Bugle 4133 - Brelectageddon

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, I am Andy Zoltzmann.

This is issue 4133 of The Bugle.

It's Friday, the 13th of December, and I'm here in London, where the UK is aflame with excitement after a truly extraordinary general election result.

The pro-Brexit vote down to 14.8 million, the votes for Remain and referendum supporting parties up to 16.6 million.

The call to end the uncertainties inspired the voters to surely vote a path to the stability of continued membership of the European Union are now unarguable democratic statements.

We have a Prime Minister who recently unseated his predecessor because she was so unelectably hopeless up against one of the least popular, most media vilified opposition leaders in British history, who could only splutter support for his party back up by a hardly moon-bending 1%.

Pathetic, the Liberal Democrats added a spectacular 60% to their votes, the Greens up by over 60% as well as a Youth Come climate quake shook British politics to its foundations.

Now, I must acknowledge that 16.6 million people being in favour of something or not completely against something does not constitute an unarguable divine overwhelming mandate.

When are the people have spoken, etc.

etc.

And I don't expect it to be as simple as just simply not getting Brexit not done.

But after all these cynically manipulated divisions of recent years, surely this election represents a long overdue generational shift towards a more forward-looking, inclusive, open-minded Britain.

Of course, none of that happened, apart from the facts about how people voted.

But this is the bugle we're recording in Britain, where our electoral system is, to be as polite as is appropriate.

Unbelievably f ⁇ ing shit at maths.

So I am Andy's Oltzman, or at least 43% of me is, and that's more than enough.

And joining me to provide some insight explanation.

Already tear swamp shoulders, comfort and or joy at this pre-Christmas time.

Probably more of the former, less of the latter.

Firstly, well, let's begin with a man who, judging from what he said on his previous appearances on the show, is not a huge fan of our now fully entrenched, full-blown Prime Minister, Boris Johnson.

Correct me if I'm wrong, it's Mark Steele.

If

a man like Boris Johnson stood to be leader of the country and across the country he got 35 votes, you'd go, our fing depressing.

and this demon lying incompetent pile of fing fox shit

who so is as somehow even on forget the politics forget the racism any of that just on grounds of sheer utter sociopathic useless destructive incompetence the man can't even turn up to one of his fing interviews on his own election campaign without hiding in a fridge he's just useless you can't have him to be prime minister it makes no more sense than going up to the bloke who stands outside poundland dancing in a circle in his pink fluorescent swimming trunks swinging a bag full of fish heads and a scotch egg and going mate do you want to rewire me electrics it's

mad and it's clear that but so many people go you're going to get brexit done And Brexit is clearly a religion.

There is no utter, there is absolutely no any rational thought.

You could say, he's not going to get Brexit done.

He's only going to get it started.

And it doesn't matter which is going to do that anyway, because you're probably going to die from f ⁇ ing food bank disease or whatever.

Or everything.

He's just...

horrible.

He's going to sell everything to Trump.

It is clear.

He is the most appalling QAbee that's ever lived.

He's got 150 kids.

He doesn't f ⁇ ing take any notice of them, and yet, and yet, yeah, but Brexit does, and that's it.

It's clearly a religion.

It doesn't matter of all the rationality that that doesn't make any sense.

And I expect there will be people now, if you point this out, they'll go, oh, but Brexit moves in mysterious ways.

And somehow we've got to put up with it.

I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, Labour were

useless to lose to that.

I think

when you're a football team, there's a

when you're at a football match and you're supporting your team and a goal from the other side goes in and there's this eerie silence

and then after about 20 seconds everyone starts going that goalkeeper's shit we've got to get rid of him and i think it was like that there was about an hour of just people just staring at walls and things and then going that corby shit we've got to get rid of him

she never bought him

well so uh well you've I think firmly laid your political cards on the table there Mark now at a point this is a Tory party now that's too vile for Esseltine who was one of Thatcher's main ministers John Major Kenneth got you see Kenneth Clark come on now and you think oh it's lovely Kenneth Clark and he comes on well I worked under Margaret Thatcher for many years she was She was quite evil enough to me, really.

But Boris has been ridiculous, really.

No need to be that.

A bunch of a bastard.

Anything, oh, lovely Ken, I'll go and watch some jazz with you.

This is a truly historic day for British comedy.

Mark Steele essentially saying, bring back Thatcher.

Yes.

Yes.

Thought we'd never see the day.

Also joining us to provide some perspective from around the world,

from two countries that, of course, would not dream of electing leaders with a bit of a penchant for expedient social provocation.

From India and Australia.

Anubab Powell and Alice Fraser.

Hello.

Welcome.

Anubab,

you flew in yesterday to see all this,

not specifically in order to see this at all.

You flew in and this then unfolded.

So you're to blame.

I am.

I am.

You know, this...

had to be seen in person.

I was quite taken by the phrase, let's get Brexit done.

Right.

Because I didn't think that that phrase made any sense.

But to have a whole nation fall for it, it makes me think everything should be changed to let's get X done.

In fact, I was thinking if this podcast, instead of its tagline being an audio newspaper for the visual world, was called, let's get this podcast done,

do you think the number of listeners would go up?

