Bugle 4119 - Evil but competent

The Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

Hello Buglers and welcome to issue 4119 of the Bugle Audio Newspaper for a Visual World.

That is Friday the 30th of August.

This is the Bugle for the week beginning Monday the 2nd of September 2019.

I'm Andy Zoltzmann back in London, the city where where a thousand years ago today, not a lot was going on.

Really?

A bit of this, bit of that.

Now they're totally different.

Arguably too much.

If only we'd find some kind of middle ground between those two.

Joining me today, all the way from Australia, Alice Fraser, and all the way from the 1980s, Mark Steele.

Hello, Andy.

Hello.

Well, the 80s seem like

quite a sort of little idyllic little...

little reservoir of calm to go back to, don't they?

You're changing your opinion on Thatcher, Mark.

Oh.

She was a sweetheart compared to this.

She'd be leading it now, wouldn't she?

She wouldn't be dithering about.

Technically, I'm also from the 80s.

Yeah.

And some of the comedy I was doing back then was...

Well, I think it's reasonable to say Thatcher was evil, but at least she was competent.

Yes.

Yeah,

is that a better combination?

At least the coal trains ran on time.

We are recording on the 30th of August, more on the issues we've tangentially touched on there shortly.

On the 30th of August in 1963, the Moscow-Washington hotline opened, a phone line between the leaders of the USA and the Soviet Union.

Like so many things, it was a state-run utility then, now just a privatised phone line.

I suppose things do change.

On the 31st of August, 1897, Thomas Edison patented the kinetoscope, which was the world's first movie projector.

I think.

I should have f ⁇ ing checked that shit off.

Don't bother checking it, Andy.

No one's judging you.

Let's call it the world's first movie projector.

Massive hit films on the kinetoscope included man holding a hat for two seconds, apple staying on a plate, woman slightly dancing, and 1 20th of a minute later.

The original kinetoscope enabled films to be viewed by just one person at a time, but it had sadly fallen out of use by the time the movie career of former Bugle co-host John Oliver began.

On the 31st of August 161 AD.

Emperor Commodus was born.

12 AD Emperor Caligula was born.

Warning, if you were born on the 31st of August, do not under any circumstances take a holiday in or near Rome, just in case those are two bad precedents.

As always, a section of the Bugle is going straight in the bin this week.

And other people's homes are a fk of a lot nicer than your home section.

TV actor Gullet McHarp explains why his home is a fk of a lot nicer than yours for reasons ranging from a global kitchen with 18 different bread ovens from around the world to his 5G enabled auto-flushing fair trade mock ivory toilet which automatically detects what kind of deposit

he has left whilst fund manager Elizabeth Lopez Plaque berates you for your lack of money and social awareness in not owning a jaloozy a women only jackuzy and multi-millionaire artisan baker's agent Pinot Gluring takes us around his 300-acre Rewild natural adventure golf site in which you have to putt your ball around a sleeping bear into the actual squirrel hole of a 400-year-old oak tree and then drive it through a functioning 1760s Dutch windmill, which grinds the flour up for his top celebrity clients,

including the controversial Cake Fura 2018 winner, Jazzard Plaint, and the former fake it to cake it champion, Gerard Fandleworth.

That section in the bin.

The

phone line thing that actually reminds me, this is true.

I once, I don't know why I did this, and I'm not proud of it.

I was once a guest on George Galloway's radio show on something or other.

And it was in some strange little peculiar office somewhere in the middle of London.

And I went in and I went downstairs and I was just waiting.

I could just hear him sort of about to introduce me.

And he used to do these, I mean, George Galloway's done many indefensible things, but these peculiar introductions.

Now, let me introduce the incandescence of perambulation that all this sort of thing the

the obfuscation that allows the oblivion into all this sort of stuff and as i looked round there was this there was this woman there in a bikini and i thought what eh and in the sort of net not even in the next office in the same sorry and not even in the next office in the same room but in a sort of behind a partition but that wasn't didn't even cover the whole room there was a chat line thing going on but a on the the telly, one of these channels, and this woman was on the bikini, and she was going, and she started, hello,

what are you eating?

Oh, hind sponge pudding.

I like syrupy things and all that.

Oh, but that's like that's a thing.

Well, I don't know.

Yeah, that's what I can't remember the exact words, but it was, I'm trying to do it as if I was doing it.

But there she was, and then there was a sign-up saying,

no fingers down pants.

And

meanwhile,

this was on to the left and to the right.

And all of the toxicity of the irrigation,

of the nebulation that pervades this capitalistic, fascistic literary.

It was really, it was like a really strange dream.

Oh, sounds delightful.

Anyway, that just put me in mind your little bit about the

80s for you.

The 60s phone line.

