Bugle 282 – Twas the Dick before Christmas

Right, how ready are we?

Yep, fing ready.

Okay, uh, we are rolling.

Ready as f.

Ready as f.

Here I go.

This is a podcast from thebuglepodcast.com.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 282 of The Bugle, the audio newspaper for a visual world, which has just won the prestigious Thing of the Year title in the Bugle Podcast's annual awards for a record's 17th consecutive year.

I am the convener and sole voting member of the awards adjudication panel, Andy Zoltzmann, live in London, where Christmas looms like a sausage.

And from New York City, it's the the man who yet again did not show up to the wars discussion meeting, thus being unable to put the case for any of the other nominees for Thing of the Year, namely his own TV show, The Environment, still bossing us around after all these years.

The as-yet unpublicised discovery of a new form of whoop, a cross between a holler and a yelp, with a hint of the gasp and an undercurrent of despair.

James Rodriguez's goal for Columbia against Uruguay and the World Cup, sliced bread, still going strong, Crimean democracy, and of course the British magic royal embryo and its predecessors, the Royal Sperm and Eggs.

So the bugle has won yet again, and so the man joining me is the comedic kebabstick himself, skewering the rotten nuggets of real news and gag-grilling them into the tasty teriyaki of truth served with a side dish of acerbic discussion.

It's John Oliver.

Best moment of the year for me, Rodriguez's goal, Andy.

It's been a dark year.

There's been some troubling events, but what a strike.

What a goal.

To control it and to hit it so cleanly.

I'm not going to say it offsets everything that happened in the world this year, but I think we all know that it kind of did.

So, hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

I experienced a roller coaster of emotions over a particular story this week, Andy, because my sister sent me a link to a sensational story about the Christmas lights outside the Harrod store in London.

The story was about the fact that Asanta had been fired and had then gone rogue, changing the lights outside the store so they would read f off

the story,

the story, which is beautiful.

This is Santa.

That is the story in every way.

It's turning me Christian, John, as you speak.

It's amazing.

Well, just you got to stay with it.

Stay with it.

The story, which is beautiful in every way, read, gaining access to a maintenance control room, the Santa, who had just been fired, was able to locate the charts and corresponding switches for Harrod's 10,000 external lights.

Barricading himself in, he disabled the correct lights until he could spell out his feelings to Harrod's bosses and Christmas shoppers alike.

He was removed by security guards after an hour-long standoff and handed over to police.

He'd drunk the best part of two bottles of whiskey, said a spokesman for the iconic London store.

And it's that kind of behaviour that got him the sack in the first place.

Hudson has since been released on police bail.

Knightsbridge visitors were stunned.

Honestly, I'm disgusted, said Irene Ryder, 59 from Indiana.

I was with my grandchildren.

We'd just gotten off the bus.

I said, look, everybody, and pointed up to the lights.

But you know what the lights said?

They said, f ⁇ off.

And that is not an appropriate message for a child at least not at Christmas

now the thing I love about that last statement Andy is that it implies telling children to go f ⁇ themselves is absolutely an appropriate message at other times of the year

so I was so excited Andy about this story and then I realized the date on the story was 2010 and then I realized that it was reportedly a hoax back then and hadn't actually happened and then even more importantly I realised I didn't care if it had happened or not it was an amazing story and isn't that deep down what Christmas is all about Andy

isn't the true meaning of Christmas an improbable story from an uncertain time that is so fantastic people decide to believe in it anyway For some people, it's a baby in a stable born to a virgin mother, Andy.

For me, from now on, it's a drunk Santa telling shoppers to go f themselves in lights.

It's the true meaning of Christmas.

Absolutely.

In fact, if that story had been what had happened 2014 years ago, then frankly,

I think the entire world would be Christian by now.

Yeah, it's look, yeah, exactly.

It's not about whether it definitely happened.

It should have happened and it could happen.

And I hope it does happen.

And

in a sense,

it's lights the way for humanity in the future.

This is is Bugle282.

We held a competition amongst our many avian fans to name this episode.

We have a very big following in the bird community.

