Look at this Massive Election! Bugle 4107

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4107 of the Bugle, free, independent, funded by you, the listener, official podcast of none other than Poseidon, ancient Greek god of the sea.

Good to have the old Trident wielder on board.

Should certainly ensure we have some very nice and calm sea crossings in future.

I am Andy Zaltzmann and joining me from Mumbai for this special Bugle Indian elections special bugle show.

It is Anuvad Pal.

Hello Andy.

Hello.

Very excited to be here this week because as you know India is in the middle of a tiny thing.

A billion people are heading to the polls to elect a leader.

Not a big thing, not affecting the country very much, but it's very exciting to be here to report from the ground, by which I mean from my apartment.

We will touch on this more in greater detail shortly.

We are recording on Wednesday this week for complicated logistical reasons.

Well, I'm going to Ireland to watch cricket, but let's talk it up.

Wednesday, the 1st of May.

To be precise, May Day, no less.

Well, every day is May Day in Britain at the moment.

But on this day, in 1851, Queen Victoria,

old Big Pants herself, opened the great exhibition at Crystal Palace.

Some hugely influential exhibits, including a precursor to the fax machine.

What a revolution in correspondence.

That must have been...

I don't know who was the first person to fax a picture of their own backside from the great exhibition.

History does not relate that.

The world's first voting machine, the world's first pay toilets were used.

People would pay a penny to use the toilets.

Hence, the term spend a penny originates from that, one of the great British euphemisms for a bodily function.

Those using the toilets for a less liquidinous, a more conclusive

exflagrution were given a commemorative Sumerian gemstone known as a sheicht, hence the term take a shite.

Bit of history for you.

As always,

I say it's been a long week.

It's Wednesday.

It's been a bit of a short week.

As always,

some sections of the Bugle are going straight in the bin.

Well, this week, a special Game of Thrones review section in the bin, one of the most eagerly awaited TV episodes of all time, episode 3 of Series 8 of Game of Thrones, the hit TV series adapted from the Magic Land fantasy novels entitled Death and Doinking.

And well, I mean, it finally boiled down, Series 8, Episode 3, so many questions arising, finally boiled down to the climactic Battle of Winterfell, although, interestingly, it's actually a bit like an English village.

It's pronounced Wiffle.

But was this episode the most memorable piece of television since that episode of Sesame Street when a drunken big bird tried to mate with a giant bottle of novelty mustard?

Or was it just a bit shit?

I mean,

I'll leave that for you to judge.

A quick spoiler alert before we do our review.

It's only pretend.

None of it happened.

So the questions arising are, why are dead people so f ⁇ ing angry all the time?

Could it be that burial and cremation, neither of which is a particularly nice thing to do to someone objectively, really piss people off?

Also, questions arising from the episode amongst the fans include, why didn't this, that, or the other happen?

And would that have made any more sense?

Plot questions arising for fans include, well, now that Strayhorn of Glouch has been trapped by the Great Wankling in an eternal state of colostial fribbage, could Vince and Hilaire form an alliance with Hogarik Rambert, Idris the Dragon, Basil the Donkeyslayer, Slayer, and Brenda from Accounts to destroy the deathly pillock ferrets of Nethergrope?

Or might a magic worm magically fix it all by shitting in a magic bucket or doing some karaoke?

Could the returning pseudo-king Glarion Penis Raker prove to be the real Doug Mountjoy?

And will Madge Bishop return as Queen of the Undead?

What has happened to the Sledgehammer of Everlasting Vengeance?

It used to be so good.

What's happening in the Gulf?

Is that the time?

Did I remember to put the bins out?

And well, a lot of fans were not happy with some of the battle tactics used in the battle.

And I guess the question does arise, if you've got a fing dragon why not get your dragon to do a massive dump on your enemies when you're flying overhead surely that would do some damage dragon shit is probably absolutely horrific they have terrible meat heavy diets and if dinosaur crap is anything to go by if you dropped it from 300 feet it could take out a Sherman tank naïve also with Jon Snow patently tiring in the heat of battle should skipper Raymond Illingworth have brought Derek Underwood on for a containing spell from the nursery end was the whole thing more or less realistic than Brexit and is it all an allegory for the dangers of professionalism in in rugby?