Had she ever ever um gone to Iraq to talk to Saddam Hussein or not

um

anyway it's time now I think she haven't that's what she was saying I like Baghdad do you

weapons of mass destruction family show

top story this week and well we're gonna have to start with uh the state of British democracy.

Parliament is being prorogued, which was a word that frankly no one had ever noticed until recently.

Mark, I'm hereby pointing you our Constitutional Affairs correspondent.

Well, it's perfectly normal, apparently.

This is, I mean, exactly.

Nobody's ever prorued anything, have they?

At any point?

Has anyone?

Oh, I've gone and prorogued me keys again.

No one's ever done that.

And now this whole business, which does seem to be to be shutting down Parliament for several weeks, for all that, and then they've, and the bit is that such a lie that, oh, it's just normal, just normal procedure.

That's all I've been doing, just normal procedure to shut down at the most historic point when Parliament would be discussing things.

And it's such a naked, open lie.

They've left three days left to discuss it.

And even that, on the Tuesday, they'll say, oh, we've we've released some leopards into the House of Commons.

But this is perfectly normal procedure.

We We won't be able to discuss anything today.

And the day after that, Ian Duncan Smith will be sort of coked up, sitting there smoking a crack pipe with a flamethrower

with a Stetson going, yeah, and shooting anyone who comes in.

And they'll say, this is just normal procedure.

This is no way absolutely ridiculous.

The opposition will say there's a

anyway.

And

it's just, but...

The other side is just seems to, I think they've got a little bit more of a sort of of gumption about them but just so much they're doing that they're trampling over anything to get their way and the opposition's going oh I don't know what to do really maybe if we come up with a legislative whatnot and put it as back of the sort of bills of cleaning dry cleaning bill we can maybe oh I don't know maybe if we set up a national government of cookery in which Dominic Greave takes charge of Brexit and John McDonnell makes the omelet but Clyde Cymru won't go along with it because they want a leak.

And

Corbyn's insisting on a marrow from his allotment.

Oh, I don't know.

And they're just they've got to get some gumption about them, these people.

But that's clearly what he's doing.

He's barely, you know, they're barely concealing it when

their lies are so black.

You know, when Rhys Moggs going, we have to take power back from the elite,

as I said this morning in Latin before my daily joust.

Well, he was one of the ones that said this is just

perfectly normal procedure.

As though that man knew anything about what was perfectly normal.

And perfectly normal for him is getting his children to recite the entirety of Virgil's eclogues before they're allowed breakfast.

Well, I think it's fairly simple.

Like, on one hand, an unelected man has asked an unelected woman whether he can shut down the government so he can get what he wants on the premise that it's what the country wants, which is a fair enough point if you truly believe that the country knows what it wants, knew what it wanted when it asked for it, and will not regret it once it's irreparable, which arguably it already is.

That said, I do sort of get why leave voters are only getting more and more furious.

It's like if you're complaining to your parents about, I don't know, having to practice the piano, and your parents are like, Well, do you want to quit then?

And you say, Actually, yes, I do.

And your parents say, No, you'll regret it.

It's really useful later in life to understand how to read music.

And you go, I hate it.

I want to quit and play computer games with my friends.

And they're like, But you're really lucky your school offers a free music program.

And you're like, I want to fucking quit the fucking piano.

And they're like, It's for your own good.

And then all of a sudden, it's less about whether or not the piano lessons are worthwhile and more about the fact that you're not being allowed to to leave and then you burn down the house.

It's our precious democracy in action.

Pro-rogue coincidentally was also on Boris Johnson's Tinder profile.

But you know, we are taking control.

Come on, he's an amateur rogue at best.

We are taking back control of the quaintly British parody democracy that we hold so dear.

But all this talk, oh, we must, we must,

we're a democracy-loving country.

I think our attitude towards democracy is, I guess, like when you meet someone who says, Yeah, my great-grandmother, I love her dearly, she's still alive, amazing, got all her faculties.

You must come round and see her one day, and you go around to visit, and the great-grandmother has changed to a radiator in a dungeon, naked, but for the mouldering remnants of a gimp outfit, saying, Am I still beautiful?

And then your friend says, Oh, she needs watering, and then whazzes powerfully into her sunken eye sockets before grumbling that she fails to express the requisite level of gratitude.

That that's basically our relationship with democracy.

I think that was I think Corbyn said

very similar thing.

It's been described as a full frontal assault on democracy, full frontal and politically priapic with the robotic flamethrower and cock of cynical opportunism, strafing democracy in its private parts.

It's all just further indignities for this.

Well, as I've said before, it does make you want to go round World War cemeteries knocking on graves and apologising.

Well, yeah, well, Matt Hancock said during the election campaign for Tory leadership, he wrote to all the other candidates to implore them to specifically rule out that they would do this because he said it would be, it would bring shame on the war dead.

Yeah, he said it would go against everything that those men who waded onto those beaches fought and died for.