And the competition was won by a very busy owl who was in a real hurry.

He asked us to name the episode Bugle282.

So we have.

And this is for the week.

Happy Christmas.

This is for the weekending Friday the 19th of December.

We're actually recording this on Wednesday the 17th of December.

I believe the first ever Wednesday bugle recording.

So by the time you hear this buglers, the world could have have ended.

Always a problem having a two-day lag before broadcast.

Wednesday, the 17th, 2014, is the 149th anniversary of the first ever performance in 1865 of Little Franzie Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, written in the early 1820s, as so many things were at the time.

And we're delighted to announce that we at the Bugle have discovered the musical score for how Shuey intended the symphony to end, here performed exclusively by the Bertie Schnizelswitz Memorial Philharmonic Orchestra.

17th of December also marks the date of the ancient Roman Saturnalia Festival.

To mark this, Chris is wearing a frankly unnecessarily revealing toga.

I'm pretty sure they were supposed to extend below the waist.

A festival was famous for its role reversals where servants would boss around their masters and everyone would sort of take the opposite of their usual social position.

So today I have been having a celebrity breakfast with Kanyeo West, the Dalai Lama, Hillary Clinton and the embalmed corpse of Charlie Chaplin, whilst John has been been wondering if there's anything he can do to boost sluggish ticket sales at a small art centre gig in a town he's never heard of and wondering how many types of tea you can have in a single day without it getting a little bit ridiculous.

Happy Saturnalia everyone.

This is the last full bugle of 2014, meaning it's the last full bugle of the International Year of Various Things.

It's been the International Year of Crystallography.

And this year's bugles do actually form a crystal if you transform them into atoms in some way or other.

It's been the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Not quite as many people have got on board with that one as they might have done.

And the International Year of Family Farming, which I have thoroughly embraced.

And I have just enjoyed a bumper harvest in the veg patch in my garden.

I managed to grow a couple of uncles, some second cousins and a granny.

So that is Christmas dinner all sorted.

And as always, the section of the Bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, more of the Bugle Audio Advent Calendar, 19th of December.

Seriously, on a f ⁇ ing donkey?

The whole f ⁇ ing way?

She

best I could do, pet.

You're the one who didn't want a home birth.

Ready to go whenever you say the word.

20th of December.

I feel awful, Joseph.

Yeah, you look like a space hopper.

Boing, boing, boing.

Hey, Mary, look at my six-pack.

Now look at your massive one-pack.

Priceless.

You're not helping, Joseph.

Not my kid.

Not my problem.

Yes, problem.

That section in the pin.

Top story this week, it's the My Country Tis a Dick Bugle Special.

And it must have been around a month ago, Andy, when you suggested that buglers from around the world email in suggestions for why their country had been the biggest dick on the planet the previous week.

And I think I was probably expecting three or four entries, but incredibly, within days, we had been hit by an electronic tsunami of self-loathing.

It was truly both heartwarming and slightly horrifying to receive so many emails from people all over the planet, all making impassioned and well-documented pitches for why their nations had been the most emphatic penis of the previous seven days.

There was ultimately, though, something deeply uplifting about so many people being so anxious to call bullshit on themselves.

These emails, I think, could either demonstrate humanity's hope or its ultimate doom, Andy.

Either way, they were very entertaining.

Yeah, this is the contest we've all been waiting for.

The My Country Tizzadik.

Can reigning champions the UK be knocked off top spots?

Now, the year, John, has been scarred and gouged by a frankly unusual preponderance of what might be charitably described as extreme levels of national naughtiness.

And not just nations, terrorists, viruses, and Putins the world over have frankly left a lot to be desired.

But this award is not about megalomaniac leaders or pseudo-religious franchises or diseases being

it's about nations being dicks.

And that is a very important differentiation for the purposes of this competition, albeit a differentiation fraught with legal technicalities, as the International Criminal Court in The Hague would no doubt testify.

And above all, it has been about you buglers, as John said, sending in your nominations for your own country's dickish behaviours, holding up the mirror to the face of your own countries and saying to those countries, can you not see that massive sky you've inflicted all over your own face?