The EU's common fisheries policy, or something else?

We look at all that in this section in the bin.

Andy, fantastic analysis, but I think what you've just done is you've written the prequel to Game of Thrones.

Brenda from Accounts will never form an alliance with those guys.

It's not going to happen.

She is above all else practical.

I'll be honest, that is the only episode I've ever actually watched start to finish.

finish.

I don't know if that came across in my analysis of it,

but the wife's quite into it.

So, I thought I'd, anyway, I thought I'd see what it was all about, or not see what it was all about.

And I think the thing is, those Ravens, they are very high-tech for the time, both wireless and 3D.

So, I assume they just, you know, you just know.

Either you've got it, you haven't as a message raven.

You can't learn it.

I mean, the show allows for a lot of things, right?

There are very few places in the world, Andy, in 2019 we can say the words Night King without having erotic undertones.

I'll have to take your word for that, Anuvab.

Top story, one billion people are voting right now over the course of, well, five weeks

or more, so

almost six weeks in a 39-day election.

Anuvab, as our Indian democracy correspondent,

talk us through exactly what it is like to be in India at the time of this extraordinary democratic process.

Well, Andy, this is a fantastic time to be in India.

I mean, for one, look, the whole world is interested.

The BBC have sent 10 different camera crews.

The Americans have sent no one.

You know, Al Jazeera rise here.

And I really love the Election Commission of India because of all the times in the year you can get a billion people to vote, they choose the middle of May

in the middle of one of the worst summers we're having.

So

you can blame the Election Commission for a lot of things, but not foresight and methodological expertise.

They have those.

New York Times did a great rundown, Andy, of what's going on here.

A billion people are are about to elect a government.

Why do these elections matter?

Well, they matter because to a billion people, the loose idea of adult franchise is important.

Of course, the ruling party are going to win, but there is something in 700 million people coming out of the house and feeling like we did something.

If mostly the doing of that means standing in a very hot summer day in a line and voting for a symbol of a shoe or a sunflower.

We'll get into that in a bit.

Who are running?

There are thousands of political parties running, but like in Britain, you have two major political parties.

You have the BJP,

India's ruling party, who have been described as slightly right-wing by other right-wing parties.

The rival party is the completely democratic, fair, non-nepotistic Congress party, which was founded, well, by the English, actually, a long time ago.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

To fight against other English people when you guys had some business here.

But that is...

That is a very polite way of putting it when you guys had some business here.

When you guys had some business, when we didn't have to get together on a hot summer day and vote for stuff, because you just had a guy in a wig saying, this is how things are going to be right.

So much simpler.

Easier, easier ending.

The Election Commission would be happy.

So the Indian National Congress is currently the opposition party and a completely fair, democratic, liberal party

run

by the great grandson of the founder of the party.

So again,

anyone who's eligible and has the ability to rise through the party can become its leader as long as you're the great-grandson of the founder.

That is true liberty.

I was fascinated by the number of political parties, which I saw had been calculated to be 2,293

when

registrations closed before the election.

Now, there is such a thing as too much choice, isn't there?

Now, speaking as a veteran of the British 2016 referendum, two choices was arguably too too many.

So 2,293, that's that's got Charles de Gaulle, the French leader,

said, how can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?

Well, wake up and smell the paneer de Gaulle.

Try governing a nation that has 2,293 different political parties, somewhere between 400 and 1,700 different languages and approximately four cheeses.

Take your cheese and quit your whinging.

Andy, you know, I think in a democracy, there's never too much choice.

I know you guys have two parties, but where would India be if we did not have, as we do, the reasonably priced vegetable party,

the clean thoughts party, that sounds pretty sinister,

and the common man party, whose symbol is the broom, suggesting metaphorically we clean up the system.

Well I'm fascinated by these the symbols that the political parties choose

because there's still a huge amount of illiteracy in India so parties have to choose a symbol.