Yes, and now he's done exactly that.

But I, but people have said he's a hypocrite, but I don't think he is because I think he really doesn't like those people who've waded onto the beaches

because they were fighting for democracy, which he's clearly not a fan of.

And so I don't think he's a hypocrite at all.

I think he's been unfairly maligned.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's very much about how you interpret these things.

I mean, Amber Rudd similarly said the idea of leaving the EU to take back more control into Parliament, and then to consider the idea of closing Parliament to do that is the most extraordinary idea I've ever heard.

But extraordinary can mean many things, can't it?

Yes.

You know, we saw Ben Stokes for England in the

middle.

We will come onto this.

And I've been incredibly disciplined to have got, I don't know how long we've been recording for, 15 minutes in without even mentioning probably the greatest moment in the history of human civilization.

Well, you are wearing the t-shirt right now that says, everyone, let's talk about Ben Stokes.

That's not a t-shirt, unless that is a tattoo.

I wonder why it had nipples on it.

I'm taking back the nipple.

I remember when I was about 14 and I was talking about cricket in the class with a kid just before the lesson started, and one of the hard kids came in and he heard this and he went, oh, for Christ's sake, Steele.

He said, I bet your balls have got seams round them.

And I,

and I often look back at that.

I thought, that was actually quite brilliant.

Yeah.

Oh, for the days of eloquent bullies.

But we will come on to that.

But

I think the opposition is...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have we?

That's what I was told.

Yeah, good.

No, the opposition to it, I said there's the official opposition.

Oh, I saw Joan Swenson, the Liberal woman, because they're sort of, they're going, oh,

our entire raison d'etre our whole the reason why we exist is to oppose a no-deal Brexit that's all we ever want to do but if it means sitting next to Jeremy Corbyn then I'm not going that far I'm not making that and she was on news night and she was on for about 10 minutes and all she went on about was about how this was putting the queen in an awkward position gee that is and that's reasonable because of all the things that are going to happen people without medicines and vital supplies and our democracy being trampled on.

But the main thing is that Her Majesty had to spend 10 minutes this week googling pro-rogging when she was looking forward to an episode of Pointless.

And that's the main thing.

You stupid twat.

I've got

is it any bloody wonder that they're getting away with it, you great stupid steaming twat?

I just and then there was Clyde Cymru at one point.

oh he don't know about not this Carbin's good oh fucking dad just just vote to stop it that's all you've got to do yes but he don't know but we oh what if he doesn't see it in Welsh as well oh no wonder they get away with it all you great useless was it all you've got to do is sit together for one minute and go well we're gonna bring there's more of them if you add in all the Tories who've said that they would do anything you know but of course as you say you know they're all

three weeks ago I would gladly velcro my own children to a barbecue and grill them while adding in extra lighter fuel rather than have no deal Brexit for a minute

well yes but on the other hand I don't like my children

all they've got to do is vote against it to bring him down it's not that hard that's all they've got to do this week turn up and vote a no-confidence thing well on one hand yes we could use the tools of democracy to fight this democratic battle on the other hand people are calling each other traitor on both sides.

The Remain voters are calling the Leave voters traitors to the idea of decency and common sense, and the Leave voters are calling the Remain voters traitors to the idea of England.

Never have I seen the word traitor thrown around so much without a guillotine present.

And I'm just saying, I've said it before, I'll say it again, bring back the murder dome.

Maybe tank ball, just fight it out like men.

Oh, what would happen in the murder dome?

Well, you'd get your two champions, you'd get Boris Johnson with some sort of spiky ball on a stick and then you'd get Jeremy Corbyn with I assume another spiky ball on probably a locally sourced stick and then they would just fight it out and whoever won won.

Oh right, what like in the Mad Max?

Heads on a spike on the Tower of London.

But

that is in the great tradition of British politics,

heads on a spike.

There's been a lot of talk of, you know, this is not

in British traditions.

Michael Gove

himself,

the hang on, let me explain.

I mean it's a fine British tradition to throw people into a pit of asps and let them get poisoned to death.

But that's before we had league football to be fair

and organised support.

That's how they sorted out the corn laws.

Michael Gove said, I think it will be...

This was Michael Gove a while ago talking about the possibility of proroguing Parliament.

I think it'll be wrong for many reasons.

I think it would not be true to the best traditions of British democracy.

That

meant that the first half might be right.

The second half, and this is very much in the best traditions of British democracy, which is essentially

a lunatic at heart, British democracy.

In his kind of contradictory, not nonsensical.

I mean, we cling to it as a, you know, it's better than the alternatives, as well, Churchill said.

I'm just not going to be happy till someone's head is being kicked around a courtyard like Cromwell's.

He was from East Anglia.

I mean, he was sort of Cambridgeshire, no, but East Anglia.

He's very nice.

Yeah, yeah.

He'd be like that.