Many of the countries, which are the biggest dicks, of of course, don't always allow people to email British American podcasts to report on their dickishness.

So the list of entries might not be quite as exhaustive as it could be, but still, here it is.

The Bugle My Country Tis a Dick Award.

Seconds out, round two.

And we start with Mexico.

Mexico makes a very good case, Andy, for being one of the strongest, spiciest dick nations on the globe.

Its dickishness level is Mui Caliente, Andrew.

So we had an email from Sam in Mexico who wrote, My country is a dick because it's a slaughterhouse, one of the most dangerous places in the globe to be a journalist.

Our youngsters all around the country are being massacred in the name of the war against drugs, even toddlers while they're at school.

And our president has no clue what's going on around him.

As in the world, as in the words of Kurtz, the horror, the horror.

And one last thing, he says, if Andy loves penguins, as John is horrified by the vision of abused donuts, how is it that you are not discussing the shocking news of penguins being sexually assaulted by fur seals?

It's really troubling.

You can check it on the BBC.

Cheers, Sam.

Now,

I have to say, Andy, it's a rare email that can begin talking about the assassination of journalists in Mexico and then end a couple of sentences later discussing the sexual abuse of penguins by seals.

I don't know if he's arguing that Mexico is the biggest dick, or that seals are the biggest dicks, or that Mexican seals are hypothetically the absolute worst.

Just for the record, just to take a slight tangent early on here, I took Sam's advice and I did check the story on the BBC and it turns out to be appallingly true.

Seals were spotted sexually assaulting penguins by Nico De Bruyne of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

And he argues, De Bruyne, that the increasing number of cases of seal on penguin sex crimes suggest learnt behavior on the part of seals.

And he says, seals have capacity for learning.

We know this from their foraging behavior, for example but if this is learned behavior we really can't think of what the reward may be for these young males other than perhaps learning that these birds are an easier target to practice their copulating skills and that Andy makes it even worse.

Seals are just using penguins for f practice.

How is that supposed to make the penguins feel other than emotionally and probably physically crushed?

I can frankly never look at seals in the same way again, Andy.

I used to think they were hilarious, but now I can't think of them as anything other than sexual predators to penguins.

All I can see in my mind is a hungover seal waking up in the morning next to a penguin, looking over, honking, oh no, and trying to slide away on its stomach before the penguin wakes up.

Seals are like Bill Cosby, Andy.

They're universally beloved and naturally funny, but that has covered up some absolutely unforgivable behaviour in the past.

Seals.

Seals.

Seals of Mexico.

A dance as old as time itself.

There was another email from an American living in Mexico called Sydney T, highlighting how the government has apparently been basically spiking peaceful protests with violent people to make the protests less peaceful.

And it's an email that concludes rather delightfully.

In conclusion, Mexico is one gigantic, throbbing,

veined dick.

Nicely shot, Sydney.

Yeah, I mean, it depends how drunk you are when you're looking at your Atlas, but I guess it's got a touch of that about it.

The next nominee is for the USA, and this comes from Morton in Norway, who complains about the market.

Well, this is a very valid point, John.

Morton has complained about Michigan passing legislation allowing emergency workers to opt out of treating critically ill-gave people if it goes against their religious beliefs.

But listen up, Morton.

This competition is not about snitching on other people's countries.

It is about shopping your own nation.

Exactly.

Even if certain states in those other people's countries have basically made it legally acceptable for an emergency worker to say, no, I'm going to let this one die.

And I think God is going to be pretty pleased with me on this one.

It is a win-win situation.

This is not your call, Morton.

From your economic power.

What have you got to make, Morton?

From your economic powerhouse with your rock-solid public finances and your comprehensive welfare provision and your eye-wateringly expensive bottled water and your increasingly uneasy relationship with the concept of immigration and your massive sense of excitement that Andy Zoltzman will be appearing in Oslo at the crap comedy on the 24th of January.

It's not your call to make, Morton.

Besides, we also had Norway nominated by...

Kadja and Maria Watner, and I'm sorry if I've pronounced that massively wrong.