Now assuming that registered but unrecognised parties can't choose their own symbol but have to choose from a list of 200 available free symbols.

Coincidentally free symbols is an election pledge by the Maharashtra Percussion Instruments for all party.

These symbols that are available include such potent democratic images as a helicopter, a kitchen sink, a sofa, that I would vote for that.

Sign me up.

Compulsory kips in the afternoon for everyone.

A javelin thrower.

Picking up on the proud Olympic history of Indian javelin throwers.

A violin, a walking stick, a typewriter, toothpaste, a syringe, a pair of socks, a soap dish, a washing up rack, a pendulum.

But I don't know that's just got quite nice, I suppose.

Shows the cyclical nature of life.

Trousers, ice cream.

I mean, that really is, we talk about bread and circuses, but

when ice cream is your symbol, you are really laying your populist cards on the table.

A 1920s gramophone, a frock, a domestic power drill, a cauliflower, a bucket, binoculars, a cricket bat, a cricket batsman, a set of cricket stumps.

The 1980s Indian cricketer Roger Binney scoring a single.

That may not be one of the available options.

And of course, a balloon.

As a voter, Anuvhab,

I mean, I would be confused by these 200 symbols because obviously, I'd like to vote for binoculars because I want my government to snoop on people from a distance.

But I also like trousers.

And I think people should wear trousers more often than not.

But what is the point of wearing trousers if you don't have access to a helicopter or can't listen to contemporary vinyl recordings of Edith Piaf or don't have a government committed to frocks for all or or filling buckets with toothpaste whilst playing the violin and batting.

It's so confusing, democracy.

So confusing.

And that is why I think we're doing it, Andy, as Plato would have intended it.

You know, we're giving, you, you know,

you can't read and write.

You walk into a polling booth, it's hot as hell.

Would you rather have to go through your entire value system to figure out whose manifesto is better, or would you just press a button on a lovely-looking ice cream?

well now you put it in those terms i can see a happier more content democratic future emerging for the entire world um

of course i mean it the the the the way that voting is carried out has led to certain uh difficulties because

you're allowed your one vote and uh then uh so you have to press your button on the on the voting machine and then you have some indelible ink put on your finger so that they know that you've already voted.

But these machines, obviously with so many different symbols on, can be quite confusing.

And a man during this election,

he accidentally voted for Modi's BJP

and then was so racked by regret because he wanted to vote for their rivals that having had the indelible ink put on his finger, he took the logical option of cutting his finger off in the hope that he would then be able to vote vote again.

Again, this is a great point.

This is a great point.

And let's face it, we've all been there.

We've all been there.

You know, I wanted a cheeseburger at a self-service McDonald's.

I pressed on a double cheeseburger.

They wouldn't change my order.

I cut off my finger.

I was

some Netflix switched over to Amazon.

There was a spoiler for a show my wife was watching.

Cut off my finger.

I just want to bring up one thing, Andy.

You may not be aware, I did do this.

I went online, speaking of symbols and pictures that represent political parties before the election, because I am that sort of person, I put in Andy Zoltzmann, Andy Zoltzmann political party, and you can do it on the Election Commission website.

to see what symbols I'd be allowed.

And I was given Andy because we're in the middle of the election, so not very many objects available.

I was given, Andy, and I don't know if these symbols would work when you launch yourself as a candidate,

a stapler, a laundry bag, and a boiled egg.

That sounds like my perfect weekend in.

Well, I've been...

Yeah, that's all.

I guess that encapsulates my political philosophy.

I love to join bits of paper together.

It shows I'm collaborative.

I can take bits bits of paper from different sources, staple them together, and come up with a compromise.

When it comes to laundry bags, I'm not afraid to attempt to clean up what has in the past been dirty.

And in terms of boiled eggs,

that's the future of food.

It's good for the environment, isn't it?

to

slay an unborn chicken.

What you've just described is better than the manifesto of both the main parties that are running.