But I'm sick of this King.

And he's all portrayed by these sort of Shakespearean actors.

Fave me from this very day.

Parliament shall rule this blessed.

Ken Clark, who was, I believe, in the same parliamentary intake as Oliver Cromwell,

he accused the government, bear in mind he is a

former Conservative government minister, accused the government of telling blatant lies.

And bear in mind, he's been in politics for decades and he's worked for the tobacco industry.

So if there's one politician who should be able to spot a blob of bullshit blopping fully formed from the bullaness of Borisyan Bumption,

it is Ken Clark.

Very nice.

Sam Jeema said, I have long since gone past the point of focusing primarily on my career.

And Sam's saying that he's prepared to stand.

The thing that rises from that comment is

why were you focusing primarily on your career in the first place?

Isn't that just everything that's wrong with politics?

I mean, yes, this is something I think

I've done on the department, on Radio 4 about 15 years ago.

The idea, anyone who ever expresses an interest in going into politics as a career should instantly be constitutionally barred from doing it.

And we can fit that into our constitution.

Now, there's a lot of been talking about, is this unconstitutional?

It's quite hard to say, given that over the past thousand plus years that England has existed or Britain, the United Kingdom, the closest we've come to writing anything down was the Magna Carta in 1215.

And from the Magna Carta, there are about four clauses remaining: one allowing the city of London to London to do what the living fk it wants, one about the etiquette of when you're allowed to was in rivers and hedges, and one about the right to ignore all other responsibilities for the duration of a test match.

Doing people, if someone has a Waz in a hedge, and like Michael Gove went past, would he go, Well, this is unconstitutional.

This is an affront to

the very rules and laws upon which our great land stands.

I'm sure he would.

And then does it

have to be five minutes later as a huge shit in the middle of St.

Paul's Cathedral.

Well, circumstances have changed.

I mean, if on the other hand the hedge is a homeless person, then he's right on it.

He would.

Exactly.

Yes.

Just helping the homeless person to grow.

But interpreting the British Constitution is basically along the lines of being a Harrow specs, looking at the entrails of a slaughtered animal.

I mean, you can basically see what you want in it, can't you?

And interpret it, you know, how you want.

Well, I think this lower intestine clearly says that the harvest is going to fail.

Bullshit, Terry.

The way that liver splatted onto the ground means that there is incontrovertible evidence that rovers are going to win the FA Cup.

You can basically just see anything you want in it.

If you want to know how the British Constitution works, and I know a lot of our listeners are not from Britain, just go to a disused quarry at midnight, belch and note down what the echo says.

That's basically as much as we've got for a Constitution.

Boris Johnson has been skillfully positioning himself as the Jimi Hendrix of constitutional battery.

He's doing things people hadn't really realised were possible and will no doubt spawn a slew of imitators of varying quality but unstoppable loudness.

He said that the reason for the pro-roguing was because the government needs to be able to enact a bold and ambitious legislative agenda.

Now in terms of reasoning, This is like gagging someone and claiming it's to stop their lips from getting sunburned or from getting a sore throat for singing too loudly or to help them with their new diet, or to stop them blurting out details of a surprise birthday party.

I said, more and more reasons for it.

It's more and more persuasive.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, exactly.

But I mean, in sort of, maybe that's his mistake, is the one mistake he's made is

lying about that because everything else is really blatant about it, isn't he?

Yeah.

And well,

this talk of the Queen as well being put in a difficult position.

Essentially, constitutionally, the Queen is beholden to issue a yeah, whatever response to anything they ask her to do.

She must be just roiling on the inside.

You must be thinking, why did Athlet be born in the 20th century?

If I'd been 200 years old, I'd

be on the bloody bonfire.

Yeah, oh, I bet she is.

I bet, yeah.

Well, and half her family, I think.

Which would have been how to do that, wouldn't they, at one point?

Shuffle them up to a mental

sort of room above an attic somewhere in Amsterdam.

Claim they died of syphilis.

Those were the days.

Yes,

it's it's um but I don't I'm I'm actually not entirely pessimistic about it actually because I think that

I think that just bit by bit there's sort of quite a lot of people are getting quite cross and and that will come to play out at some point in some way.

I don't quite know how.

Tank.

Well tank.

Yeah yeah yeah.

I am starting to think that holding binary referendums and highly divisive issues without properly defining the terms and outcomes in advance might might be a bit silly

with the benefit of hindsight.

Well, in that case, we need another one then.

I know that.

I mean, anytime sort of feeling, oh, the second referendum will sort it.

Well, I mean, I am in favour of that, but it's not going to sort it.

No, nothing will sort it.

Nothing will sort it.

It's not apart from a time machine or the impending apocalypse, which appears to be getting closer by the day.

Maybe that's...

We should embrace him.

There's going to be a public information campaign.

