Independents Day – Bugle 4098

Speaker 1 I will be in Australia for the next few weeks, hoping that the cricket can provide the distraction for everyone that it has so successfully provided for me since I was six years old.

Speaker 1 If you want to come to my shows, there is a Bugle Live in Melbourne on the 22nd of December, where I'll be joined by Sammy Shar and Lloyd Langford.

Speaker 1 And I'm doing the Zoltgeist, my stand-up show in Melbourne on the 23rd of December. And we've just added a possibly optimistic extra show in Sydney on the 3rd of January.

Speaker 1 The 2nd of January show is sold out, but please, please, please come on the 3rd. My UK tour extension begins at the end of january all details and ticket links at andysaltzman.co.uk

Speaker 2 the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world hello buglers and welcome to issue 4098 of the bugle it is the 22nd of february 2019 and i in london am andy zaltzman and I am as sure of that as I can be of anything in this age of doubt and dissembling.

Speaker 2 I do know for sure that what I am not is either of my two co-hosts this week. I am neither, first of all, joined again by the voice of Filth and Reason herself, Alice Fraser.

Speaker 4 Thank you, Andy. I'm putting that on my next poster.

Speaker 2 Nor am I, and I'm equally confident of this. Coming to you live from Mumbai, as is Andrew Van Powell.

Speaker 3 Hello, Andy. I'm happy to report that that you are indeed currently not me.

Speaker 2 Okay, glad we've cleared that we've cleared that up. Let's narrow it down.

Speaker 2 How's India?

Speaker 3 Well, Andy, Alice, hello. Things are well.

Speaker 3 We have a massive election coming up. A billion people are going to vote in the month of May.
So election campaigning has started. And

Speaker 3 a lot of politicians, to get people's votes, just give away stuff for free, Andy. They give away air conditioners, refrigerators, microwaves.

Speaker 3 And I was going to suggest if that would be useful to get Brexit people to vote and influence the vote in any way.

Speaker 3 These are just, you know, again, just like Eastern medicine, these are just Eastern politics that I'm hoping catches on in the West.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess that's preferable to, you know, to offer people something physical and concrete rather than offering them a

Speaker 2 fantastical pipe dream.

Speaker 4 But why would they ever offer you a real fridge when they can offer you the hope of a fridge in the future that will never arrive?

Speaker 2 Oh, democracy, you old tease.

Speaker 2 It is the 22nd of February 2019, meaning it is the 222nd anniversary of the last invasion of Britain, the last time a hostile foreign force landed on British soil.

Speaker 2 That's disagreed with by some right-wing tabloids who seem to think there is an invasion on an almost daily basis. But the last official invasion of Britain, 1797, resulted in the Battle of Fishguard.

Speaker 2 There was a planned three-prong attack by the French. That turned into a one-prong, not so much attack as brief outbreak of looting, two-day low-level scrimmage, and then surrender and the end.

Speaker 2 In terms of violence, it was on a level with three drunken uncles at a wedding arguing over who gets the last profiterole.

Speaker 2 The French invasion force quickly surrendered and wandered off with a least competent invasion award, a certificate for advanced half-arsery, brackets, military, and the sense that Britain would never truly ever trust anything coming from the continent ever again.

Speaker 2 The MVP of the Battle of Fish Guard, Jemima Nicholas, 47 years old, who armed only with a pitchfork, rounded up 12 French soldiers who then swiftly surrendered.

Speaker 2 Super piece of invasion spiking from Jemima. To give some context, these French soldiers were apparently paralytically drunk and surrendered in the pub.

Speaker 2 Why can't all wars be like that? In the Royal Oak.

Speaker 4 Are you sure it was an invasion and they didn't just get turned around in the channel and think they were coming on?

Speaker 2 It's possible.

Speaker 2 The terms of surrender included giving up invading Britain, no next dibs on the pool table in the Royal Oak, don't clean out the quiz machine, and a two-drink minimum for all invading French soldiers for the next hundred years.

Speaker 2 Also, today is the anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.

Speaker 4 Which miracle on ice?

Speaker 2 Oh, well, well, I'll give you a multiple choice quiz since you ask Alice and Anuvab, you can chip in on this as well. What was the miracle on ice and on the 22nd of February?

Speaker 2 Of which year did it take place? Was it A, in 1931, when J.

Speaker 2 Bramett Falkling, the Canadian Emeritus Professor of Messianology at the University of Labrador, demonstrated how Jesus could at least have walked on frozen water by walking across a frozen lake on Baffin Island in February?

Speaker 2 Not all the locals believed it, of course. They were having none of it.

Speaker 2 They were having none of it. Yeah, we got it.

Speaker 2 We just hoped if we ignored it, you'd you'd stop.

Speaker 2 Well, I did kind of suspect we'll get that reaction. In Newt.

Speaker 2 Oh, no.

Speaker 2 And was The Miracle on Ice B? 1994, a book of academic writings by the Hungarian Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Mira Kule concerning the deeper meanings of the early works of the rapper Ice Tea.