And this emo goes like this.

Okay, Norway may not be the first country that springs to mind when dicks are mentioned, but this past year it's been acting like it's pretty keen to get a place in this competition.

Here are a few examples of how, if you'll pardon the pun, hard it's been trying lately.

Nice to see someone throw that one in early on.

Norway's newly elected Conservative government recently passed a national budget which includes wealth tax cuts and abolishes inheritance tax, giving the wealthiest a total of a 6 billion kroner tax reduction.

That's around half a billion pounds.

With Norway actually literally the world's richest country.

The Norwegians benefiting from from this budget are in the world elite of the well-to-do.

And who pays for this present for the prosperous to finance these tax cuts that government acts chooses to fall on and slash the pitiful monthly benefit reserved for parents of families in the poorest percentile, many of whom are single parents, surviving on their meagre incapacity benefit from the national insurance scheme.

Well, this Norway is what we all fought the Cold War for, to enrich the rich, to win wealth the wealthy, and to further impoverish the already poverished.

I think anything else would be dishonoring the memory of all the people who would have died in a global nuclear conflict had it actually happened.

And that includes me potentially.

So I find that deeply offensive that you should have nominated your country for this.

You also add that it's also been a bad time in this country, which has basically, as you say, won the world lottery for Syrian refugees.

The spacious, wealthy, and sparsely populated Norway has grudgingly accepted its international obligation to take in Syrian refugees.

A staggering wave of a full 1,000 Syrian refugees has been accepted in 2014, compared with neighbouring Sweden, equal in size but not in petroleum wealth, who have taken nearly 30,000 refugees from Syria this year.

Syria has had a bad year.

How many is that in a row?

Three or four?

I think they get to keep themselves down.

Three in a row?

It's definitely a hat-trick.

But wait, there's more, continues the email.

Norway insists on defying the UNHCR's recommendations by refusing to take in their minimum amount of refugees.

Undeniably a dickish move.

And the dick does not stop there.

It keeps on dickishly moving.

Norway also overrules the UNHCR's selection criteria by adding its own exclusively Norwegian screening, excluding anyone with a physical handicap or psychological trauma.

That's right, they will accept a tragically small number of war refugees and then refuse anyone who's A, hurt or B, traumatized by war.

So that is f ⁇ ing

that is quite a strong,

that is a strong, strong entry.

This early on.

And on top of all that, Andy, what the Vikings did was unforgivable.

Unforgivable and

as yet unapologised for.

Let's not at truly awful things.

The email concludes.

Without further ado, we give you Dicus Maximus Norwegicus.

So thank you for that, Kaja and Maria.

Poland being a dick news now, and thanks to an email from David Onby, we now know that a town in Poland has been a real kilbasa sausage of a dick over the proposed mascot for a children's playground.

Officials in Tushnin, a town about 90 miles south of Warsaw, ruled out Winnie the Pooh as an appropriate mascot due to the fact that he is, and I quote, an inappropriately dressed bear of dubious sexuality.

Wow, okay.

Okay, I think they're getting a few things confused straight off the bat there, Andy.

First, there's nothing dubious about Winnie the Pooh's sexuality.

He'll go after anything holding a honey pot.

That's a fact.

He's a hound when it comes to the honey.

That's a second fact.

The reason this story came out is that there was an audio recording of the council deliberation featuring such spectacular exchanges as Councillor Reichard Seashi saying, the problem with that bear is it doesn't have a complete wardrobe.

It is half naked, which is wholly inappropriate for children.

In which case, Andy, I'm guessing that Eeyore is out of the equation too, because he walks around completely naked.

Sure, he'll occasionally wear a bow tie on his tail but I'm guessing that unless he wears that bow over his cartoon donkey penis the Poles just aren't going to be happy with that either.

And in many ways that bow tie just makes it worse doesn't it?

It's like the tassel.

An unnamed official then chimed in, well it doesn't wear underpants because it doesn't have a sex.

It's a hermaphrodite.

And that is either magnificently stupid or a problem of translation, Andy.