Michael Gove, and remember, kids, you can't spell spell Michael Gove without using all the letters in Machiavelli,

he's set to launch a £100 million public information campaign with the slogan, get ready, apparently, to get us all prepared for the eventuality of a no-deal Brexit.

And no doubt this news has enthused both the hard boner Brexiteers and graffiti spraying community alike.

It's been funded this £100 million campaign by stealing money from the NHS and letting people die instead.

Oh, which is that?

Well, they promised on the side of a bus.

Yeah.

That's it.

We'll let people die.

That's what.

I mean, they haven't said that.

I mean, they're really doing a favour for everyone in the democracy.

The more people you kill off, the more your vote is worth.

Yes, that's true.

That's statistics.

Especially once you've sort of cut down immigration, so the population goes down and down and down.

And yeah, that's a very good point.

Just think how powerful we'll all be.

Well, I'd still fuss, because a lot you sort of get a lot on the phone-ins and they go, these people go, We'll get through it, it's all the fuss, we got through the blitz.

And I was thinking, yeah, but we didn't vote for the blitz, did we?

Maybe we did.

Maybe we did.

Well, I mean, no one reads them.

We voted for it.

Get on with it.

What's all it?

Look, I've the Luff Waffer.

Just get on, just put commentary, it's still there.

I voted about it.

Set a light.

No one actually reads a full manifesto, do they?

Who knows what Neville Chamberlain might have sneaked in there?

Alice, you are our southern hemisphere correspondent, and this is

a story mostly from the hemisphere that you hold so dear.

Yes, indeed, Andy.

In inspiring news for ambitious pyromaniacs, an area nearly one times the size of the Amazon rainforest is on fire.

Did you know the Amazon is so big that it could only fit twice into a country the size of Wales if you shrank it down to half the size of Wales?

To date, at least 40,000 plant species, 427 mammal species, 1,300 birds, 378 reptiles, more than 400 amphibians, around 3,000 freshwater fish species, and 100,000 invertebrate species have been described by scientists as living in the Amazon.

And let's all agree that mostly they're super creepy and gross.

Overall, it's a great thing, Andy.

I'm happy for these animals to burn.

Most of them are weird-looking, and if they're medicinal or cancer-curing or really good for you, we've just short-circuited a whole hipster health trend.

Imagine if the Amazon had burned down before Cafe culture discovered the acai bowl or quinoa via the Oprah Winfrey show.

We'd have saved so much stress trying to figure out how to pronounce them.

Let's get back to the good old days of medieval England where lunch was a well-balanced lump of cheese, slice of bread with gravel in and a whole raw onion.

That's a solution to overpopulation.

Try eating a whole raw onion for lunch.

Your Australian Prime Minister did that, doesn't he?

Tony Abbott, didn't eat a raw onion on television?

He took a whole bite, but I'm saying go all the way through.

They say the Amazon basin is the lungs of the earth, which is shocking news because I didn't know that was a vector for categorizing geography which country is the appendix of the earth andy where is the thigh gap of the earth

belgium obviously we all know where the asshole of the earth is it doesn't even bear saying

um

well i mean that's the problem with describing it as the lungs of uh the lungs of the planet is that you know people will hear that and think well you can survive with one lung and yeah you can get quite a good price for a lung if you sell it to the right my granddad owned a planet, smoked.

It's lived to be 400 billion.

We're all making it up.

They say that in the Amazon, they're losing a football pitch of forest every minute.

But, I mean, if these were all being turned into football pitches, it would be fine.

I wouldn't have a problem with it.

But they're not.

Some people have claimed that the rise in Fires is due to the policies of President Bolsonaro, or to give him his Brazilian footballer name, Mussolinio,

and his chief of staff Onyx Lorenzoni, real name, that is his genuine name,

threw some Brazilian shade at Emmanuel Macron, because Macron, well, the G7 have offered Brazil £18 million, which is not a lot for a G7.

That's the equivalent of one medium-caliber squad midfielder in a relegation fighting Premier League football team.

So I don't know if there's a compromise.

But I mean, you're a Crystal Palace fan, man.

Oh, yeah, we could send him Jeffrey Schluck.

there we go problem solved we could put that with our toes

i would be laughing at that if i got the reference anyway uh bolsonaro's chief of staff uh said uh uh macron cannot even avoid a predictable fire in a church that is part of the world's heritage referring to the notre dame cathedral fire and he wants us to give us lessons for our country the difference is being that they put that fire out quite quickly and it was one fire caused by carelessness not 83 000 fires aggravated by government policy.

If 83,000 churches in France were burning down due to a new French government policy to offer tax breaks to people for holding barbecues inside spires, fair enough.

Well, that's the thing, Andy.

It is coinciding with these regulations.

A record number of fires has

come hand in hand with this sharp drop in fines for environmental violations, which is a little worrying given that meanwhile in America Trump is trying to curtail the regulation of methane emissions.