Speaker 2 Was The Miracle on Ice?

Speaker 2 In 2002, a really awesome cocktail made by 18-year-old Percival Crimp at a house party in which he raided his parents' booze cupboard and blended some cheap Latvian whiskey, a can of cider eight years past its best before date that had fallen over behind a bottle of bacon-flavoured tequila at the back of that booze cabinet with some corn flakes, some whipped cream, a gherkin, and some deep-heat mussel rub.

Speaker 2 The resulting concoction caused Crimp to ask Kimberly Scroffins out on a date, and she said yes. To everyone's surprise, the cocktail was given its Miracle on Ice name.

Speaker 2 Although Kimberly and Percival never went on that date, and it later transpired that she had not even been at the party.

Speaker 2 And Crimp had, in fact, propositioned a portrait painting of his great-aunt Meredith, who, to be fair, was a bit of a look of back in the 1930s.

Speaker 2 Or was the miracle on ice D in 1980 when the USA beat the mighty Soviet Union in ice hockey at the Winter Olympics.

Speaker 2 The amateur American team made up of young college students, a couple of competition prize winners who'd sent in pictures of polar bears playing ice hockey.

Speaker 2 Also in the squad a cleaner from the venue who just wandered into the team room at the wrong time and ended up playing 22 minutes of the match for the American team. And President Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 Of course it's a little known fact that American presidents can not only give pardons to criminals but can also select themselves for national teams in any Olympics. And

Speaker 2 as well as him, Marlon Brando was in the squad researching for a forthcoming role in the film Puck Invaders 2 Alien Hockey Mayhem.

Speaker 2 The Soviet team, of course, made up of the leading ice hockey players from the communist world in 1980, four-time reigning Olympic champions,

Speaker 2 the Red Machine, included not only some great hockey players, but also a crack division of the Red Army, including four PT-76 amphibious tanks and the former Communist Revolution star Lenin as a dressing room motivational motivational corpse.

Speaker 2 But despite this, America won 4-3 thanks to two third period goals

Speaker 2 and also by being supported by the combined forces of democratic justice against the skewed, broken, hypocritical pseudo-Marxist autocracy of the USSR, causing wild scenes of celebration, reminiscent of when the Stretton Redhawk came from three down with 12 minutes to go against the London Raiders back in November of 2018 to take it to overtime and went on a shootout.

Speaker 2 Surely one of the greatest upsets in sports history.

Speaker 2 The Stretton one, or the American one, I forget. Today is also World Thinking Day.

Speaker 4 Was it a quiz?

Speaker 2 It was definitely a question, definitely a quiz. Yeah.

Speaker 4 No, I've forgotten the quiz.

Speaker 2 All right. It was which of those was the miracle on ice? 22nd of February? There you go.
Answers on a post. It was all of them.
All of them. All of them are true.

Speaker 2 Especially the last one.

Speaker 4 Did you forget halfway through writing that, as I forgot halfway through listening to that, that it was a quiz?

Speaker 2 Well, what is a quiz?

Speaker 3 Even though it was, you know, D, the game between the Russians and the Americans, the world would have been a a much better place if it was B, an author called Miracle, writing a book on the rapper Ice T.

Speaker 3 And its subsequent sequel, I wonder if it'll be called just Frozen.

Speaker 3 It's sad that it's not that.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, but then again, you know, is life just not a quiz in which you never really find the answer? So, who are we blaming here? Me or reality?

Speaker 5 Is who we're blaming here, the first question?

Speaker 2 I mean, again,

Speaker 2 that is basically the fundamental question driving all of global politics right now. That's what happened to this show.

Speaker 2 We just accidentally satirise the nature of existence through our incompetent writing.

Speaker 2 Today is also World Thinking Day. We would encourage you to boycott this evil institution.

Speaker 2 Thinking could undermine Brexit, it could lead to an irreparable breakdown in trust in democracy, could cause market-spluttering doubts about whether unfettered capitalism is really the most sensible way to run the planet.

Speaker 2 So please do not succumb to the temptation to think about what the fk we've done to this planet over the last 5,000 years. The whole edifice could come crashing down.

Speaker 2 As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

Speaker 2 This week, we look at social media as more and more people and indeed some celebrities who are like people but different, although they do share over 85% of the same DNA.

Speaker 2 People and celebrities are ditching social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Ephemero, which is the one-second thought platform, Transience,

Speaker 2 which is the hit forgettable entertainment platform in which creators can post songs, films, poems, and various other influenzials requiring a maximum of two discernible thought processes to compute, which naturally fade from the audience's mind within six seconds.

Speaker 2 Also, people have been boycotting Insignifax, in which celebs post uninteresting observations, contactless aphorisms, and post endorsement photographs.

Speaker 2 The Insignifax page stroke app then sends a fax to the celebs' followers telling them their hero has posted something, but not what it is that they've posted.