Perhaps the word hermaphrodite in Polish means fictional cartoon character.

Let's give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

But the best argument came from a counselor, Jakisma, saying, this is very disturbing, but can you imagine the author was over 60 and cut Pooh's testicles off with a razor blade because he had a problem with his identity.

Whoa.

Whoa.

The key question I have here, Andy, is, what the f happens in the Polish version of Winnie the Pooh?

A.A.

Milne suddenly appears on a page and cuts Winnie the Pooh's testicles off with a razor blade, then what?

Christopher Robin chemically castrates Piglet.

What is wrong with the old stories where they throw sticks off bridges?

Is that not edgy enough anymore?

Well, the stick was clearly a representation of the male penis being discarded into the river.

When they sold Winnie the Pooh to Disney, it all went to shit.

I think the Saw movies franchise was initially based on a Polish edition of Winnie the Pooh.

Well, I mean, I think it's completely wrong to blame A.

A.

Milne for this, because, of course, A.A.

Milne was the author of this, and he makes no explicit reference to slicing off Pooh's testicles.

I think the blame needs to lie with the illustrator, E.H.

Shepard, who, of course, was absolutely renowned for his hatred of visible bearballs.

Now it's time for the reigning champions, the UK.

What kind of defence can we put up to our hard-won title?

Well, this nation of food banks and billionaires, of nasty, scrounging, benefit-bludging war refugees, and nice cash-flashing oligarchs and multinationals who sidestep tax like a Fijian rugby player.

We have been, yeah, we are endemically dickish in many ways.

And a few stories have really highlighted this.

This came from Joseph Poole, who writes, To protect the UK's status as world's biggest dicks, I'd like to put forward this story about how the work and pension secretary Ian Duncan Smith has reclassified multiple sclerosis and Parkinson sufferers as being okay to seek work as their degenerative conditions will improve.

So

this is further grisp to...

God, we're the absolute worst.

This is...

Historically, we've been absolutely appalling, but do not get complacent and think that we don't still have a string to our dickish bow that we can pluck every now and then.

We've got a lot of dicks in our bag, as a golfer would say.

This is further grisp to the stropping mills of those who think Britain is legislating itself towards becoming a heartless bastard of a nation.

An investigation by charities found that almost 8,000 people diagnosed with MS, muscular atrophy, Parkinson's cystic fibrosis and rheumatoid arthritis have been put on the lesser will be able to work soon benefit.

Well, Britain, if you're not happy with that, why don't you elect some medical scientists instead of politicians at the next election?

You choose politicians, they will act like politicians.

And in a further

dickish story, the UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said that women should not breastfeed in public in, quote, an openly ostentatious way, because some people feel very embarrassed by it.

And this followed a story in which a woman in Claridge's tea room was asked to cover up the hideous and unnatural abomination of her feeding a small baby using her boob.

Some people feel very embarrassed by breastfeeding in public, said Rog, which to me, John,

in a tea room, makes about as much sense as being embarrassed by someone drinking a cup of tea.

It's absolutely ostentatious breastfeeding as well.

I've been around breastfeeding mothers,

both my own mother whilst I was the victim stroke recipient

and my wife.

And I've never seen any breastfeeding mother think, right, I think baby needs a feed.

Let's get ostentatious about this.

Let's go out and get a bit of a crowd.

Bring the big screen and a projector.

I want this to be completely and utterly unignorable.

I mean, a lot of people say, well, it's disgusting.

It's unnatural.

That's not what WAPs are for.

It's unnatural.

Well, we all know what WAPs are for.

That's a really hard case to make.

Well, I mean, it's not what WAPs are for, John.

They are for making...

What does that Nestle?

They're for making you more hydrodynamic while swimming backstroke, I believe.

And the argument that it's natural, well, so is bubonic plague.

And you wouldn't bring a dying, plague-stricken 14th-century peasant to Clarity's for tea and then take your top off and pop your tit in its mouth, would you?

So let's have some consistency, sisters.

Farage also, he was on a journey to Cardiff in Wales from London for an appointment for a meeting.