He's

like, A, a man who must be super sick of being told that in some cultures

his name means farts and the physical embodiment of so many hot air jokes, I'm surprised he doesn't explode like the Hindenburg.

So he wants to curtail the regulation of methane emissions,

which is a move that even the oil and gas companies oppose.

And you know you're in trouble when even cannibals are like, no, no, no, thanks for the offer of a conveyor belt of baby flesh, but really I'm watching my way.

Yeah, but when oil and gas companies think you're not doing enough to protect the environment that that's like being lectured by Saudi Arabia on journalist welfare issues.

Or female welfare issues or

human welfare issues.

Just fill in your Saudi Arabia joke of your own choice there.

Donald Trump rolls back environmental regulations like I have hot dinners 84 times in two and a half years.

Okay, well I might have the edge.

But still that's a lot of environmental regulations he is currently or has already rolled back.

He's not too far away I think from making it compulsory for all American households to buy a 1950s car, park it outside the nearest school, and just leave the engine running all day.

Otherwise, all the Mexicans will come.

And it can only be a matter of time before he issues a government edict forcing all towns to ceremonially spill 50 barrels of toxic chemicals into a nearby river

because America used to do it when it was great.

Well, look, Andy, maybe he's just trying to fulfil his campaign promises.

If America is on fire, maybe the Mexicans won't want to come.

There you go.

Yeah.

You're also

he's looking at Alaska for more mining and logging opportunities under a new policy entitled Who Needs Inuits.

And also, I mean, that's got to look long term.

That's why we're talking about him looking at Greenland.

If global warming keeps going at the current rate, Alaska is basically going to be the new Tuscany.

Yeah, we're going to Greenland this year.

You've been to Greenland, haven't I?

I have been to Greenland.

For reasons that I have no idea what the origins of it are, I've I've always been really fascinated by Greenland.

And then I went.

And was it fascinating?

Yeah, it was fantastic.

I went to a place to start with.

I went to Kulusuk, which is this little Inuit settlement with about, I think, the population is 320.

And it's just, but it's not like a village of 320 because you can't, the next place is Dalisac, which you can only get to in the winter

using dog sleds and stuff.

And that's about 30 miles.

And although you can get a helicopter there, because most of those people can't afford to, you know, they just see this thing.

You might as well be watching a bird, it's not anything that they could ever aspire to, even.

And it's just this little settlement, and there's a shop that's open an hour a week.

And it's sold, let's see if I can remember, it's sold

boots,

washing powder, a couple of CDs by local Inuit singers, and rifles.

All the major food groups.

groups.

Oh, it was fantastic.

Fantastic place.

And I found a cricket match because

there were some

people from Essex were sort of traipes at doing some sort of course or something where they had to go across Greenland on skis or something.

And they had to do something to help out the local people.

This was in the much bigger town of Dalisac.

And so they decided to teach the Inuit kids in Dale Sac cricket and they set up a little cricket match.

And so me and my son went down, and we sort of helped out coaching these Inuit kids.

And that means within five years, they'll beat England.

Trump was also in the news for allegedly suggesting that

we could drop nuclear bombs into the Eye of Hurricanes to stop the hurricanes.

Yes, this was an announcement that made me wonder what really terrible thing he's trying to distract us from now.

The suggestion that you could nuke hurricanes implies that he doesn't understand how hurricanes or nukes or wind or nightmares or apocalyps work.

When has nuking anything ever been the answer to anything?

I want to read his school maths test, seven times five equals nukes.

Well, I mean he's denied this story.

But obviously no one believes that denial because of who he is.

And he denied it and people have understandably reacted by saying, no, you clearly did suggest nuking hurricanes.

And even if you didn't, if that meeting had gone on eight to ten minutes longer, you definitely would have done it.

Here you are, Mr.

President.

I've run a computer simulation to predict the things that you would suggest might work to stop a hurricane, factoring in everything you've said and done in your entire life.

And look, nuke it comes out top.

Second, try to bung it up with immigrant children, see if that slows it down like an overfilled tumble dryer.

Third, build a wall around the Atlantic so the hurricanes can't make it to the USA.

Fourth, nuke it, bung it up with immigrants and build a wall around it.

And fifth, blame Hillary Clinton for it.

Well I feel like this is a little bit of a boy who cried wolf situation if he did indeed not say it because there's so many things that he has says that he there's so many things that he has said that he said he hasn't said that at this point you can almost attribute any quote to him.

It's like Winston Churchill.

Yeah, but it does.

One marvellous thing about this is that if there is a hurricane that goes through an area where there's a Trump rally, instead of all fleeing or seeking shelter, they'll just all stand in a big crowd shouting, send it back.

and

and they'll all be sort of scattered across the Pacific Ocean.

So there's that to look forward to.