Speaker 2 The followers then wonder what it was for a couple of seconds and then get on with their lives.

Speaker 2 So it has been a tough time for platforms such as this, according to a new report by the social media app Exaggerate, which translates things that are at least partially true into wildly overstated claims masquerading as fact, which has claimed that

Speaker 2 platforms like Instagram and Twitter are being abandoned by people in their trillions.

Speaker 2 And we also ask, should you give up listening to podcasts? No, no, please, please, please

Speaker 2 do not do that, particularly not now, at this time, where the Bugle is going independent. Now, we will have a full relaunch episode in March and a new season.

Speaker 2 I think it'll be season five, Chris, of The Bugle, or is it season six?

Speaker 5 I mean, I don't even know what number you want to call this new season, right?

Speaker 4 I mean, we're currently on season four, right?

Speaker 2 I think it's season four.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but what what about all the episodes in between? Like, all the episodes from about 300 onwards?

Speaker 2 Where are they?

Speaker 2 Season one was the first four years at the Times. Season two was the voluntary subscription years.

Speaker 2 Season three was one episode long.

Speaker 2 And I think

Speaker 2 season four was the current season since October 2017. So I think that's a good thing.

Speaker 4 Well, so this is going back to independent donations, which means

Speaker 4 season two, part two.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I agree with that. Right.
So season 2B, which follows season 4. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, that makes as much sense as your item that went in the bin today.

Speaker 2 2B or not 2B. We will see.

Speaker 4 Season 2 returns.

Speaker 6 We need to workshop this.

Speaker 2 We do need to workshop this, and indeed many other things. But you can already contribute to the future of the Bugle by going to thebuglepodcast.com and clicking the donate button.

Speaker 2 Yes, we are essentially relaunching a new improved voluntary subscription scheme. There are various options for you there.
So if you can and want to support this podcast, please do so.

Speaker 2 And hopefully it'll catapult the Bugle into a glorious new independent future. So go to thebuglepodcast.com and click donate.

Speaker 4 Top story private moon mission in Moon Jews News Now, a team of Israeli scientists will launch the first privately funded moon mission sending a spacecraft to collect data from the lunar surface.

Speaker 4 The robotic lander is called Beresheet. Is it a Hebrew word meaning Genesis, Andy? There's a bearsheet in the woods.
Of course it is a Hebrew word meaning genesis.

Speaker 2 Propelled by one of Earth.

Speaker 2 You didn't even tell me that, obviously. Obviously.

Speaker 4 Propelled by one of Elon Musk's SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. It will measure the magnetic field of the moon and will also...

Speaker 2 I've always been wondering what that was, actually.

Speaker 2 Glad someone's going to be able to clear that up. I've been a number of times I've just been up in the middle of the night thinking, I wonder what the magnetic force of the the moon is.

Speaker 4 Just desperately holding up a fridge magnet and trying to feel it in your fingertips.

Speaker 2 Never quite sticks.

Speaker 4 The space thing, Beresheet, will also deposit a time capsule of digital files the size of coins containing the Bible, children's drawing, Israel's national anthem and flag, as well as memories of a Holocaust survivor, making it a full round of bullshit bingo for both anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, moon landing sceptics, and flat earthers.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's very exciting, this, because they are hoping to find out a number of,

Speaker 2 I mean, just quickly, the logistics of it are quite interesting.

Speaker 2 The route is going to take the lander module is going to be put in the freight hold of an Airbus 380 from Tel Aviv airport direct to Dallas and then transported on a pickup to the studio where they film these things with their special fluttery flags.

Speaker 2 So hopefully the doctored film should be up online by the middle of next week.

Speaker 2 So they're hoping to find out from this expedition, is the moon actually a fully farmable arable paradise covered in a temporary shell casing, making it look like a useless rock of no particular relevance to humanity?

Speaker 2 And also, is the moon kosher?

Speaker 4 Not if they take meat up there.

Speaker 2 It doesn't necessarily mean it's dairy, does it?

Speaker 4 Isn't the moon made of cheese? Wasn't that a thing?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I guess that was a thing, but whether it's a true thing or not, I think there's probably a loophole on that.

Speaker 4 We won't know until it's on a bagel, Andy.

Speaker 2 Never a truer word said.

Speaker 3 Andy, Alice, I have a quick question about this. It centers around just rich people doing things in space.

Speaker 2 Now, I know this is a private mission, and

Speaker 3 I know that Jeff Bezos has a thing called Blue Origin, where he sends stuff up in space. And I have a side ambition where I'm kind of obsessed with rich people's hobbies.

Speaker 3 And I looked up a particular Middle Eastern prince who was obsessed with making exotic pets make love to each other to see what would happen.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 he made an emu and a giraffe mate just to see what would happen.