Yeah, it's

simple messaging, isn't it?

Definitely.

Personally,

I've had enough of oversimplistic slogans, and I'd like to launch my own slogan which is end over simplistic slogans.

I'll be chanting that on street corners for the rest of my life.

And then can you go in the question time audience and whenever someone says, well, I think that the economics of this just end over simplistic slogans.

I'm very happy to be here.

I flared my country, which is on fire.

Our own Prime Minister, in response to the fact that we are on fire, has decided to push very hard for a bill about religious freedom,

presumably so we all know that we are allowed to pray to whatever gods we want as our houses go up in flames, and then to come here and have such certainty from the people, a landslide victory for the Tories, so we can all

be really happy that we can all agree on these fundamental principles that wealth means health,

might means right, and Brexit means Brexit.

This idea that we can get Brexit done I find reassuring because it gives me some sort of a fixed point in the up until now very ephemeral ontology of what Brexit actually is, other than an amorphous cloud of sort of vaguely associated ideals, mainly to do with getting away from the present and back into the past.

I think Boris Johnson is the perfect person to get this done.

He's the only one with practice from walking away from his responsibilities to a complex ecosystem, right?

He's abandoned so many children, he shouldn't find it hard to walk an entire nation away from its support network.

And I'm excited to see what Scotland does next.

Right.

I mean, that is

an interesting angle on this.

Well, because Scotland's very anti, so Brexit isn't really Britain exit, it's England exit, so it should just be called exit, or maybe Wales as well, so it should be called Wanksit.

Right.

But

well, this is this is the thing with Brexit.

It has revealed certain things about the United Kingdom that a lot of people, certainly in England, didn't know, which was, for example,

that it wasn't just England.

I think we just assumed that when the Empire ended, all the bits fell off.

Not just the bits a long way away, but just everything.

So it's been.

I think they might just reactivate Hadrian's Wall.

I think that is.

Well,

they're going to ask fairly quickly for a referendum on leaving.

Boris Johnson is adamant he's not going to give them.

one.

I just wonder, I mean, you can help with this, but is there any sort of examples in history of when a country wants to leave the country that it's part of and doesn't want to be part of it?

And the mother country says, no, we're not going to let you leave, even if you...

Does that ever cause any problems?

Well, from the last 250 years, I can't think of an example, Mark, where this may have happened between two countries.

I wonder.

I mean, that's very cynical, of course.

I mean, because we're Britain, we're one of the great nations of the world.

We learn from our mistakes.

And, you know, at some point, we're going to get it right.

Well, as two British men sitting in a room with two of the reminders of your colonial past,

I mean, you don't so much learn from your mistakes as have them come back and hijack your podcast.

I think we've got food, it's great.

Well, I come from a country where we're choking on the smoke of our own mistakes.

I'm genuinely impressed by a man who has the courage to appear as incompetent as he actually is.

It's pleasing honesty.

Yeah, yeah.

And also, Bach, to answer, you know, it's weird how history turns out because, you know, right now, Mahatma Gandhi is still probably somewhere in the British Parliament demanding independence.

But last week,

Hindus for Boris group released a video where they took a Hindu religious devotional song, replaced Lord Vishnu with Boris Johnson,

and superimposed images of just Mr.

Johnson just shaking hands with people in turbans.

Chris, can we get a snippet of this?

I think the same people did one for Zach Goldsmith a few years ago for the London Mayor Alert.

I think we might even have talked about it on the bugle.

I mean, what do Hindus think Boris Johnson is a reincarnation of?

Well, I have a couple of lines.

I don't want to know the answer to this.

A couple of lines of lyrics suggest that he is very close to God.

And the other thing it says is he'll get everything done.

Everything done.

Yeah.

And what they said about Jeremy Corbyn, and some things don't translate correctly in Hindi, is that he has a face on his face.

Right?

So I guess they wanted to say two-faced, but the right phrases did not exist in the Dev Nagree script.

Oh, no, I know exactly what that feels like when you're jet-lagged and it feels like your face is sort of detached from your face, and you're like, is this a smile?

I think that's a.

That's probably how Corbyn feels at all times, just constantly trying to live up to his own expectations of.

Yeah, yeah, yes.

does

does this feel like a version of modi then

well you know um

modi is i think a couple of steps ahead uh in that i think to build a totalitarian like we they just passed a bill in india that said that india would take in refugees as long as they were not muslim refugees So a country that's supposed to be secular, or the country Gandhi fought for, they just passed a bill that says you could come from anywhere.

You could be Norwegian, you could be Sikh.

If you are from a Muslim country, we can't take you in.

And then Modi came out and said, This has nothing to do with religion.

We're just surrounded by a bunch of strange countries.

Well, I heard someone justifying so that the law was that minorities can't be

refused.

And they were sort of using this to say, well, they're coming from Muslim countries where they're not

a minority.

Correct, correct.

Right.

I mean, that's some kind of bullshit sophistry going on there, isn't it?

I mean, are they then appealing for a huge amount?

I mean, what if you are, say, a gay Muslim?