Cricket rendering everything else in the world utterly meaningless news now.

And well as we've touched on before, England won one of the most dramatic cricket matches in history.

I don't think it's really appropriate to talk about the desecration of our democracy, the latest hyper-cynical manipulations of our politics, and the attempts to heal the rifts in our country by deepening the rift in our country.

What we should be focusing on, and will focus on now, is one of the greatest cricketing victories ever achieved, therefore, one of the defining moments in the history of humanity, and a new entry into the top 10 greatest things in human civilization ever.

Mark,

it was an incredible game.

For those of you who didn't follow it, it started with Australia being bowled out for 180, then England all out for 67.

Then keeping Australia to a kind of moderate score, but the target was 359 to win.

Which, in itself, is, even from a starting point is unusually high very very very unlikely especially in a game like that yeah and then so so england lost a couple of early wickets and this might mean absolutely nothing to some of our listeners but just bear with us um then recovered then out of another collapse and it ended up with uh with australia needing one further wicket england needing around about 80 more runs and

which stokes the man who uh who who was a one of the key figures in the world cup final as we talked about a few weeks ago ago,

at the crease.

So, yeah, just the sort of

I don't know, it's hard to sort of think

if you were to apply it to another game that you sort of might know.

I mean, what would it be like?

Would it be like being 4-0 down with three minutes to go or something?

It's probably not far from that.

But then, you know, all sport is about subplots.

So, Ben Stokes, a couple of years ago, was arrested for thumping someone outside a nightclub and was

only a year ago the court case he was found not guilty and so on and then and the the guy at the other end Jack Lee so if you don't know cricket it means

you don't the the one the same person doesn't face all the bowling so you've got to manipulate he's got so many things to think about it's extraordinary it'd be like I suppose because he's got to Ben Stokes is each at the end of each six balls he's got to get himself up the other end which is extraordinarily difficult they're all something to do that and the guy at the other end looks like a librarian and he's got these glasses and he was taking them off to wipe them so it was all the subplots and stokes when the librarian was facing the bowling some of the best bowling in the world stokes literally couldn't look which was extra the drama of that he was literally sat on his haunches and faced the other way and it was just so he's got so many things to think about how

how to get these run so quickly how to get the ball over the top of everybody into the crowd over and over i suppose in in america what it'd be the equivalent of i've got to hit eight home runs in the next it's probably like that isn't it um but they're all around the boundary it's so many things to think about it'd be like if a golfer came up the 18th fairway not only having to get a hole in one but he also had to unify the laws of physics as he was doing it solve the middle east crisis yeah and make a cake.

Got one bake-off.

It was just.

Okay, now explain it to me.

Now, explain it to me with a ballet analogy, please.

It was like

the Bolshoi ballet having to perform an entrecher at the same time as a plie

while the man at the other end, who was a 19-stone postman,

did a back flip.

Literally.

I'd pay to watch that.

And the stage was full of

Randy rhinoceroses as well.

Who would try to stop them doing it?

Who would win the Ashes?

The rhinoceros ashes.

Sorry to interrupt you, Andy.

Don't you have an entire other podcast for this?

Fashion with Cricket?

Yeah, yes,

that will be out.

We're recording that on Monday.

It's called Unbelievable with Felicity Ward.

And we'll go into further detail.

I'm not going to do all the stats here, Alice.

Okay.

But that's another four hours' worth.

So

if you took this match and turned it into a metaphor, how many times would it fit into whales?

Seven.

Yeah, it's a big, big metaphor.

Well I think, this is what I honestly think.

I think what Stokes did was he bent the will of everyone involved around himself.

He just looked so dominant.

He looked like I am going to do this and no one is going to stop me.

And I think that that actually completely, if that's why Nathan Lyon dropped that, that's why they couldn't, they didn't know where they were.

Their minds were addled.

It was actually really fascinating psychologically because you know that you've got all of the the bowlers kept making the most simple mistakes because they're in a situation where they go I don't know what to do with him I don't know they bowl a perfectly good ball and he plays the most outrageous shot and whacks it over his head for six and they literally didn't know what to do so then they when they were facing bowling to Jack Leach, who was the weaker batsman, then they would deliberately, they would just bowl a ball that was just stupid because their minds were completely gone.

And I think even the umpire I think he was like what do I do I don't know what I do I've never said anything like this and I don't know what you think I think he didn't want to spoil it would have spoken

to somehow deep down psychologically Stokes was so extraordinary that he uh that he just bent everything around him like a huge planet does to space.

Isn't it?

And I isn't it great that someone who's that like strategically powerful and emotionally influential is putting all of his energy into this particular game.

Yes.

Thank the Lord people like that

don't turn their abilities and their levels of determination to other matters such as taking countries out of

economic blocks.

But anyway, it was quite extraordinary.