So, well, just quickly on the indelible ink, it is actually interesting because

the ink has been provided by the same company for 57 years and the Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited company.

And it's a closely guarded secret,

thought to involve some combination of Coca-Cola, the source from Big Max, and the boiled-down essence of cricket.

And interestingly, when I get indelible ink accidentally on my finger,

I'm overwhelmed by a powerful, subliminal sensation that I've just voted in Nagpur.

So, interesting.

If you go to social media in India, don't know what's really going on, it's going to be very confusing because you'll see Indian person after Indian person holding up their forefinger.

And

it looks like a bit of a bizarre gesture, but what they do is you go in there and they mark you in blue.

And apparently, the reason we do this, the indelible ink thing, that that there are slight incidents of fraudulence and criminality in elections, never heard of before.

It's a new phenomenon.

And I faced this some years ago when I was in college, when I went into vote to a polling booth in Calcutta and found out that my vote had already been done by

a widow in her 70s who happened to have the name Anuva Paul.

But she also happened to be named a number of other things.

Because back then, when there was no system of marking the voter, the political party would just pay somebody to vote on your behalf.

Which,

in hindsight, Andy, I think, seeing how democracy has turned out in my country, a far better option.

Well, there was a report on Reuters, of well, incentivizations for voters, And the authorities have seized

cash and goods worth hundreds of millions of dollars across India since the election was announced on the 10th of

March.

Almost half a billion dollars worth of what we may call incentivatious materials

including, well, cash, alcohol, drugs and gold.

The big four.

And to be honest, from a British perspective, if that bus of bullshit from the Brexit campaign had not promised to give £350 million a week to the NHS, but had promised to give to every voter a £20 note, a bottle of supermarket whiskey, a line of Charlie and a commemorative miniature solid gold queen if we leave the EU, then none of the current mess would have happened because we would have voted 97% to leave.

And

that is exactly why I think our democratic thinking is way ahead of the Western world at that time.

Because, you know,

I'm sure Brexit would have turned out differently if the Labour Party or whoever showed up at your doorstep with a working microwave

and said you could either vote for us for this microwave or you could vote for something stupid called values and belief systems.

And values and belief systems cannot make you a nice chicken roast.

I mean, are these not just merely the physical manifestations of the kind of policy bribe hybrids that are the staple of all elections.

It's a much more honest way of doing it to actually physically give people things that you're promising to give them rather than say, oh yeah, we'll definitely do this, but then not do it.

I appreciate the honesty.

Thank you, Andy.

The honesty of it.

Exactly.

They're doing it prior.

It's a prepaid system.

You know, as Indians, we have seen through the 70s and 80s a lot of violent elections.

We've seen

criminal gangs going into polling booths and when it was paper elections, capturing

the box where the votes are in and running away.

So, to go from that India to a bribe India is actually an improvement.

There's a significant less loss of life, and you end up with an espresso machine and some branding.

So, Narendra Modi won

quite reasonably, convincingly, in 2014.

Is he expected to

win again?

And

what exactly is he standing for?

Great question, Andy.

Narendra Modi, our Prime Minister,

came in with a majority of 300-plus seats

out of 529 in our parliament,

promised his tagline in Hindi was Sabke Sat, Sabka Vikas, which translates to we rise with everyone for everyone's economic benefit.

It's played out really well because the 1% of India have become even wealthier and the poor stand no chance.

So,

you know, like everywhere else in the world, you know, he did come in with that belief system.

But even then, he's, you know,

a number of Indian businesses have collapsed.

There is a job crisis in India.

But even then, he remains tremendously popular.

So popular, in fact, that various news organizations are clamoring to get an interview with him.

He very rarely gives interviews.

He gave one to the big Bollywood star Akshay Kumar a week ago, in which he decided not to talk about politics because he thought there's too much of that, but to talk to the Bollywood star about his love for mangoes.

Well, of course, I could

absolutely critical part of any election.

Exactly.

And how is a child used to climb up and have raw mangoes with no consideration for hygiene?

And he thought that this personal anecdote, because he's quite secretive, single,

would make him, you know, likable to voters.