And he pulled out because he got stuck in traffic and said that basically blamed the fact that he didn't appear at this meeting on immigration causing excessive traffic on the M4.

Now, I can give an update to this because the very next day, I myself went to Cardiff and got there on time.

So I'm delighted to announce that in those 24 hours between Farage heading west and me heading west, immigration was entirely solved.

So we're now fine.

Only because he had the bravery to speak out, Andy.

That's all you take away from that.

And also, a man faces deportation from the UK after a court ruled that his British wife's salary was not high enough to allow him to stay in the country.

So here's a couple of lessons from the British government.

A, to Brits, don't fall in love with foreigners.

And B, to foreigners, don't fall in love with Brits without checking their tax returns first.

Now, both of you, please f off.

Belgium dickishness now, and there was a bold, bold my country to a dick entry for Belgium particularly bold in it not featuring a waffle at any point Andy

seems physically impossible unless it's been notably missed out of the reporting of this story there must have been one somewhere it's just it's they're so ever present you don't think it's unless you mention that there was definitely not a waffle present I think you assume that a waffle was there So this email came in from Andy Penman, who pointed out that Belgium recently attempted to deport an entire Pakistani family after their son was identified as a terrorist for carrying his cricket bat on public transport.

What happened was that Asim Abbasi, a 22 year old Pakistani cricket player, was photographed carrying his covered bat.

As soon as he saw his photo in the newspaper, he immediately contacted the police to tell them that he was not armed, but he was carrying his cricket bat to a practice session.

And practicing cricket, Andy, is about as far from an act of terrorism as it is possible to be.

Unless you think that testing the limits of the human attention span is an act of terrorism he he told the police that i wrapped my bat in my sweatshirt because it was raining and if it's wet i can't play the ball properly but to be fair andy that is just what a terrorist would say yeah that's if exactly right a terrorist was a cricketer concerned about playing with a wet bat and not a terrorist at all

or or maybe belgium just thinks that that's some kind of terror code when he says i wrapped my bat in my sweatshirt he means i will attack the west with ferocious anger

well i i'd look at this from the point of view of someone who was infected by the glorious, benevolent virus of cricket at a very young age.

And I would say to you, Belgium, get down on your waffly f ⁇ ing knees and give thanks that there are people prepared to live in your chocolate-riddled nation and try to educate you in the glories of cricket.

Try to save you from your miserable swamp of waffle-addicted cricketlessness.

Bow down and give thanks.

And there's a danger of tit-for-tat reprisals, John.

In fact, just before we started recording, there was a story about Pakistan expelling Belgians for carrying waffles on the streets of Lahore.

Well, the incredible thing is that despite contacting the police and clearing the whole misunderstanding up, his entire family of seven has now lost their right to live in Belgium as the Pakistani embassy in Brussels sacked his dad, a diplomat, for damaging Pakistan's reputation.

How the f ⁇ is that damaging Pakistan's reputation, Andy?

Are they concerned that the world will think they're too scared to play cricket with a damp bat?

They've got a nuclear bomb, Andy.

As long as they're willing to use that when it's raining, I think they'll have a certain level of the world's attention.

But against the Belgian nominee comes this nomination from Esteban Dominguez Bunaface,

strong name, who writes, I'm half Belgian, half Dominican, and I'll live in Manchester.

I'll bet you never thought you would see those words together in one sentence.

I probably didn't think I would see those words together.

I've taken time out from my regular Monday night, writes Esteban, which primarily consists of eating rum-based waffles, using chocolate sticks as pretend cigars, and watching Poirot to the soundtrack of baseball commentary to

tell you that one of my countries is a dick, but not Belgium, it's the Dominican Republic.

Now,

you've probably never heard of the Dominican Republic, writes Esteban, though John might have, given that he's living in the second biggest Dominican city in the world.

That's true.

We are just like Puerto Ricans, minus the parade, but with better rum.

Another difference with Puerto Rico is that we're actually independent, or at least we get to legislate our own rules and stuff, and are left pretty much to play alone with ourselves, as long as we don't make too much noise and leave the grown-ups, Papa USA and Mama IMF, in peace.

Classic parenting.

If we behave, we're rewarded with a multi-million dollar baseball contract.

That is even better parenting.

I mean, it's not necessarily what my son wanted for his birthday this week, but what's good for Albert Puhols is good for my boy, if not for my bank account.

But anyway, I think he's only six, but he's playing for the LA Angels next year.

However, However, our politicians, continues Esteban, did what they do best and ruined this peaceful life by being dicks.

Once again, a dance as old as time itself.

Our constitutional courts decided to resolve decades of tensions with neighbouring Haiti by reinterpreting a law introduced in 2010, which changed the right of Dominican citizenship from jus solely to jus sanguinis, right of the land against right of blood, and applied it retrospectively, thus stripping citizenship from all descendants of illegal immigrants born in the Dominican Republic between any guesses for the years?

1750.

Not quite that bad.

1929 and 20.

That's still bad.

That's still very bad.

Don't let Chris's guess make that feel less bad to you.

To be fair, if the Queen had been born in the Dominican Republic from Haitian parents, and that is quite a big if, she would be safe under this.

She was born in 1926.

But this renders, points out Esteban, people who haven't lived anywhere else basically stateless.

These are overwhelmingly Haitians, says Esteban.

No problem with that.

These Haitians have had it far too good for far too long.

Hang on,

I might be mixing up Haiti with Monaco, but they're basically interchangeable.

You don't have to pay too much tax on either of them, albeit for very, very different reasons.

Esteban concludes, just in case the dick-off ends in a draw, here's the tiebreaker.

Amid international condemnation, a complaint was submitted to the Inter-American inter-American Court of Human Rights in the hope of overturning the rule what did the Dominican court do well they found a loophole and annulled their membership of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights dissolving any responsibility to review the complaint that is classic John that is a classic governmental sidestep

Hong Kong dickishness now and someone else wrote to us Matt Brown wrote to us saying hello John and Andy I believe Hong Kong while not necessarily a country should get special mention as a potential top dick for the government's response to the democracy protests and he's all wrong about that Andy because whilst the physical responses to the protests got the most attention on the news around the world the verbal responses were perhaps even more chilling the most profoundly patronizing came from chief chief executive csai lung who basically argued that the universal democracy would not be possible could not possibly be allowed because it would mean that too many poor people would be able to vote and that is the kind of old school snubbing of poor people that can give you a nosebleed just to hear out loud nowadays.

Usually when you hear that kind of tone, it's in a lavish BBC costume drama being spoken by a man in an unfeasibly large mustache, not a clean-shaven politician in 2014.

Lung said it would be better, as Beijing is suggesting, for them to screen all candidates with a broadly representative nominating committee appointed by Beijing.

That screening, he said, would insulate candidates from popular pressure to create a welfare state and would allow the city government to follow more business-friendly policies to address economic inequality instead.

Holy shit, I think I just had a nosebleed out of the other nostril as well, Andy.

He is one sentence away from saying, let them eat cake and meaning it.

And the best thing about all of this is that he said a government house in Hong Kong, the ornate mansion that was the home of British colonial governors for more than a century.

So if those wars could talk, they'd probably say, honestly, you're not going to believe this, but we've actually heard a lot worse than what you say right now.

This is a refreshingly unracist take on poor people in Hong Kong.

A few quick entries: Konstantin nominated Russia for an interview in which Igor Strelkov, the ex-Minister of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic, reminisced with a quote teary-eyed nostalgia about atrocities he himself had committed in Ukraine.

Russia is, I mean, it's had a strong year in terms of

its president's sleeves.

Alex nominated Spain.

We in Spain are such dicks that we're about to tax the sun.

If you have a solar panel, you have to pay a tax so high, it will become cheaper to buy the energy from the electric companies who can even get into your home without permission to make sure you aren't hiding solar panels.

Well, we've warned about this before, John.

They've clearly worried about the dangers of overfarming the sun.

And also, what about the oil companies?

Won't somebody please, please for once think of the oil companies?

Japan was nominated by Ian Maloney,

currently living there, who points out that official statistics show that of 3,260 people who applied for refugee status in Japan during 2014, only how many applications were granted?

From 3,260.

Any guesses?

Half?

Half of the applications, or one half of one application.

1,500.

You would have been much closer going for one half of one application.

Six applications.

Six

out of 3,260.

Alvaro from Chile nominated his country for antediluvian abortion laws that put the O into misogyny.

And we had a frankly horrific nomination for Kenya from an understandably anonymous correspondent that puts the G into even more appallingly misogynistic.

It's been, as you say, John, it's hard to be overly positive about the state of our once great species, having read plowed through all these emails.

Yeah.

So those are the entries for the My Country Tizetic competition.

Now it is decision time.

Well, John, for me, it has to be Belgium for its hideously anti-cricket attempt to deport that

Pakistani family.

I mean, you take on cricket, you take on Andy Zoltzmann, and you know, I'm not going to stand by and let that dickishness go unrewarded.

It's hard to look past Mexico just in terms of the

distilled horror that's taking place there.

Russia is generally almost a victim of having had too good a year of being a dick.

I don't know.

In terms of the nominees,

it just shows what it is.

It's so hard to make a call though.

What a competitive field it's been.

You almost want to just cut the trophy in 15.

God, it's like Miss World, but more so.

I don't know if I can pick one.

Chris, have you got any?

Well, I've played cricket in Belgium against a team made up entirely of Muslims and racists, and they seemed to get along just fine.

Oh, right.

Speaking of hope.

Cricket is a uniting force, so Belgium should embrace that.

But I personally think that it's got to be Poland because you can't f ⁇ with Winnie the Pooh.

No, I'll testify.

I mean, of all the things we've discussed here,

a fictitious bear being dishonoured.

Yeah, I mean, that is fully dickish.

I think some of these nominations actually do spill beyond the dick.

the dickishness into fully.

And

I mean, that is...

I think to me, it's Poland or Belgium that's um yeah you're right in terms of dickishness yeah a kind of you know irritating piece of behavior that doesn't really have much broader significance on the world it's probably Poland isn't it it's probably Poland I think we have a winner the biggest dick of a country is the other country slightly overshot that's the problem

they've just they've made an impression on the plaster scene on the take-off board

there's been a lot of no jumps and so, the winner, congratulations, Poland.

Well done.

A much overdue trophy for the Poles had Pope Pope of the Decade in the 1990s, of course.

I think this is the first major trophy they've won since then.

So, thanks to all of you who sent in emails for

this competition.

Sorry we couldn't get around to all the nominated countries and all the emails, but I'm sure you understand it was a massively keenly fought contest, one that I'm sure we'll return to at some point in the bugle future.

This is the end of the bugle for this year, 2014.

Thanks once again for listening through the year.

Thanks in particular to those who have voluntarily subscribed to keep the podcast free for other people and independent.

And also

happy Hanukkah to one and all.

I believe I've got the right week this year, John.

If you have, it's a lucky guess.

No, it's, you know, well, guess.

I mean, can you guess something with access to the internet?

I'm not sure you can anymore.

And particularly, happy Chappy Hanukkah to our listeners, chosen by the Almighty Lord as his chosen people,

and chosen by the bugle for a special Happy Hanukkah greeting.

Don't listen to this if you're not on

the Jewish team.

Chappy Hanukkah!

May Father Hanukkah bring all the presents you've asked for on his special sleigh.

Although you do have to have eight separate chimneys, I think, if you want him to come every day of the big cha.

Sorry, I'm a bit out of the loop.

As a lapsed Jew, John, of course, I'm

not allowed to have the full

Hanukkah shebang, which this this year runs 16th to the 24th of December I'm just allowed a special one-day laps Hanukkah the day after the real Hanukkah ends which this year falls on the 25th of December as it has in all other years in my house

so

We will have a bugle review of the year out at some point over the

festive season.

Thanks again for your ears and your support during this year, and we will be back in 2015.

Goodbye.

Happy holidays.

Bye!

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.