Speaker 2 And I feel that,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I have no record of what happened

Speaker 3 because I didn't speak to the emu or the giraffe, but

Speaker 3 I do know that rich people down in America, and I assume in Israel, are obsessed with just sending things up to space. Now, if I was an alien

Speaker 3 and I just started seeing stuff just go up there, I would think that was just another rich-spoiled brat who invented tick tock or something like that

Speaker 3 I don't know I don't know why I just want to know how you guys feel about the rich private people being obsessed with space

Speaker 2 well I mean it's just all part of humanity's escape strategy isn't it because clearly we're you know we're busy fing this planet up so if you can we can stick a rocket on the moon yeah Anubab from a particular perspective this is just rich people seeing what you can get to f another thing

Speaker 2 and it's gone from

Speaker 4 poor people to seeing if you can the stars.

Speaker 2 Also, they will be looking for any further proof that God might have promised the moon to my team as well,

Speaker 2 hoping to find some sign of God in the moon dust that showed that he'd marked out the renowned orb for his

Speaker 2 us, his chosen people. So it could be could be very exciting.
That

Speaker 2 whole new promised satellite

Speaker 2 in other, well, tangentially related, I guess, waiting for the Messiah news, a fish could be Jesus.

Speaker 2 Scientists have found that a Scottish stickleback fish had a virgin birth.

Speaker 2 They've named the fish Mary after the mother of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 Jesus Christ, for those of you who haven't heard of him, a prominent turn of the first millennium Middle East space magician and raconteur, of course.

Speaker 2 Apparently, this fish fertilized its own eggs internally in an absolute first for

Speaker 2 stickleback reproduction. Jesus, of course, was in his time one of the top-ranked messiahs, although the rankings I think were done like tennis rankings.

Speaker 2 So they only counted your miracles and your parables in the last 12 months, all weighted equally, which is kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 2 I don't know why they're going to do it more like golf, where it decays over two years, so it's more weighted to the recent miracles and the parables.

Speaker 2 So the problem is you're feeding of the 5,000, you're wedding at Cana, turning water into wine, that kind of stuff. Great for a year, then suddenly worth nothing.

Speaker 2 To me, it skews the whole notion of how messianic you can judge someone to be. But look, I digress.
Anyway, it's got this.

Speaker 2 They would collect it. The way they discovered this, they were collecting fish, these scientists, during a scheme to do the genome sequencing of sticklebacks.
Because, well,

Speaker 2 you have to, don't you? I mean, you've got to know the genome sequence of a stickleback, otherwise, what's the point?

Speaker 2 And hopefully, they'll be able to then pinpoint why it is that us and sticklebacks are so different from each other.

Speaker 2 Why is it that we can't breathe underwater and they can't play cribbage or build functioning medieval castles? So hopefully the genome sequencing will

Speaker 2 reveal all that. So this fish, Mary, Mary the stickleback, delivered her stickle nippers by cesarean section.
That's the problem with fish today, too post to push.

Speaker 2 And 54 bouncing, well sploshing baby sticklebacks. Miracle baby fishes, Alice.

Speaker 4 Miracle baby fishes, it does cast some light on how Jesus did do the multiplying of the fishes situation himself.

Speaker 4 If internal fertilization was part of that, I don't think anyone would have wanted to eat however many fish there were.

Speaker 4 Oh, no, no, I've had plenty.

Speaker 2 20 of these 54 fish are still alive. It's not clear whether any of the remaining 34 have been betrayed by their buddies or crucified.
Very hard to tell with fish.

Speaker 2 The scientists said we couldn't believe it when we found she had completely developed embryos inside her ovaries.

Speaker 2 Pretty much unheard of say the scientists i mean there's a lot of questions that have been

Speaker 4 raised by this story i think first of all how would you have heard of it if it happened before because fish don't talk that's very famously their thing that's why you send people to sleep with them yep because they're very discreet fish don't talk hips don't lie two of the eternal truths of life alice andy my question very simple Would this affect the dating scene in the high seas?

Speaker 2 I don't know much about the dating scene in the high seas it's been a while it's relatively fruitful andy there's always more fish

Speaker 2 very good

Speaker 2 but i i mean it could do really couldn't it of uh i mean it could lead to

Speaker 2 i mean a real kind of gender war and then what i mean what a what a male fish gonna do it i'll just be

Speaker 2 you know foot loose fancy free Do they have feet? Can you be foot loose without a foot?

Speaker 2 Other questions,

Speaker 2 was this really the coming of the the pisk guy and Jesus?

Speaker 2 If so, could a fish messiah actually be more effective than a human messiah?

Speaker 2 And also,

Speaker 2 how disappointed should I be as an English Jew who isn't very good at swimming that it seems that the Messiah is a f ⁇ ing stickleback fish from Scotland?

Speaker 3 Fair point, but think about this. How many messiahs can go in and out of a jet stream?

Speaker 2 Well, again, it's one of the eternal questions of life.

Speaker 4 People are asking a lot of questions in this episode, and I'm not sure you really want answers to them.

Speaker 2 How many pharaohs does it take to change a light bulb?