He gave another interview in Varanasi, the holy city of the Ganges, in a very fancy yacht

in which he talked about how he's a son of the Ganges, that he's, you know, he sees the Ganges as the heartland of India.

He's from there.

He's he's almost, it's almost like by divine

calling, he should be brought back as the prime minister.

It is, of course, an entirely different matter that he was born in Gujarat, hundreds of miles away from the Ganges.

But that's that's how he's positioned himself.

And people are saying

he's going to win.

The rival Congress party

have about 50 plus seats, and Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi dynasty,

you know, he is a very likable fellow.

He's a very likable fellow.

But he's likable in the way that you would like a golf partner or a tennis partner or somebody you play squash with.

When you see him talk about policies of how to address

the issues of a billion people, he falls slightly short.

And by

I mean by about 90%.

Modi proudly announced during the campaign that India now has space weapons and can shoot down satellites, much to the relief of the hundreds of millions of people in India living in abject poverty

who worry about the simple day-to-day task of not having space weapons.

And

so this is a very proud moment for India.

Now has space weapons.

A spokesperson for the Pakistan Foreign Ministry responded with these words: Boasting of such capabilities is reminiscent of Don Quixote's tilting against windmills, which is a very welcome, if rare, use of 17th-century Spanish literature to zing a political adversary.

That's just great to hear.

Although, if you do play Donald Trump's recent speech to the National Rifle Association in America backwards, it contains elongated passages lifted straight from El Pinto de Su de Zondra by Pedro Calderon de la Barca.

Thanks be to the internet.

A further controversy for Modi came with the

scheduled release of a film, a biopic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi entitled PM Narendra Modi, imaginatively, that was due to be released on the day that voting started, was halted by the Indian Electoral Commission on the grounds that

A, it could be seen as a political advertisement, thus falling foul of campaign finance regulations, and B, it's a fing feature film about a sitting prime minister.

When do we get Theresa May, Dither of Destiny?

Why did we not get David Cameron Mission Irresponsible?

Why do we not got our biopics of our prime ministers?

You know, all I'm going to say here is, you know, again, you guys have a lot to catch up on.

Andy, it's fantastic you bring that up because this week we've got a Narendra Modi web series out in which he fights an alligator.

There is a two-page sequence in the comic book where he wrestles the alligator, doesn't kill it, saves it, brings it home, only to be told by his mother to return it because you've separated the baby alligator from its mother.

His mother, of course, did not ask him, what are you doing with a giant reptile?

Now, this got made into a web series called Narendra Modi, Prime Minister, and this this is a sequence of the web series.

We've got Narendra Modi, the film,

we've got Narendra Modi in a TV show, and Narendra Modi has popped up in a very successful Indian movie called Uri,

which documents the surgical strike by the Indian army

when apparently we were attacked by terrorists from Pakistan, so they go into Pakistan.

So Narendra Modi has now featured in five different things.

A web series, a comic book, a massive motion picture.

Now, till I see Boris Johnson in a Marvel franchise, Andy, I think there's a lot of catching up to do.

Apparently, one-third of all Indian members of parliament have criminal cases pending.

And a piece of research has found that a candidate with a clean record has only a 12% chance of winning their their election seat.

Whereas a candidate with a criminal record has a 23% chance of but is this what voters want?

Someone who's shown they are prepared to do whatever it takes to get the job done, whether or not that is legal.

Maybe that is that what we need in democracy.

I think so, Andy.

I think so.

Because I think, I don't know how it is in the Western world, but we're trying to really narrow the divide between criminality and respectability.

It's building bridges, making us a more unified world.

Exactly.

And our elections, you know, education is inversely proportional to success.

So if you note, some of our leading politicians have not studied a day since fourth grade.

And they've made excellent leaders.

So I think we're making a case to the world of all the things that you think make a leader respectable, i.e.

education, life experience.

Are any of those necessary necessary when you could be handed a gun or a smuggling ring at the age of five?

So we are now what are approximately heading towards the well the halfway mark.