Would you then be allowed in?

No,

I think his point is that because Bangladesh and Pakistan, where the refugees come from, who are probably fleeing certain human rights abuses, are coming into India, because they happen to be from Muslim countries,

they can't.

It's a whole different matter that India is the second largest Muslim country in the world.

I love the delicacy of your phrasing.

Certain human rights abuses makes it sound like a tea party.

That's going to be a cracking racism against Muslim Olympics with Trump, Modi, and Johnson, isn't there?

Well, bring sport into it.

I'm on side.

It was a rather dramatic night.

And

at the start of the BBC's coverage at 10 o'clock, they flashed up on the side of the BBC building,

just I think above the statue made by the notorious paedophile Eric Gill that the BBC's chosen not to remove, despite you know the fact that it's a man holding a child from behind, it's a deeply creepy.

It's a naked child as well, that's not a naked child.

We don't know if the man's naked because he's holding the child's head in front of his penis.

But you know,

it's anyway, but anyway, the BBC's not got around to that.

But they did get around to putting on the front of the building a huge great

sign saying

Con368,

which I'd assume was just a latest leaderboard of the amount of lies told in the Tory company.

But it was in fact the projected number of seats they were

going to get.

It was disastrous, Mark, from Jeremy Corbyn's point of view, his cunning electoral plan of not having any plan on the defining battleground of our times with a side order in failing as elementary grade one anti-anti-semitism practical coursework

didn't go as well as it could have done.

Well, for about a year and a half, you know, because it's very important, obviously, with your main policy that it's simple.

And that's why when the Liberals had

scraped bollocks to Brexit, and Boris Johnson, of course, had get Brexit done,

and Corbyn had

we will support a second referendum on the establishment of an anti-referendum in the customs union, as long as there is no customs union.

If the ball pitches outside off stump, the batsman isn't playing a shot.

And I think that was,

can't see what was wrong with that.

I think there seemed for about a year,

Labour seemed to have, the Brexit policy seemed to have

caused two factions

with regard to the Brexit policy in the Labour Party, one of which was angry about it and the other was bewildered about it.

Everyone was one of them two.

Either, what's she on about?

Or...

What's she on about?

I feel like the Left has a lesson to learn from this, which is that people will prefer even a shitty strong statement as long as it's strongly and affirmatively stated enough rather than an infinitely recursive series of footnotes and exceptions.

It's hard to vote for the EU.

Like if Cameron, instead of mucking about, he's probably still have got through all that if he just was known for going, I fed a pig.

Yeah, I fucked a pig, I'll do it again.

But that's something to vote for.

Either you support that, or you don't.

You know, with Make America Great Again,

I was doing a little bit of research

on phrases used in election campaigns and you bring this up Mark.

I fed a pig.

India, that's a good word.

But it's definitive.

You know, India had an election in the last May when Modi won overwhelming majority.

One of the candidates in the state of Bihar was running against a guy who was charged with murder.

And he ran away in the middle of the campaign.

So the other guy campaigned on the catchphrase, I'm still here.

But you know what you're voting for.

The guy's still there.

The The other guy ran away.

So people...

Yeah, he should have stood his ground and his slogan should have been, yeah, I'm a murderer, so what?

That's a good line.

So you know what you're voting for.

I've killed, I'll do it again.

Yeah, I'm prepared.

Yeah,

we want a tough leader, don't we?

Yeah.

Don't one of these people who

shies away from murder.

The exit poll wasn't exactly right.

The Conservatives look like they've ended up on 364 seats, which is

really irritating, isn't it?

356.

Well, because that's 364 is the highest score by an England player in Test cricket.

That number is

tainted.

Tainted.

That's Len Hunt and the Oval in 38, of course.

It's awful.

Turnout was down a little to 67%

in the 80 years between 1920 and the end of the millennium.

It never dropped below 70%.

But the weather was a bit wet.

And that may have slightly suppressed turnout.

So I hope people remember that.

Actually, the weather during the Battle of Britain was quite sunny.

So, those pilots don't really understand how difficult it is to get to a polling station in some drizzle.

So, let's try to keep these things in

perspective.

And it was clearly that, you know, Brexit was the defining issue.

Whatever you think of Brexit, whether you think it's a heroic break for freedom, casting off the shackles, reminiscent of when my friend Mike broke free from the shackles of his own house and sofa and went to the pub for a pint.

Or whether you think it's the 21st century equivalent of Joan of Arc jumping into the fire shouting, I love barbecues and my toes look like sausages.

Who knows?

But the mathematics of it are really baffling.

That here we are, that if you add up the Conservative vote and

the Brexit Party vote and the DUP vote in Northern Ireland, it comes to

about 14.8 million, like I said.

If you add up Labour calling for a second referendum, there's clearly splits within the Labour Party, but then add the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the other parties calling for either Brexit or a second referendum.

That is 16.5

million.

And yet, the effect of this is an overwhelming mandate for Brexit.

Our electoral system is utterly insane.

Yeah, I don't understand the first past-the-post thing at all.