Speaker 2 How many?

Speaker 2 What? I thought you had an answer. No, I don't.
Just that's what I want to know.

Speaker 2 I imagine they delegate.

Speaker 2 They don't seem averse to a prolonged period in a darkened room.

Speaker 4 One to do it, the other to claim the monument and carve their name over the other one's face.

Speaker 2 In other

Speaker 2 natural world news,

Speaker 2 more

Speaker 2 disgusting insect news. Following on from last week's disgusting insect news section, the world's largest bee has been discovered, rediscovered in fact.
People thought it had gone extinct.

Speaker 2 It hasn't been seen for almost four decades. The bee is called the mega child Pluto,

Speaker 2 also known as Wallace's giant bee, also known as Big Stingy Buzzbuzz, that's an Australian name. Keep it simple.

Speaker 2 Also known as the Honey Hercules, the six-legged shitbag, and the pollen-pounding bastard bug, and the bee rex.

Speaker 2 It's been rediscovered. It's absolutely vast.
It clocks in at almost four centimetres long, which is way too big for a bee in

Speaker 2 my book. It's as big as a human thumb.
Also like a human thumb. It's not what you want poking out of your sausage sandwich at a picnic.

Speaker 2 Crucially, it's got six more legs and one more. wrist.

Speaker 2 Both interesting pleasers.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 2 you didn't mean to say that, Alice.

Speaker 4 But I did anyway.

Speaker 4 Have you seen the picture of this big bee?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's pretty big, but it's not as big as I thought it would be when people were telling me that the biggest bee had been found. Like, it's big for a bee, but it's not as big as that big cow.

Speaker 4 Remember the big cow? Yep, yep. I mean, it's obviously smaller than that cow, but technically it's probably a bigger bee for a bee than that cow was big for a cow compared to other cows.

Speaker 4 I expect to be more impressed, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Right. I mean, I think I'd be pretty impressed if I saw it

Speaker 2 in person.

Speaker 2 Crucially, to return to the comparison with the human thumb, it has six more legs and one more sting than the average thumb, and is less likely to get you a free ride in someone's car if you hitchhike by waggling it past some drivers.

Speaker 2 Much more effective, sorry, much less effective than the human thumb, unless that thumb is severed, which is in many ways the worst way to hitchhike.

Speaker 2 compared with a regular bee it's almost three times as long and the lady megachild pluto or i think the mega child dina the daxon technically for disney fans or the mega child persephone for uh classical mythology fans um

Speaker 2 uh she she's a big one for almost four centimeters in bee length and male versions are much shorter the pc brigade have finally got their way

Speaker 2 It has jaws, according to the 19th century naturalist Alfred Wallace, like quotes, an industrial-level robot mega shark could chomp you up like a frankfurter and gob you into a bucket.

Speaker 2 A normal bee weighs only 1.1 grams, whereas the megacharth Pluto can weigh none of your business.

Speaker 2 You've already length-shamed the lady mega child bee. Don't start banging on about its weight.
Let it be the bee it wants to be.

Speaker 2 And in terms of wingspan, more than a housefly, less than a Lancaster bomber, but still

Speaker 2 big for a bee.

Speaker 4 In more discovering of all creatures, big and tiny, the fossilized remains of a proto-T-Rex has been found in Utah. It's about the size of a donkey.

Speaker 4 It's a tiny dinosaur, or tinosaur, as I shall now call it.

Speaker 4 It stood around three to four feet tall at the hip and lived 15 million years before the big T-Rexes and has been named Moros intrepidis, meaning harbinger of doom, which reminds me of my niece-in-law, who is extremely big for her one and a half years of age, but very small for an actual human.

Speaker 4 But she keeps getting in trouble for going into the infant area during daycare nap time and trying to hug the babies like a miniature Godzilla.

Speaker 4 But imagine being a tiny T-Rex. It'd be like being one of those small dogs that you see in the city.
You think they're the same amount of dog as a big dog, but clearly aren't.

Speaker 4 Dr.

Speaker 4 Lindsay Zano, who's the paleontologist at the North Carolina State University, has said, when and how quickly Tyrannosaurs went from wallflower to prom king has been vexing paleontologists for a long time, which says a lot about how unpopular most paleontologists were during their high school years, without shedding any light on the answers at all.

Speaker 4 Imagining a high school prom full of dinosaurs.

Speaker 4 It would be even more countage than an actual high school prom, which from American movies looks like a really stressful nexus of narrative-driven coming-of-age character arcs and date rape.

Speaker 3 You know, Alice, I think that this is the kind of T-Rex that will definitely display fascist tendencies.

Speaker 2 Are you going to explain, you know, give a little

Speaker 2 more flesh on those long fossilized bones?

Speaker 4 They can't do the hidden salute.

Speaker 2 They've got tiny arms.

Speaker 2 In other giant versions of animals that are not actually extinct news. Now,

Speaker 2 more exciting news: a living member of a species of tortoise, not seen in over a hundred years and thought to be extinct, has been found.