We are basically at the halfway mark of the election process.

39-day election process, but still shorter than the impending Cricket World Cup,

which is going to take, I don't think, a week longer.

than getting 900 million people to vote.

Exactly, Andy.

You know, we do it over six weeks.

And to be fair to the Election Commission, it is quite a task getting 700 million people out of their house.

If we did it in a single day, it would, you know, be like a Game of Thrones episode where, you know, all the dead would be marching together.

It would be like that.

Instead, they do it in phases.

They do South India first.

They just finished Mumbai yesterday.

Then they go further up north to the states of Rajasthan.

And then they do the big ones.

They do Delhi.

They do Uttar Pradesh which has a size of Brazil in terms of number of voters then they do Eastern India and basically they they take all everybody's votes and they just sit on it and they release the results all on one day the 23rd of May so they start counting in the morning and by the end they have counted 700 million votes

Can I give you a stat on that?

Yeah, go on there, Chris.

So if 700 million people turn up, Anavab, I think, was it you said there's 2,293 parties?

Yes, there are.

Let's say every single one of those parties was evenly represented.

That's 303,000 votes per party, which is more than the DUP, Britain's most important political party, got at the last election.

So we're looking at

over 2,000 DUPs in India.

What a...

Glorious vision, isn't it?

Of a brighter future that is.

Each with a photo of a boy leg.

But it is the largest exercise of adult franchise in human history.

I mean, I think when the Greeks wrote this down,

they hadn't accounted for a line that extends from Mumbai to Pune just to get it to the polling booth.

Yeah,

and they get good turnouts,

around about 70%.

turnouts, which is better than we get in Britain, way better than America gets in

its elections.

And the Greeks,

the Greeks couldn't get it to work with 30,000 voters, essentially, the ancient Athenians.

They just couldn't nail it.

So to get anywhere near anything functioning, even if you do end up electing religious nationalists, which is, I guess, you know, not ideal as someone who's not a fan of religious nationalism,

like everything in India, it's not the chaos that is so striking, but the fact that it's not even more chaotic.

exactly exactly how does it happen you know we wonder this every day um for example of course people go out to vote because

you know you're you're being bribed to do it you know a car will come pick you up you know you get into a van that's provided by some political party you go sometimes you'll get a packet of biryani sometimes you'll get alcohol and it's the same way with election campaign speeches the reason prime minister modi has a hundred thousand people uh listening to his rallies in the middle of the summer heat in Uttar Pradesh is because everyone's getting a packet of biryani at the end of it.

So even if you can't hear him after the first four rows, it doesn't matter.

You're going home happy.

And it's the same thing with voting.

It's a day out.

They pick you up.

They give you stuff.

Of course, what you'll do in that nice cloth booth, you know, and it's by and large free and fair.

So there isn't anyone, you know, there isn't anyone pointing a gun.

What you'll do in that booth is of course your business.

So

if they show you a nice photograph of an object or whatever and you get impressed, you press whatever, that's still free and fair.

And that's shocking to us.

You know, that's shocking that we can even get all these people into that little booth.

In other news now, Brexit update.

And

elsewhere in Asia, Japan has a new emperor,

a new emperor,

old Emperor Akihito has abdicated and his son Narahito,

viewed as a modernizer, has taken over, has a more global outlook, studied at Oxford University, did some post-grad study there and of course was the official mascot for the 1982 Football World Cup in Spain.

A powerful gesture of internationalism that reverberates to this day.

And he becomes the 126th member of the current Japanese imperial family to be emperor.

That goes back to Emperor Jimmu,

who ironically lived to the age of 126, according to both legend and Wikipedia.

And he was in, I think, about 600 BC.

Jimmu, of course, was the descendant of a Scottish man called James and the sun goddess Amaterazu, which means that Narahito will share up to 37% of his mitochondrial DNA with the sun, meaning that if he ever catches fire, he will burn at 5,700 degrees Celsius.

He's the 127th member of that dynasty.

That is

impressive longevity from the imperial family.

And only two to go now until you can have a full seven-round knockout to find your favorite Japanese emperor of all time.

And I, for one, cannot wait for the Bidatsu versus Kamayama first-round title.

That could be an absolute cracker.

The actual Japanese abdication ceremony involves the existing emperor to go into a room and speak to his mystical ancestors.

Do you have any rituals of this kind before this podcast or in life?

Well, I mean, I speak to all my

spiritual ancestors all the time on

an almost daily basis.

And my general pre-bugle ritual, obviously, I spend half an hour benching, benching

380-odd these days.

I do a triathlon in honor of Chris, but a mental triathlon where I just imagine myself swimming, cycling, and then running.

And then I'd read transcripts of every single previous bugle episode

out loud.

That's not how I see it.

Right.

I Anivab,

how I tend to see it is

this kind of sound

accompanied with the occasional fk I haven't written this bit yet

followed by the occasional period of silence interspersed with a random comment like honky-tonk bedonka-donk.

Those are messages that I'm getting from my spiritual ancestors, Chris.

Okay.

It's a line of communication, exactly.

And Andy, Chris, you forgot.

After doing all of that, Andy, it's time to run in the Indian elections with the symbol of a laundry basket and a money.

I'm busy.

I'm busy, Chris.

Yeah.

In

other Britain news, some very important scientific research has come out this week from the University of Portsmouth who have found that donkeys do not like British weather.

Donkeys don't like our weather.

They prefer to huddle indoors unless it's a really hot, bright, sunny day.

Horses happy outside in pretty much any weather conditions.

But donkeys, very fussy.

And well done to the University of Portsmouth for stepping up to this crucial scientific plate and cutting up our num nums into easily chewable chunks.

This is the kind of science I can get behind.

The reason apparently is that donkeys originate from Africa, so they don't like our chilly British weather.

I, for one, am relieved, Anivab, that this is why they are huddling indoors, because I'd always assumed that they were plotting our downfall.

A bit of interspecies resentment after a millennia of exploitation of the donkeys.

The donk, of course, a crucial part of British heritage and culture, not only

because it carried Alfred and Beatrice Roberts to the birthing suite in Grantham where their daughter Margaret Thatcher was born.

Sorry, I must stop borrowing Jacob Reese Mogg's Bible.

But also, because the donkey ride is a fundamental part of British entertainment, as British kids for centuries, millennia even, have been taken to the beach, put on a donkey, and walked at incredibly slow speed up and down a beach.

And it is truly amazing what the human mind was capable of finding fun before the advent of television and the games console.

Sitting on a slow-moving animal walking up and down a cloudy beach.

Andy, two things.

One,

still relevant.

That's how I go to Starbucks every day.

Still works in some countries.

Second,

how did these experts do the studies with the donkeys?

Did they take them to the theater in the rain?

Did they take

work on sunny days?

Like, what was the basis of the study?

Well, I mean, it's the thing with science, Annivab.

It's not really our business to pry into

how they do it.

We really must just marvel at the very important influential results.

And,

you know, now we understand donkeys

better.

Correct.

And also, I mean, it does suggest that we could deploy them to nursing homes because they like huddling together inside to entertain our increasingly

aging population.

Scientists have made other very important discoveries recently, including that a stopped clock is right either one or two times a day, depending on whether the clock owner is awake or asleep at night.

Clocks cannot be right if no one is looking at them.

Similarly, if a tree falls in a a forest and no one is there to hear it, scientists have found that it does actually make a noise.

And that noise is, wee, I'm falling.

This is the most exciting thing that's ever happened in my arboreal life.

I feel free.

Ow!

Ow, my branches, ow.

I think I've done one of my branches.

Ah, tree down, medic.

Can the rest of you f ⁇ ers quit standing around and do something?

You smug bastards.

Further

scientific research has found that the Anopheles mosquito is 1.28% less likely to spread malaria if it is forced to listen to the classic funk hits of Sly and the Family Stone.

If courgettes taste more like chocolate, more children would eat it.

That's another crucial scientific discovery made at Harvard University.