England snatching victory from the duodenum of defeat helped by Australia.

Heimlecking the shit out of themselves.

But it just goes to show what we can achieve as a nation, just like the World Cup final, what we can achieve as a a nation with considerable help from immigrants.

Stokes, born in New Zealand, Joffrey Archer from Barbados, two key players.

Still, isn't Brexit fun?

Well, I think that Stokes, as a result of that, should now be legally entitled to punch whoever he wants, once a day for a year.

And if he chose me, it would be an honour.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle.

Thanks to everyone who came to see

my show and Alice's show and all the other Bugle co-hosts' shows in Edinburgh and the Bugle live shows and a few of you who made it down to Political Animal.

No doubt some or all of us will be back next year.

There are a couple of bugle shows to alert you to.

This Sunday, if you are listening to this in time, there is the Bugle Guilty Feminist crossover show, the feminist bugle at King's Place.

Guilty Bugle, as I'm liking to call them.

That is Sunday, the 1st of September.

In October, we have a couple of shows.

Glasgow on the 7th of October and Newcastle on the 8th.

Live bugle shows at the Stand Comedy Clubs.

Alice?

Yes, I have a big show in Melbourne on the 10th of September at the Malthouse Theatre.

It is,

I can't reveal the details yet, but it is for a large streaming service that may or may not be on fire.

So please do come for that.

It's a massive theatre.

It's like a 600-seat theatre.

So if you're a bugler or if you like my work, please come.

10th of September Mauldhouse Theatre in Melbourne.

It'll be good.

Mark, have you got any shows?

Oh, yes, I'm doing the Hackney Empire, so I seems a little bit after Melbourne.

But yeah, the Hackney Empire on October the 15th, you come along.

I'm also doing a crossover podcast with Nigel Farage

about fishing.

Well, I would pay good money to see that

and see who ends up at the bottom of the pond.

Thank you very much for listening, buglers.

Until next time, goodbye.

Bye.

To play you out, here are some more lies about our premium-level subscribers.

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You can choose one of our ready-made packages or just contribute whatever you want on a recurring or one-off basis.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.

And here are some lies about some of you.

Tom Bowling or Bowling let's say bowling thinks the number of mirrors manufactured and bought each year is completely out of proportion with the number of Medusas at large in the world these days.

Seth Carbon is ironically made in large part of carbon but nevertheless is not a fan of the celebrity element.

He prefers less high profile elements such as potassium, bismuth and above all antimony.

AJ Wells has lost count of the number of times people have called asking how much it would cost to install a well in their garden and whether there was a choice of water or oil.

Simon Harding tried to set up a business as a freelance prophet but resigned after his first prophecy failed to come true.

He'd foretold that his next-door neighbour's cat would win a prize at a local pet show.

In fact, the cat came last and was described as a bit mangy by one of the judges.

Jack Tonkin thinks that if the word gosling refers to a baby goose, then a tiny Christmas tree should be called a sprosling, and a small French grapefruit, a pomple mosling.

Frank Sterling tried to swim upstream in a river to see what it is like to be a salmon.

Sadly, he ended up in a secret government research facility where they're trying to breed giant attack toads for future conflicts.

Nabil Charania thinks that scampering should be an Olympic sport, probably in pursuit of a train involving carrying some baggage and possibly an umbrella.

Why don't Olympic sports reflect the realities of life, wonders Nabil, who was once fired from a restaurant job for disco throwing a plate of prawns over a customer's head into a chandelier.

Frederick Waymond the other day found himself absently strumming a potato in a supermarket, as if it was an oddly round and lumpy guitar.

When asked what he was doing, he claimed to be practicing for his new root-vegetable-themed blues tribute act, Spuddy Guy.

Amit Gandhi does not like it when buskers use amplifiers, so keeps a supply of extra-large coins the size of dinner plates that he ostentatiously drops into the busker's collection receptacle while shouting, I've never heard anyone play stairway to heaven so beautifully through a loud halo.

Jason Berg is frankly tired of explaining to casual acquaintances that, unlike other Bergs, you can see all of him.

It is simply not the case that 90% of him is in fact hidden underground.

Laura Swartz thinks the year 2020 should be postponed.

I don't think the world is ready for it yet, says Laura.

We should go back to 2010 and have another crack at the whole decade.

Tom Begley, however, disagrees and says we should instead skip 2020 and go straight to 2021, see how things have panned out, and then do 2020 afterwards, having learned from the mistakes we will have delayed making.

Both Laura and Tom acknowledge there are significant logistical issues involved in their proposals.

And finally, Tom, another Tom, not the ex-producer, found that he drank considerably less milk when he labelled all his milk cartons with big stickers saying poison.

He rationalised it by arguing to himself that if you drank milk non-stop for three to four hours, you would probably die, making it, to all intents and purposes, as good as poison.

Here endeth the 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.