain Cook, Australia, Captain Cook.

Speaker 5 Who uh spent a week or so in Australia then fed off to look for somewhere else.

Speaker 23 Australia, we all hate Mondays.

Speaker 24 Australia, Captain Cook, Australia,

Speaker 20 Captain Cook, Australia, Captain Cook.

Speaker 23 We all hate Mondays.

Speaker 1 Mondays.

Speaker 19 Mondays.

Speaker 23 We all hate Mondays.

Speaker 23 Mondays. Mondays.
We all hate Mondays. Or

Speaker 1 Mondays. Mondays.

Speaker 23 We all hate Mondays.

Speaker 20 Captain Cook.

Speaker 5 Finally, this week, archive time.

Speaker 16 Remember when the prospect of an American president being re-elected wasn't enough to make you run for the Book of Revelations to rifle through the pages, muttering, for f's sake, if not now, then when?

Speaker 11 Well, to help jog your memory, here's the year 2012.

Speaker 1 Top story this week, US presidential election 2012. Vote or sigh.

Speaker 1 Andy, I think that the US presidential election season is actually the perfect way for you to transition from your addiction to the Olympics because they actually have a lot in common, those two events.

Speaker 1 Think about it. The whole thing happens every four years.
It's two people racing each other. After going round and round in circles, one will eventually be declared the winner.

Speaker 1 It's incredibly expensive to put on, and there's just as much corporate involvement that slightly soils the whole event. It's perfect candy.

Speaker 1 It's like a nicotine patch for a debilitating sports addiction.

Speaker 1 And there was a big development this week.

Speaker 1 Mitt Romney finally picked his running mate and he went with Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, a move which seemed to energise the base of the Republican Party, who loved to be energised by conservative picks around this time of year.

Speaker 1 Now some people might say, why the hoopla? It's only the vice president.

Speaker 1 Why is everyone getting excited over a largely ceremonial role well because that is simply no longer the case you are thinking with a pre-year 2000 mentality because it was around that time that dick cheney managed to successfully change his job description into something significantly more powerful than the job he signed up for with cheney the republicans seem to unlock their ideal formula for a presidential ticket a sinister puppet master pulling the strings of a happy-go-lucky wooden boy the the aim for the republicans at the start of any search for a presidential candidate is now to find a nominee who's essentially an empty, amiable husk, just palatable enough to disguise the poisonous substance of their running mates.

Speaker 1 Think about the track record. Bush, Cheney, McCain, Palin, and now Ron Lee Ryan.

Speaker 1 Because Paul Ryan might look like an average Midwestern, good-looking man who was walking down the street when a Brooks Brothers store exploded all over.

Speaker 1 But he wants to end Medicare, has spent the last few years driving John Boehner, the Speaker of the House here, into almost unprecedented levels of obstructionism.

Speaker 1 Now, you might think, why don't Republicans just nominate the person they actually want in the first place? Why didn't they just nominate Paul Ryan if they like him so much?

Speaker 1 Well, because they know that you cannot shoot pure heroin, Andy. It will fing kill you.
You have to cut it with baking soda, and that is what they've done here.

Speaker 30 Well, yes, he I mean, he seems like many Republicans too love the concept of women having all all the possible babies that they may or may not want and of poor people retaining the God-given right to die untreated in the maximum amount of pain.

Speaker 4 So I guess he's appealing clearly to the

Speaker 14 Republican heartlands.

Speaker 1 That's right, Andy, but what you're selling is not something that you can appeal to people with on the top half of your ticket. So that's why this system they found works.

Speaker 1 It's like when you give a dog a pill for worms. It's never going to eat that pill on its own.
The pill is clearly disgusting. So you hide that pill in a bowl of cottage cheese.

Speaker 1 And if the Republicans have their way, Andy, come November, America is going to have cottage cheese all over its face and not realise what it's just eaten.

Speaker 1 The concept is nothing new. Look at the ancient Greeks.
They invented democracy. And when they sacked the city of Troy, they didn't just show up with a bunch of crazy Greeks.

Speaker 1 They put a bunch of crazy Greeks inside an empty wooden horse. What I'm saying is, Romney is that empty wooden horse and Paul Ryan is a bunch of crazy Greeks.

Speaker 30 I don't remember that horse being quite as much of a dick though.

Speaker 1 All right, that is the one flaw in that metaphor, Andy, but that is a fair point. Because then the Trojans would have said, let's get rid of this horse.

Speaker 1 This horse is an arsehole.

Speaker 1 Also, this horse does round in a ludicrous way. It's all stupid classical music.

Speaker 30 This horse does not pay enough taxes.

Speaker 6 That's all for this week's sub-bugle.

Speaker 11 You have heard from Tiff Stevenson, James Nikisei, Helen Zlatzmann, Alice Fraser, Ross the Intern, Nish Kumar, Nato Green, Hari Kondabolu, Tom Ballard and Juan Orivera.

Speaker 12 Time for me to return once again to commune with the comfortingly twistable truths of cricket statistics and to recommend you listen to producer Chris's new series of his Travel Hacker podcast available at all good podcast shops about which he will now tell you everything.

Speaker 13 Chris, wake up.

Speaker 8 This is your moment.

Speaker 10 Until next week, Buglers, goodbye.

Speaker 34 Thanks Andy and hello buglers.

Speaker 34 So, as some of you might know, I make a program with one of the true greats of podcasting, a man called Richie Firth, who believes he can get from A to B better than anybody else.

Speaker 34 Now, you might have noticed that traveling around has become increasingly difficult over the last three, four months. Something's going on, not quite sure.

Speaker 34 Should probably find out a little bit more about that. So, we have decided to

Speaker 34 basically reinvent our show, which is now called Fantasy Travel Hacker.

Speaker 34 Where basically Rich and I get suggestions from members of the global public about ways in which we might make their journeys better.

Speaker 34 It could be a better way to get to the shops, it could be a better way to go over a waterfall, it could be a better way to traverse between two countries without getting any kind of visa.

Speaker 34 So, please do listen. It's Richie Firth Travel Hacker in all good stores, and I'm going to play you a completely out-of-context clip, which may or may not work in this environment.

Speaker 34 Goodbye, you know I love you all except you.

Speaker 35 Well, two hacks down in the first episode of series two of Richie Firth Travel Hacker. Two hacks down, two hacks done.
It's going well. Time for a new feature to season two.

Speaker 36 Oh yes, it's a celebrity hack.

Speaker 25 Celebrity hack, celebrity hack, do do celebrity hack, celebrity hack, do do celebrity hack, celebrity hack, celebrity hack.

Speaker 36 Could you add some reverb and jazzy bits to that, please?

Speaker 19 Sure. Celebrity hack, celebrity hack, do do, celebrity hack, celebrity hack, do do, celebrity hack, celebrity hack, celebrity hack, celebrity, hack,

Speaker 1 celebrity,

Speaker 1 celebrity, do,

Speaker 34 Rich, Rich, wake up.

Speaker 35 Right, it's time for our first ever celebrity hack. It is comedian and podcaster Alice Fraser who brings it to us tonight.
Hello, Alice.

Speaker 37 What's your hack? Hi there, travel hackers. Popular entertainer Alice Fraser here with a request for Richie and Chris.
Hi, Richie and Chris.

Speaker 37 Please tell me the best way to get from Nottingham Castle to Sherwood Forest.

Speaker 37 No reason. Just

Speaker 37 met a guy recently.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 34 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.