Well, as I think I've said before, it's a very good system for deciding horse races, less good for deciding elections.

yes

yes you wouldn't have proportional representation horse racing

it made no sense well the guy came ninth he ran

he ran 1.7 furlongs as opposed to the two furlongs of the other guy in the same time so he should still get one twelfth of the prize well it's so it essentially came out of tactical voting didn't it that that

one side did it you know it was slightly easier i guess there were fewer options but you know the brex brexit party were polling over 10 percent um at the end of october and they went down to under three percent in the election so the brexit vote went to the conservatives and the remain vote was diffused and uh you know there were columnist marina hyde said uh about i read about nine months ago uh in one of her columns she said i think what we'll all end up saying is like football supporters when your team's lost and you go their side wanted it more than ours.

And I think that's what's happened.

Paul Mason, the left-wing writer, wrote in the aftermath of the election result: We're facing what Hannah Arendt called the temporary alliance of the elite and the mob.

The only answer to it is an alliance of the left and centre.

Now, if only that need for an alliance of the left and centre had been blindingly fing obvious months ago,

you might have been able to at least mitigate something.

Well, you say that.

I had, with a woman who was a Green MEP who stood, I think we were talking about this, weren't we?

Yeah.

In Stroud.

And I'm a big fan of the Green Party.

But this woman was standing in an area where the Labour Party won last time by, I think, 300 votes.

And she said, she's a big, high-profile Green person.

I'm going to stand in this area.

And I just wrote a little thing to her.

And I said, what are you doing?

This is really close.

And Labour are committed to a second referendum yes but he doesn't support remain no but the Tory gets in they're just going to get Brexit done I know you have to look in the small print of what they say at the bottom of fucking it down

oh you're just gonna and she she wrote to me she wrote to me but Labour can't win on their own here

And I thought, well, are you under the impression they're going to add your votes and the Labour vote together, you f ⁇ ing great f ⁇ ing ecological f I would like to contextualize this outburst Mark Steele got to these studios an hour early and had a nap

I feel like you were storing up all your energy like a coil screen honestly honestly it and guess what exactly your point Andy guess what the Labour candidate lost by a thousand and she got fifteen hundred votes

so the Tory won so I guess I bet it comes down to that old phrase you know you know shutting the stable whore off.

Shutting the stable door off the horse has bolted.

There's no point.

Shutting the stable whore is pretty good too.

There's no point.

Take a look at your work.

You have a whore that lives in the stable.

We're very kind to her.

We give her new hay every day.

No time for a Jacob Reese Mog impressions now.

But I guess the point is there's no point shutting the stable door if you can't agree what type of lock to fit to it.

You need to leave the door open, brandish your lock towards the horse and say to the horse, Can you please stay where you are?

That's the way to do it.

But to Mark's point, you know,

these are the times where corruption really helps.

Here's a little lesson from defecting members of parliament in India.

Like when you have a seat that you know is divisive, what one party does is first they try to bribe the other person not to stand with stuff like a refrigerator, a car.

Sometimes when that doesn't work out.

I mean that wouldn't work for Boris Johnson.

He loves a fridge.

Yeah, he likes being inside.

It wouldn't have worked for the Green Party woman though, would it?

Yeah, like a friend.

A car.

You could get a range of options.

Could be a voucher, could be anything.

And when that

doesn't work out, sometimes what happens, and again, this is why we are in advanced democracy because we've thought through some of these things.

They actually sometimes lock members of parliament, legislative assembly people in a hotel, in a five-star hotel, with food and drink till they change their opinion.

This is happening

recently in the Karnataka elections, there was a threat of 150 defecting members of Legislative Assembly.

They were going to switch parties for ethics or whatever other reason.

And they locked, they physically did not let them leave a five-star hotel.

And they just basically bribed them till they remained with the party they were with.

I mean, that's a great kind of bribe, bribe/slash threat combo.

Yeah.

And free food and drink flowing.

Well, in this country, what they prefer to do is to do their bribery in a sort of a roundabout way by buying bots on Twitter.

Much more honourable that way, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

Just manipulate those streams of information to particular demographics until they fold to your view of reality.

So you don't need, I've probably said this on the Boogie, you don't really need to bother with

electoral corruption in this country because the voting system pretty much does it all for you.

And

no one needs to suffer through a five-star hotel, most importantly.

Would you not, though, just stay?

Because couldn't you just go, I'm going to stand in this constituency and split the vote in the hope that then, you know, oh, I reckon I'm going to get a new lawnmower out of this.

Many do.

Yeah, many.

Corbyn's campaign, I think, can be safely compared to Captain Scott turning up in Antarctica with nothing but 40 crates of beer, some ping pong bats and a karaoke machine.

He would probably have lost anyway, but he definitely did not give himself the best chance.

Oats would have gone for a longer walk earlier.

He lost 2.6 million votes compared with the election two years ago,

ended up with 10.3 million votes, which is still more than Tony Blair got in his third successful election in some more curious mathematics.

Boris Johnson managed to get the Conservatives up from Theresa May's disastrous showing up by, as I said, 1%.

Oh, it's baffling.

It feels that is genuinely, I still don't understand it.