Speaker 2 In the Galapagos Islands, the species is known as the Chelanoidis fantasticus, which is also a medical condition suffered by 30% of all popes. It's a rash caused by chafing of an unwashed chasuble.

Speaker 2 So, giant tortoises are back, giant bees are back.

Speaker 2 If this does not convince you that the apocalypse is coming, wait until you see the size of the pussycat they found in the line enclosure of Windsor Safari Park last week.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of talk in the papers about insects dying off, and if insects die off, all of humanity apparently dies off. So, maybe they're evolving into one big insect.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 3 raises the question: is one big thing of something better than many small things of the same thing?

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 6 that's that's run and run through through history that yes when it comes to Toblerones

Speaker 2 well we've clearly deliberately avoided this for this show so far by banging on about moon landings and massive bees but it's time now to turn our attention reluctantly to Brexit once again the inescapable shit on our national dinner plate here in Britain and time the insufferable little bastard that it it is, is inflexibly rumbling on.

Speaker 2 And on, despite the fact that we in Britain, we could seriously deal with time slowing down at the very least, ideally stopping for a while to let us get our national shit together, or even more ideally going backwards so that we can have another go at stuff.

Speaker 2 Not that far backwards for any of our ardent Jacob Reese Mog supporting hard Brexit rebuild the Empire type buglers.

Speaker 2 Maybe just four years or so so we can inject David Cameron with a special serum that makes him immune to the temptation to hold ill-defined high-risk referendums in an effort to shore up his personal political power base in a traditionally sclerotically divided Tory party.

Speaker 2 If you want to know what's been going on this week in the Brexit legislato-negotiatory deadliniac situation, just listen to the Brexit bit from any bugle from the last two years and imagine that with a heightened sense of panic, disillusionment, stroppiness, and embafflement.

Speaker 2 More votes in Parliament are imminent. The days are ticking down until the government officially launches its new Cliff Edges of Fun slogan.

Speaker 2 And the ghost of King Arthur is due to emerge at some point next week from his fictional grave and ram Excalibur back into a stone while saying, I'm done with this place.

Speaker 2 And this week we've seen the party system is starting to crumble.

Speaker 2 Seven Labour MPs splat from the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit stance, which in case you've not been following it, is

Speaker 2 yeah, I think, look,

Speaker 2 definitely,

Speaker 2 let's give it another couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 And also due to anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, including Chuka Ramuna, my local MP. He

Speaker 2 splat from Labour.

Speaker 2 Then three Conservative MPs, splat from the Conservative Party, then one more Labour MP, splat from Labour, and another Labour MP, he splat, but not to join the new alliance of independent MPs made up of the other ones who already splitted stroke splat off.

Speaker 2 Vive, la révolution Britannique. This is an indecisive revolt in response to an era of indecision precipitated by an indecisive decision in the referendum.

Speaker 2 They are literally trembling in Downing Street.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, they're doing that anyway all the time. This might have added a slight extra tremble.

Speaker 2 What it essentially is, is a slow, pathetic fragmentation of a party system that is not so much ripe for change as ripened, fallen off the tree, mulched down, rotten, and decayed for change.

Speaker 2 Where will it all end? Ah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 Frankly, our system is clearly as nuts as it can possibly get without being America or indeed many other countries.

Speaker 3 Is it possible that enough people will rebel against their own party so that the number of independents is actually larger than the number of people in both the parties right now?

Speaker 2 It's possible, but at the current rate, I think that would take about eight years.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, as revolutions go, it's pretty low-key, isn't it? It's not, you know, they're not exactly chained themselves to the houses of parliament. dressed as giant courgettes like any others.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, and all this depressing news, Andy Alice, I can report from my corner of the world, there is one place I know that still loves Britain.

Speaker 3 It's a restaurant in South Mumbai, and it's a restaurant that you've probably been to, Andy. It's called Britannia.
Oh, yes. Very new, very Indian name, Britannia.

Speaker 3 And its owner has, for the last 70 years, refused to be part of the Indian Union.

Speaker 3 He flies the British flag, has a photograph of your queen, and most of the time often refuses to speak to any customer in the local language.

Speaker 4 Really carrying on the British traditions there.

Speaker 3 He really is. He really is, Alice.
And I think in all this bad news, I just thought, you know, I'd throw out from a far-flung corner

Speaker 3 of the former empire, there are people that miss the old days.

Speaker 3 And in India news, Andy,

Speaker 3 we've all been here, so I just wanted to report it. Andy TV, one of our main news channels, reported about three weeks ago that a man accidentally drove his car onto a cricket field.

Speaker 3 Claimed he was lost, and that he'd taken a wrong turn. Now, I just want to know what you guys think of this.
I mean, we've all been here, Andy.

Speaker 3 I know, you know, suddenly you may have taken a left in London, and suddenly you're on the Lord's pitch in the middle of the ashes.