And this final one also came from the University of Portsmouth's influential Pointless Animal Research Department.

Whilst a live eagle is much better at flying than a live badger, a dead eagle has only a 0.34% advantage at flying versus a dead badger, and then only if you splice its corpse out onto a special frame so its wings stretch out.

So

thank you, science.

Well, that concludes this week's Bugle.

Anubab, thanks very much for shedding some light on the wonders of the Indian electoral process.

Truly baffling and fascinating, as

so many things in India

are.

My pleasure, Andy, and I'll keep track of how many votes you're getting.

And well, now that you've registered me as a

political candidate, I will commit a crime spree.

Evidently, that will make me far more likely to win.

Thank you for listening once again.

Buglers, a gig to alert you to.

I'm doing a solo show at London's Underbelly.

as part of their annual residency on the South Bank.

That is on the 18th of May.

So do please come along to that.

And we will play you out now with some lies about our subscribers, our voluntary subscribers.

If you do want to join them on the voluntary subscription scheme and donate whatever you can and or wish to, whether it's a regular or one-off donation, do go to the Bugle website, thebuglepodcast.com, and click the donate button.

And if you choose one of our, shall we say, premium packages, you can earn yourself a lie about you to be told on this show.

Chris, orchestra, please.

Matt Porter sleeps with a full set of chess pieces under his pillow and a chessboard as he reckons that if the Grim Reaper ever comes for him at night he can distract him with a game of chess and a chat about what they've each done with their respective lives and careers.

An anonymous donor, initials MR, owns a collection of porcelain pelicans because he likes to own figurines whose subject matter is an anagram or part anagram of the material they are made from.

He also has 24 plastic cats, 12 granite tigers, two rats made of quartz and a statue of the aforementioned Narendra Modi made of red diamonds.

Richard van der Haeck is five-time Northern Hemisphere Bird of Prey impersonation champion.

You should hear his buzzard.

It is truly uncanny.

Francis Hamm is surprisingly kosher, in theory at least.

Francis also once guessed correctly in 231 consecutive coin tosses before realizing that the coin had only one side.

Another anonymous donor, initials CW, can cook a potato just by looking at it in an encouraging way.

This makes the molecules in in the potato jiggle about excitedly, mimicking the physics of heat.

Laura van der Vieden thinks that the invention of sliced bread should become the default year zero for all international calendars.

Time to ditch the at-best hopeful guesswork of Bible-based chronology, claims Laura.

Anonymous donor initials KN thinks all public spaces should have free trampolines for people to use.

She has calculated that the economic benefits of this scheme in terms of public well-being and happiness could exceed $300 trillion a month.

Matthias Edera invented a kitchen spatula by cross-breeding a tarantula with a spaceman.

Thomas Taylor sometimes deliberately leaves an upturned ice cream cone on the ground in the woods to provide an impromptu cathedral for any Christian insects who happen to be passing by.

David Manuel can tell what species insects are by the noise they make when they've squished against his car window whilst he's driving.

And Rod Begby could never enjoy the children's fairy story Hansel and Gretel for two reasons.

One, because it is truly, deeply harrowing on many, many levels.

And two, because it always nagged away him how an obviously evil witch could get planning permission to build a house made of gingerbread and confectionery, given that frankly the first half decent shower of rain is going to leave it as a big sticky mess.

Daniel Hawksworth reckons tennis players should have to use a racket in each hand and shout, hi-ya, whenever they serve, and Max Ashford has calculated that, in fact, fewer than 0.2% of roads actually lead to Rome these days, down from a peak of 3.4% in the 4th century AD.

David Wright wonders why golfers don't carry their own bags and thinks they set a very bad example by not taking responsibility for their own kit and moreover by selfishly never letting their caddies have a go at hitting the ball even though they walk around with them for the whole fing day.

And a correspondent who calls himself Silvio Berlusconi has never done anything wrong in his life.

If anything his only crime was to have too much love.

Thank you for your generous contributions to keeping the bugle free and independent.

To join them or take any form of voluntary subscription go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

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.