I need to buy a calculator for the nation and pay more attention in math class.

Mark Francois, one of the great heroes of

recent British politics,

he said a number of things in, I think it was on the BBC coverage.

We've got what we want.

We're leaving the EU.

Now, remember, folks, this was a general election.

A general, general, general elect a general election.

A general election that affects everything.

It's not a referendum on one thing.

It's the general election.

But he also said this.

This was

possibly the highlight of all the coverage.

He compared the fall of the Berlin Wall to the fall of what is described as Labour's Red Wall, that string of seats across the north and midlands of England.

So he was saying that was alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall.

There's a few key differences.

So at last, the Tories in the north can be reunited with the families of the Tories in the south.

I haven't seen my sister for 32 years because she lives the other side at war.

And the trains are shit.

But there are certain key differences between the Berlin Wall and Labour's Red Wall.

Trying to get across it.

The Labour's Red Wall, you need to take the M six or the M1 or, as you say, a dodgy train line.

And the traffic can be really quite annoying at times with some roadworks versus fully armed East German soldiers shooting you to ribbons.

Almost indistinguishable, I guess, between those two walls.

We have to dig tunnel under Odysphere.

And almost also, also very importantly, David Hasselhoff is much less interested in

the Berlin Wall, built by a powerful empire of murderous autocratic pseudo-socialist despotism.

Labour's Red Wall voted in in elections over many years.

Potato potato, I guess.

Sorry, not potato-potato.

I meant radioactive flesh-eating robot wolf with claws coated in rabies potato.

The Berlin Wall.

No one says potato.

I hate that session.

Subsequently.

Subsequently.

Potato, potato.

Yeah, just look at the results in the paper.

The Berlin Wall became a universal symbol of hope for a better future, free from oppression, and also a major world tourist destination.

The Labour Red Wall contains Darlington.

So

significant differences between

the two.

Daniel Hanan,

another the

art pro-Brexit camp Tory MEP, says, issued this tweet after the result became clear.

Seriously, Romainers, did you think 17.4 million of us didn't mean it, that it was some sort of joke?

Now, without wishing to speak on behalf of all Romainers, or indeed the not sures, not old enoughs, other not-alloweds, and not born yet, all of whom will be affected.

I say the answers to that were no, and obviously f ⁇ ing not.

I don't think anyone thought

that the Brexit vote didn't mean it.

And it definitely, I mean, I know a shit joke, and that was not a joke.

I could tell when something is just a joke that's not working.

Oh, you mean it?

Do we all do that?

I think I'm relatively moderate in most things, but I do think anyone who ever uses the word 17.4 million again should be put in a rocket launcher and fired at Mars with a parachute and an oxygen mask.

I'm not a total animal.

That's 17.4 million miles an hour.

So, I mean, what conclusions can we draw about Britain and?

I mean, essentially, we love lies,

we're quite happy to be lied to, and we will buy into those lies.

And I guess, you know, we're a Christian company.

Yeah, yeah oh he always tells lies yeah but you know but he says what he means so i'll vote for him

he says what he's pretending he means which is as good as the same isn't it

well i i've been following boris johnson for the last couple of months on instagram that's why he didn't afraid yeah it's a good reason and i've come i've come to the conclusion that if you're seen doing things in modern politics physically doing things so i he was he was picking up fish he picked up a pig once you know he he was carrying crates of things.

Yeah, driving footlift trucks.

Worked for Tony Abbott ate an onion.

Yeah.

Didn't he eat an onion twice in a week?

Yes.

Took two raw onions on television.

Yes.

He was just being polite.

You can't compete with that.

No one can compete with that.

I mean, that is a man who will, I mean.

I mean, that's proper.

But what won't he do?

Yeah.

Exactly.

You know, it's just putting things in your mouth looks like something than just waving at things and saying that you'll think about another referendum.

You know, Prime Minister Modi

was seen with a cow, was seen on a scooter, was seen on an aircraft fighter.

He wasn't doing it.

He was just on these things,

doing things.

And I think that is far more important in a democracy now than policies.

That's how Instagram works.

Yeah,

thank you, Alice.

You become an influencer by being doing, you know,

sitting on a couch.

visibly.

Yeah.

Henry VIII pretty much did nothing apart from wear massive trousers.

Yeah.

Worked for him.

Didn't you have to pose for all those things?

Everybody stood to the king.

Someone was always painting him.

Oh, look at him.

Painterazzi.

Eating a chicken.

Beheading a wife.

He's always doing something.

She

kept him in the papers, though, didn't he?

People knew where they stood with him.

I have a quick question

because I'm new to this country's election coverage.

Yesterday on the BBC, and I know that election coverage has changed a lot with technology.

So in Obama's election, I remember the big CNN thing was being able to do touchscreen to go into a state and have it expand.

Yes.

And then you just had just, you know, election experts just playing with the state, you know, just throwing.

Well, they'd go into each sort of area, wouldn't they?

Yes.

The guy go, hey, let's have a look at this little bit of Wisconsin here.

And then they go like that and they go, now this is Fourth Avenue in Wichita.