Speaker 3 Apparently, this was the news item here. I do not know why leading cricketers complained that a small Hyundai wagon R drove straight under the pitch asking for directions.

Speaker 2 And I mean, this is

Speaker 2 not just an ordinary club game, where, I mean, frankly, that can happen all the time, given that the demarcation between road and cricket field in India is much more blurred than it tends to be here.

Speaker 2 This was a Ranji trophy game, the kind of professional level of Indian domestic cricket, featuring a number of stars from the

Speaker 2 Indian national team. And there was a car not only that is driven onto the

Speaker 2 onto the playing surface but right into the middle onto the the pitch where the the game is played which needs to be protected at all costs they get stroppy about human beings running on the pitch because it could damage the surface a huge part of cricket this guy has driven his car onto the actual pitch of this this cricket ground

Speaker 2 and i mean presumably it's one thing to drive accidentally drive into a cricket ground i mean mistakes are made but to then think oh look at all those guys in the middle I'll just drive up to them and I'll ask them if they're not.

Speaker 4 There's only one place here that looks like a parking spot.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 3 I mean guys look when your Google Maps is not working you've got to ask someone for directions. Why not the wicket keeper?

Speaker 4 The BCCI acting president C.K. Khanna told PTI, this is a breach of security measures at the Services Sports Control Board ground.

Speaker 4 Imagine if any if the man had had any sinister motive then lives of international cricketers could have been in danger. Imagine though, instead of sinister motives, he had a car full of balloons.

Speaker 4 Then lots of international cricketers could have had a fun balloon party.

Speaker 4 But what if we imagine instead that he was nude, covered in chocolate spread, and sprinkles with disapproving pictures of his own frowning face pasted over his nips and dongles?

Speaker 4 Then the lives of international cricketers could have been full of confusion.

Speaker 4 This kind of speculation helps nobody.

Speaker 3 Alice, I think you've just revived the Ruggie Trophy cricket tournament with just that one situation.

Speaker 2 Nips and dongles, the most harrowing kids' cartoon I've ever seen.

Speaker 3 And very quickly, in other Indian news, Andy,

Speaker 3 again, Alice Andy, we've all been here.

Speaker 3 An Indian man, a man in Mumbai, this is on the BBC, sued his parents for giving birth to him.

Speaker 2 Look. Both his parents.
He was a bit harsh on the dad.

Speaker 3 I guess they were both involved in the whole process. And it raises a valuable philosophical question that man has been trying to answer for millennia.
Who are we and what are we doing here?

Speaker 3 And he's answered it by saying we are forced into a habitat non-consensually and then made to litigate.

Speaker 4 I mean, I get his outrage, Anubab.

Speaker 4 None of us want to contemplate the uncomfortable reality that for most of us we are the residual byproduct of a time our parents literally had naked sex with each other.

Speaker 4 It's hard to look at yourself in the mirror when all you can see is that we are in ourselves a constant inescapable reminder of the erotic vignette of sweaty procreative parental coitus.

Speaker 4 It's why women wear makeup.

Speaker 3 Alice, I'm worried. Have you been talking to this guy?

Speaker 2 But his parents were both lawyers. So this is going to be a tough case for him to win.
Albeit it does maybe justify why he's suing them.

Speaker 4 I think he should sue them for making him into such an asshole.

Speaker 3 He raised a lot of sort of interesting points in his affidavit. He said, why should I suffer? Why must I be stuck in traffic? Why must I work? Why must I face wars? Why must I feel pain?

Speaker 3 Why should I do anything when I don't want to? Many questions, one answer. Someone had me for their pleasure.

Speaker 2 Sort of drilling down into the very heart of the human condition, as you said.

Speaker 3 I have a feeling whatever ruling the judge passes on this,

Speaker 3 he's going to go back and maybe sue his own parents, and I'm not concerned.

Speaker 2 This is a rabbit hole. Where does this end?

Speaker 2 I mean, it could set an extremely dangerous legal precedent.

Speaker 4 I mean, it's the nanny state gone mad, hasn't it?

Speaker 4 Going to the courts to complain about choices your parents have made instead of doing what people who hate their parents used to do, which is marry someone they disapprove of and then wait for them to get old and ship them off to an old folks' home with deliberately ugly carpets.

Speaker 4 Deal with your problems yourself, mate.

Speaker 3 I think you may just have described India, Alice.

Speaker 3 Described the lives of a billion people.

Speaker 3 In my last India story, Alice Andy, it's a question.

Speaker 1 It's a question.

Speaker 3 Again, I'm the BBC. Indian rail minister, our minister of railways, has just launched a train.
He claims it's India's fastest train. It's called the Vandebharat Express.

Speaker 3 And to show the world that he's launched this fast train, he put up a two-minute clip of it on Twitter and immediately Twitter trolls pointed out that the train was not fast but the footage was at 2x speed

Speaker 3 which raises again an important philosophical question for you guys is being fast as important as looking fast

Speaker 4 not in today's world it's all about appearances about perception yeah you can't really hold him accountable for using technology to make something look a little more impressive than it actually is in this era of social media filters.