And, you know,

Mrs.

johnson there and then she yes

what's that accent

wisconsin accent

specifically wisconsin

but that's right they would they would call me for not knowing the exact bloody dialect of people inside town in wisconsin

but mark was going there he had zoomed in on the house

sorry sorry i'm sorry i interrupted you your perfect accent oh i didn't mean to offend you i'm sure it wasn't perfect

it was glorious.

It was Kentucky.

But they could go down, you know, at least there was the appearance, again, of doing things.

You know, they would just go into a house and stuff.

Yesterday, on the BBC, outside your main BBC studios, they decided to go analog.

And Andy, you were talking about this.

They didn't do technology.

They had a huge puzzle.

A f off-grade jigsaw, basically.

Oh, yes.

And they were moving hexagon pieces from red to blue.

And, you know, I didn't know what the red wall was, but at the time it looked like a necklace, and they kept moving it around physically, which was a lot of work for the lady through the night.

Yeah,

like the worst game of risk ever.

Yes, yes, it was, wasn't it?

Yes, I think that's quite a good summary of this election, actually.

Um, I didn't actually see any of it because um,

I was in a sort of uh Labour Party office,

so there was this sort of silence from

10.01 to 10.03,

and then everyone went and sat on a chair after the first time anyone spoke was about 143.

It's like a pinterplay.

It was like a pinta play

if only they'd done that during the campaign.

Just

three hours and forty minutes of silence would have gone better, I think, than Corbyn talking.

I mean let's try now

to I mean it's it's easy to be very negative on our side of the political seesaw.

And there's various apocalyptic suggestions about the impact of five five years of Johnson government, reduced civil liberties, attacks on democratic institutions, hostility towards, shall we say, the insufficiently British.

There will, of course, also be a tsunami of online bile and newspaper fury.

But let's clutch at some very flimsy straws here and try to slurp on the definitely on the turn borderline cheesy milk of optimism.

Boris Johnson essentially doesn't give a shit about anything and

is, you know, know, he's nothing if not an unprincipled chancellor who will do anything to further his own career.

Furthermore, he's no longer, because he's got a decent majority, no longer tied to the total raging, hard stonking Brexit boner lunatics within his party.

So given that he has essentially a moral vacuum style of politics based on opportunism, is it possible that this could be harnessed?

That his his power base is, you know, seats that were generally Labour, so it's a very kind of shallow,

volatile

support.

I mean, because a lot of people are saying, oh, this means I'll definitely win the next election.

That kind of majority has not been overturned before.

Do you have any shred of optimism, Mark?

Yeah, I do, because the,

although I think it,

in, in the South, in the South, the results were

amazing, really.

If you hadn't, if they hadn't happened, like, like, for Labour to win Canterbury is extraordinary and that it's never ever happened up until the last time so there's bits of the south you know like winning Battersea back again I know they'd already got Battersea but there's all sorts of they took Putney so there's bits there's there's there's probably a dozen results that if you just saw them and nothing else you'd think Labour must have a majority from that but it's just uh so I think we'll be we're becoming upside down aren't we it's like in the 80s people in the north would go oh it's right right for you down south, all you Tories, you don't know about us up here.

And it's the opposite of that.

Now we'll have sort of all website designers and coffee shop people going, You haven't got a clue about us, all you Tories in Dudley and Wolverhampton and Bishop Auckland and Sundown and Stockton.

You don't know what it's like doing a podcast.

Yeah, you don't know actually.

You don't know what it's like having to put a different letter every couple of minutes on the top of a frothy bit of coffee.

You haven't got a clue.

You've never been confronted with a deconstructed latte, you

exactly.

Did you resign?

What do you think?

Corbyn.

Yeah.

In the next couple of days?

Well, I mean, you'd assume so, but

he did say that he's going to stick around for a period of reassessment, I think.

Reflection.

Reflection.

Reflection.

He did say he didn't want to lead the next general election, but that gives him, what, five years to quit?

Yeah, and what after that, he could be back for.

I feel a period of reflection isn't useful if you have the face of a Medusa.

But Mark Rees is an ipsy.

Yes, but I mean, again, this comes back to the point.

Again, I've probably made this before on the bugle.

Jeremy Corbyn was the wrong leader of the Labour Party.

The right leader of the Labour Party was the idea of Jeremy Corbyn.

Just the vague concept.

And the Conservatives have that the idea of Boris Johnson as their leader, because there is essentially no real Boris Johnson.

No.

And they've been outmaneuvered.

Shall we move on to non-election stories?

Well Alice, I mean I wish you'd said that half an hour ago.

I think I would be in a much better mood.

Yes, now let's move on to non-election stories and don't forget to follow the Bugle for the next five years for world exclusive coverage on the Johnson reign.

You are the Bugle's bird life correspondent.

What have you got for us?

Yes, Andy, in bird life news now, there's been so many bird things that have been happening.

I think it's very exciting.

In America, there is scandal coming up around a new pigeon fashion statement.

A charity has come forward as concerned after a series of pictures appeared on the internet of pigeons wearing tiny cowboy hats in Las Vegas.

Bloodied stories.

Assuming that they had had a great win on the tables and were showing off their newfound wealth by wearing these little hats, people were taking pictures of the adorable birds and putting them online.

But this charity has come forward and said it's probably not good for pigeons to be wearing tiny, tiny cowboy hats.

I wonder why there's so many pigeons in Vegas.

I assume it's just because they've heard it's a very seedy place.

Autopili Baccarat.

I'm here all week.

That's not strictly true.

Next week, I'm at the Soho Theatre from Monday.

Running to the 8th of January.

Tickets online.

Also, in a rectification of historical wrongs, Jimi Hendrix has been cleared of blame for the release of parakeets in the UK.

Oh yes, there's an ongoing rumour that Jimi Hendrix.

I'm going to stop you there because

there have been some combinations of words in recent weeks that we never thought we'd hear, including this week, Prime Minister hides in fridge.

But Jimi Hendrix cleared of blame for release of parakeet.

So Andy, I'm surprised you don't know this as someone who lives in South London.

Well, there are a lot of parakeets, but I'd never thought.

I

assume they were more of an eric claplin thing so it's jimi hendrix so well this is the thing there's been a rumour swirling for years that uh because jimi hendrix released some uh a pair of parakeets in carnaby street in the 60s right that he was the cause of parakeets in britain oh i see

all minorities are always blamed for large-scale problems it's not like elvis faking his own death

official well we need a jimi hendrix rumour as well oh he'd let well no he did release two parakeets but uh parakeets were they were not exactly the Adam and Eve of all parakeet presence in Britain.

There is one other, could you mind if I sort of interject, but there is one other rumour as well, which I think is even more glorious, which is that when the African Queen was being filmed at Shepperton Studios, they used parakeets and some of them escaped

because they were trying to make it look like the jungle and some of them escaped from the studios.

And that was that is another rumour.

no apparently there have been parakeets in the uk since the 1860s and there was large-scale intentional releases in about the 1930s and also in 1952 too with this recurring what's been called parrot fever where people were trying to seed parakeets across across the united kingdom well i mean because i i'm pleased that it's not hendrix's fault because i love love jimi hendricks but my appreciation of his music was significantly diminished by the sense that he'd introduced foreign gene pool to our British bird species in an effort to turn British British pigeons green.

So I'm glad he's off the hook for that.

That's better to turn them green.

Fred brought in the red squirrel.

Well, there are other accusations,

but some people claim that

the Carnaby Street story is bullshit, that actually he just played a guitar solo of such unfathomable genius that a parrot spontaneously birthed from his.

But also, Shakespeare is responsible for the badger when he made a dog f a rock.

That must be historically accurate.

Don't believe everything David Attenborough says.

I will continue to do so until he dies.

He will never die.

Oh, remember when David Attenborough wasn't an endangered species?

Remember when nostalgia was good and not all about Nazis?

It would be entirely within the character of people like Hendrix to release

parakeets.

Eric Clapton, of course, released a bucket of carp into the Mississippi on tour of the million, which ate through the entire local population of river eels.

Joe Satriani was responsible for an infestation of wombats in Tokyo, released accidentally after a spectacular show-stopping finale to his little-known album track, Furry Frank, the Combat Wombat, that went disaster.

And his fellow axeman Peter Frampton's attempt to prove that worms were, in fact, baby snakes, led to an extremely distressing snake scapade involving a pair of Randy Boer constrictors having a vigorous snake rumpy on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Interesting

Hendrix facts, of course,

famous for various songs, Purple Haze, which is a song about a rare breed of Taiwanese puffins,

the pro-coffee anthem Hey Joe, and voodoo child, which is often mispronounced.

How is it literally pronounced?

Because it's spelt C-H-I-L-E, isn't it?

But it's actually pronounced chili.

Because

he had a magic globe and once spilt a glass of water on chili and it broke a 30-year drought in the Atacama Desert.

That's a fact.

I found myself in the world.

Unacceptable level of bullshit.

To be honest.

You say that.

Unacceptable level of bullshit.

That is the gold standard for success in this country now.

Mexico has been turned on its head with protesters storming the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City on Tuesday because of a painting of Emiliano Zapata.

on a horse with an erection.

The horse has the erection.

He's nude.

He's wearing high heels and a hat.

And people have been

more enraged about this piece of art, fine art, than I think anyone in the UK has ever cared about art at all.

They've been, they want the painting to be burned.

It shows Zapata in this high heels, pink hat, naked on an aroused horse, and his grandson is furious.

He says, for us as relatives, this denigrates the figure of our general, depicting him as gay, which I feel like is a stretch.

Just because he's nude on an aroused horse, that doesn't say anything about his sexuality, maybe about his sexual preferences.

Or, you know, just the fact that

he was an adaptable man.

Clearly, he found himself in a situation where he needed to escape from somewhere naked and was not hidebound by social convention and escaped on an aroused horse.

Yeah, and no one's objecting to the aroused horse.

I think they're just objecting to the...

What about I bet the aroused horse's grandchildren are furious

casting aspersions upon the aroused horses.

Maybe they're proud.

I mean, what horse wouldn't pop a boner if they've got a famous general on their back?

Yeah, yeah.

And also in the revolution.

You know what?

Was that a rhetorical question?

It was.

All right, okay.

Was it?

Multiple choice.

We don't know also that the work of art was, in fact, a Zapata.

It could well have been the England cricketer Graham Gooch, who

one of his nicknames was Zap.

in his early career, due to his similarity with Zapata.

That is a genuine fact.

You've had a go at me for telling lies.

How about a bit of praise for a bit of fact?

I will never, never give you praise for fact, Annie.

No, well done you.

I'm just surprised that it's seen as insulting because in a revolution an element of surprise is key.

Yeah.

And what's more surprising than showing up to the Main Palace nude on an erect horse?

Yes.

I mean, and it's a very, I mean, the pain that horse is, I mean, really

extremely

interestingly, every appearance by Putin on a horse has been an attempt to recreate this photograph.

But I don't recall Putin ever making a horse aroused, which suggests that he's not as good as a body.

Insufficiently masculine, yeah, sure.

Well, take that, Vlad.

Marlon Brando played him in a film, didn't he?

Gooch.

Yes.

He was called Gooch.

Well, I mean, the Gooch is very

relevant in this painting.

I mean, if you're riding a horse while naked, the bull's been swinging outside the half-stone.

Oh, that's one of the highlights of my year.

This is disintegrating rapidly.

Again, an entirely appropriate phrase for today.

January,

a quick bit of other universe news.

Well, I've got one that I think,

you know, because we've talked about Boris Johnson impersonating a prime minister and just nobody knows knows who he is and etc.

playing various parts.

An Indian man has been impersonating a Lufthansa pilot for about

an Indian man who is not a pilot has been going to airports dressed as a Lufthansa pilot for five and a half years and flying on different commercial planes.

And all he's had is just a pilot's outfit.

And

finally Lufthansa caught on and said this is a fake badge.

This is just something from a fancy dress place.

And he said, yes.

But for five years, this gentleman has traveled the world just dressed as a pilot.

That gives me absolute hope that Boris Johnson will successfully be able to lead the Conservative Party.

You just have to dress the part and do the part.

But

how do you get through security in it?

So he had, you know, when you look like a pilot, apparently Indian airports just let you pass.

And he had the hat and he had the thing and he had a fake badge made.

And the badge was really fake because it just said pilot on it

with no further details.

And it took Luftza and everybody else about five years to catch it up, but he'd seen the whole world in that time.

And presumably become quite a good pilot as well.

And he'd just get on planes.

Yeah, yeah.

But they got always a pilot,

yeah.

And he just dressed as a pilot.

And I think that's a nice...

Wouldn't he go in the cockpit then?

Sometimes I think they let him.

But most of the time, he traveled first class.

And

there was always an empty seat.

And he was just because he looked the part, which I think is quite relevant in the modern world.

He's a one-man metaphor for 21st century politics.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, Mark, earlier you brought up how the world was in the future going to be divided into sort of conservative shipbuilders and,

you know, liberal meme makers and so on.

But you have to dress the part.

You know, in in my head, shipbuilder has to like you know look like a shipbuilder and the meme maker has to have a coffee in his hand and tight pants and a and a long beard that's carefully groomed so this guy he's way ahead of time he he got himself a pilot's outfit and a thing and confidence he said how did they say how do you cheat so many people he said the main thing is you have to walk in and look the person in the eye at the airport and say pilot

well if there's a message from this week's show it is that lying works and for f's sake practice it.

That said, there will be no lies about our voluntary subscribers at the end of this week's show.

This is in honour of all the lies that have been told during the election campaign.

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

Thanks very much for coming in on

what I know is a difficult day for you in particular, Mark, and indeed

Christmas in general.

This day just means that the whole of my life's been a failure.

That's all I've got.

Nothing

Most people's lives have been a failure.

At least you've got a reason to point to.

Thank you.

Positive note to end on.

Alice, thanks very much.

You can see Alice alongside me in the Certifiable History at Soho Theatre.

Also doing a show, Savage from the 2nd to the 4th.

You can double up, in fact.

You can go to my show at 7.30, Spotted Dinner, and then Alice's at 10.15.

It's the 2nd and 4th of January, renowned for being the time of year in which people least want to see comedy.

So do come out.

Come to two comedy shows in the evening.

Mark, have you got any tour shows coming up?

No.

Oh, there we go.

I have, actually, I think it's starting in February, but I don't know

where it is.

Just wander about, you'll find me.

That's how I think about my whole life, I think.

And if I have any.

I'm back in April, so I'm starting a small run of the Edinburgh Shore Democracy and Disco Dancing at Soho Theatre 27th April, which unfortunately happens to be my birthday, but it's a good way to spend it.

Mine's the 7th of January.

Well, I mean, you've just dropped that in a few weeks out to try and haul it up.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Buy me presents.

Birthdays have been cancelled.

Buddhist, not an idiot.

Now, that is an election campaign.

That'll let you through airports if you just had that t-shirt.

Thank you for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back next week with the final full bugle of the year.

Thank you for listening.

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.