Speaker 4 Show me someone who would willingly select and send the accurate, if depressing, dick pic instead of the one where it looks as much as possible like a looming monument to the might of the ages of man, and I will show you a liar.

Speaker 2 Well, it's good that government ministers in India are taking the philosophy of the dick pic into

Speaker 2 top-level politics.

Speaker 3 And Alice, this is probably the first time that a dick pic has been compared to Hellenic Greece.

Speaker 2 Ancient Rome.

Speaker 2 They were not afraid of a dick pic. Ancient Greece, they put it on their vases.

Speaker 2 And I mean, it's not the first time this has happened.

Speaker 2 If you look at any black and white footage from the early 20th century, obviously people speeded it up to make it look like they were busier than they actually were.

Speaker 2 This is the thing, guys.

Speaker 3 This is the thing. Perhaps Indian Railway Minister Pirushkohal is a huge Buster Keaton fan.

Speaker 2 We don't know.

Speaker 3 I'm happy to report that subsequently, India's fastest train has had a few roadblocks.

Speaker 3 It broke down on two of its first two runs.

Speaker 3 The first time people threw stones at it, I don't know why. And the second time it hit cattle.

Speaker 2 And the third time

Speaker 3 there was a person crossing with a motorbike.

Speaker 3 and he saw this really fast train coming. This was somewhere in the state of Uttar Pradesh that the train covers.
He saw the train, he abandoned his motorbike and ran.

Speaker 3 And perhaps it raises important questions in our democracy, which is there is a reason our trains go slowly.

Speaker 4 I have an India story as well, Anuvab.

Speaker 2 Fantastic!

Speaker 4 Which you sent through, so it's your story.

Speaker 4 But the officials have caused an environmentalism kerfuffle in India by beginning to remove hundreds of crocodiles from the site of the world's largest statue,

Speaker 4 which I love.

Speaker 4 They're being relocated to allow for a seaplane service to carry tourists to the Statue of Unity, which is impressive because it's a 597-foot-tall, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, and was also apparently built smack banging in the middle of a massive live crocodiles, which makes it quite the feat.

Speaker 4 The authorities are worried that hundreds of crocodiles will interfere with the new tourist seaplane that hopes to ferry people in to see the statue.

Speaker 4 And I think this is a situation where they need to take note of the obvious signs, bow to the inevitable, and install an evil supervillain in the giant statue that's surrounded by it's a giant statue surrounded by crocodiles.

Speaker 4 That is not just the natural environment of crocodiles, it's also the natural environment of someone with plans to shoot the moon.

Speaker 2 Do we know though that they built this statue in the middle of a crocodile swamp? Or did they build the statue and then the crocodiles came to see what all the fuss was about?

Speaker 3 Now, I'm glad you guys brought this up because Malabhai Patel, whose statue this is, was a noted Indian freedom fighter, India's first defence minister.

Speaker 3 He was many things, but he was not a bond villain.

Speaker 2 Was he a crocodile fan?

Speaker 3 I think he may have liked reptiles. He may have liked reptiles.
And there is a big revival of Fallabhai Patel in India because he was a big patriot. He started India's first independent army.

Speaker 3 People love him. So, a lot of associations with patriotism.
But again, in India, we ask questions that have never been asked in the world, which is patriotism or reptiles.

Speaker 2 What a game show that would be.

Speaker 2 Well, that brings us to the end of this week's Bugle. Thank you very much for listening.
Don't forget the Bugle Live tour of the USA begins on Tuesday in Brooklyn, then Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 2 An extra show has been added in Washington, so please do come along to that.

Speaker 2 Then 10 other cities over the following two weeks, by which time I will be even more tired than I am now.

Speaker 2 And bear in mind now, I've just had six consecutive mornings in which I've had to get up at 5.30am to take my son to a

Speaker 2 half-term camp. And my entire adult and working life has been dedicated to not having to get up at 5.30 in the morning.
Something has gone horribly wrong.

Speaker 2 So the American tour will feature Alice Fraser

Speaker 2 on screen.

Speaker 4 On screen via Skype.

Speaker 2 Via Skype.

Speaker 2 And we have a couple of other live guests,

Speaker 2 new Bugle guests

Speaker 2 during the tour. So do come along to all of those shows.
Details on the Bugle website and elsewhere on the internet.

Speaker 2 And don't forget, if you want to contribute financially to the future of the Bugle, we are going independent, relaunching the voluntary subscription scheme.

Speaker 2 Go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button and your support will be enormously gratefully.

Speaker 6 Because you're trying to be sincere and I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 No, it doesn't come easily to me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 all your contributions will be gratefully received received and spent on sports memorabilia. Sorry, the future health and continuing existence of the show.

Speaker 2 Until next week, Buglers, goodbye. Bye.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye.