TheBugle review of the year: 2013

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello Buglers, I'm Andy Saltzman.

I hope you had a wonderful and or awful Christmas depending on whether you do and or do not believe in Santa Claus.

And I hope you're about to have or are are having or had a truly unforgettable new year.

Actually scratch that if New Year is truly unforgettable it's quite likely that something absolutely terrible happened otherwise it would just blend in with the other new years so I hope you've had a deeply mediocre new year.

No full bugle this week but it is time for the bugle review of the year 2013.

Of course it's a year that's been now permanently defined for history as the year that England's cricket team went to Australia and had their own guts, testicles, brains, internal organs and assorted non-identifiable body parts hacked out, grilled in front of them on a large barbecue and served up to them on a commemorative crocodile Dundee children's dinner plate.

But let's not forget that other things have also happened this year, as proved by this, the bugle highlights of Planet Earth 2013.

Between 1415 and 2012, if you'd been asked to write a list of one thing popes don't do, you'd have said, can you technically have a list of one thing?

No, I didn't think so, but if you could on that list, I would have written, be cool about condoms, and resign.

That's two things that proves my point.

Well, in 2013, one of those ecumenical badgers was taken to a barn and shot in the face.

Big news out of the Vatican this week, Andy.

Well, straight away, a sentence like that understandably puts people on edge nowadays, because in recent times, no good sentence has started with those words.

But Pope Benedict, Johnny Ratz, to his old friends back in Germany, and Hera Singer to his postman.

Beautiful language, Andy, just beautiful.

Pope Benedict, in a shock move, resigned as pope.

This was a particular surprise because this is the first papal resignation for 600 years.

The last pope to step aside was Pope Gregory XII, who resigned in 1415 amid a schism within the church.

So he resigned because of the Western schism, Andy.

This guy looks like he resigned because he got a bit tired.

It's all we're getting soft as a species, John.

We're getting soft.

And it's making everything a little confusing.

Usually, if you see an ex-pope walking around, you know that you're looking at a ghost.

And you need to get your proton pack quickly and suck that ghost pope into a storage container so you can take the ghost pope on tour all over the world.

Now, after this resignation, you need to be a lot more careful because it may not be a ghost pope after all.

You may instead be blasting an old man and trying to force him to get into a little box.

Life has got a lot more complicated all of a sudden.

That's right, John.

The Pope said nope.

He went popadope.

He's taken a look at the Holy See.

He's seen it and he's thought, that I cannot anymore.

So he's quats, as you say, the first Pope to chuck in his mitre for almost 600 years since Pope Greg XII hung up his chajible, as you said, in 1415.

And he cited his increasing age and decreasing physical and mental powers as a reason for quitting the ring.

Rumours suggested that he wanted to get out before anyone could clonk him on the head with a hammer to check if he's alive or not, or more pressingly, before anyone could crucify him upside down, like happened to some popes.

I could mention St.

Peter.

Now,

a new pope

is going to be elected at a papal conclave, John, before Easter.

You got tickets for that?

Well, I love a conclave, Andy.

You know, I'm certainly in there for the ballot.

I was hoping I might get a vote.

I might really spice that thing up a bit.

I mean, who would you, who would you, I mean, if you were choosing the Pope, John, who would you?

Beyonce.

Beyonce, Andy, yeah, for me.

I mean, I know that that's unlikely for a number of reasons, but that doesn't mean I'm not going Beyoncé with my first ballot anyway.

Well, I think

it could be time for someone from outside the Catholic Church to take over.

You know, we've had foreign football managers managing the England football team.

You know, maybe it is time for a non-Catholic pope to try to re-energise the brand.

Yeah.

I mean, for example, I mean, the obvious candidate is the freakishly evangelistic Microsoft boss, Steve Ballmer.

I mean, he could give the Catholic Church the kick up the backside it so desperately needs.

Someone to get out there and aggressively sell the brand.

Besides, Microsoft is the perfect grounding for a pope.

In the beginning, was the word.

And the word was good until they needlessly pissed around with how the menus menus worked in words and then the word became incomprehensible and deeply counterintuitive.

So there's some parallels to the development of religion.

That would be such a ballsy move, Andy, if they appointed someone who was not religious in any way, just an absolute CEO marketer, saying, look, we are tired of pretending that this is something it isn't.

We are a gigantic, immensely successful corporation.

And it's about time we started running ourselves as such.

The news of the resignation seemed to surprise everyone, from governments to Vatican experts to the Pope's closest aides who seemed to react with much more authentic surprise than they did during the recent child sex abuse allegation.

Pope Benny XVI has only been Pope for eight years, taking over in 2005 after John Paul II's death.

He'd apparently been looking forward to a piano-playing retirement before the Pope died back then and has stated that he never wanted to be Pope.

And I mean, wow, you can see from that how that smooth talker aced the pope interview, Andy.

I don't want to be pope.

You can stick your papacy up your arse.

Now, when do I start?

So

he's not the first pope to have resigned after not wanting to be pope.

Not many popes have resigned.

And one of the previous ones was Celestine V

in the late 13th century.

Now, he was a hermit who had never wanted to be pope.

He then refused to take the job and ran away when he was offered it before being coaxed into accepting it, despite saying, no, I'm going to be shit at this job.

Then did the job shitly for five months and then pissed off for a long walk in the mountains so

there's a bit of previous john in his official announcement the pope said i'm leaving now so i can spend more time with my son i mean um uh i mean the son of god jesus jesus not my son he's called darren and

and he also doesn't exist i don't mean also doesn't exist jesus did exist of course uh until the jews killed him i mean the romans i mean mankind we all mango we all killed him.

Oh boy this is not going as well as I hoped it would.

Of course the Pope wasn't the only celeb to quit his or her job this year.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also gave up her job which was being the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

What an emotional week it has been for Britain Andy.

The 87 year old former Prime Minister and political juggernaut Margaret Thatcher has died and it may be very hard for people around the world to understand the kind of strange emotional roller coaster that Britain has been on over the last seven days as many people are forced to navigate some complicated feelings regarding how to justify feeling slightly less than sorrowful over the death of a frail vulnerable old lady.

It's been halfway between a celebration and a memorial this week.

It's essentially been a celebrorial.

And if you saw some of the scenes on TV of impromptu street parties over the death of Margaret Thatcher, you might understandably think people in Britain are a bunch of heartless

and to some extent you'd be right.

Seeing 18-year-olds dancing around after the death of a woman whose time in power they never directly experienced, albeit the aftershocks of which they undoubtedly felt, is not an entirely heartwarming experience and it's only going to get more complicated from here.

The official full ceremonial funeral is going to take place on Wednesday in London at ironically high cost to the taxpayer, a final hypocrisy haiku in a controversial career.

It's been, I think it's fair to say, more than a little bit controversial because she was a woman who didn't just split opinion but slathered it with ice cream and popped a glasse cherry on top.

And also, interestingly, within minutes, John,

of her death being announced,

there was a great debate on how it should be commemorated, not just in society in Britain as a whole, but also amongst buglers uh particularly through the bugle twitter feed with a lot of people asking uh whether or not she would get or demanding that she should get a f eulogy and you know it's uh that's a tough philosophical question to address because uh

as you know you set the bar pretty high for f eulogies uh and we try to maintain that this franchise we don't just hand them out to anyone you've got to really earn them and uh you might say set alongside bin laden gaddafi and Kim Jong-il.

There's no way a woman even as divisive as Thatcher deserves a fk eulogy.

But you would also say set alongside Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, and Isaac Newton.

She sure as f doesn't deserve a state funeral, which is, as you say, essentially what she's got.

Funded by the taxpayers, a large percentage of whom would only be happy to contribute if their money was being used to pay for a giant 50-metre-high middle finger made of coal to be paraded 10 yards behind her coffin.

Also, Parliament was recalled to pay tribute to her a few days earlier than it would otherwise have done.

Would that have made many difference?

Was she going to get any more or less dead in those intervening days?

Perhaps she was.

Apparently, Tory Central Office was reportedly disappointed and surprised that as of three days after her death, there had still been no resurrection.

They issued a statement saying, We assume that it's just been some kind of administrative holdup.

According to precedent, it should have happened by now.

It's probably to do with paperwork.

Thank you, Brussels.

She was, as you say, an incredibly...

incredibly divisive figure in this country.

She polarised this nation like a celebrity chef smearing a grizzly bear in cream cheese and buying it a one-way ticket to the North Pole.

And

she was a sort of a political medusa that if you looked into her policies, it would simply turn you to stone.

She was a dominatrix in a parliament of submissives.

And if you want to know the relationship between Thatcher and her party, anytime you see footage of her talking in parliament, imagine all the grey men sitting behind her wearing gimp masks.

And I think

that will show you exactly

what Britain was like in the 1980s.

Andy, I guess this bugle's going to probably be about half an hour, but really, you only need to listen to that sentence to perfectly evoke what Britain is going through this week.

To indicate some of the complications that are ahead of us, the Premier League did not ask clubs to observe a minute's silence at any football games this weekend, which upset a number of people, especially Thatcher's former sports minister, Richard Tracy, who said, frankly, I think it's rather cheap that they decided not to show any sort of respect for her because, to be honest, she really did deliver what football is today.

And exactly, Andy, he's not wrong about that.

She really did deliver what football is today, an unregulated commercial nightmare.

Plus, let's not forget her and her government's response to the Hillsborough disaster, which guaranteed that if you asked football fans to observe the life of Margaret Thatcher, you might get a minute of something, but it sure as shit wouldn't be silence.

In fact, there might actually be something in that, Andy.

Maybe they should have suggested a minute's noise across the country, just so you could make any primal sound that you wanted in relation to Margaret Thatcher.

It might have been cathartic for the whole of Britain.

Some could cry, others could cheer, many could cry at the others cheering, some could moo, but all could find a way to process their feelings.

I had a special simulation run, John, on what would have happened to Britain if Thatcher had never

actually existed.

And I went to two, because I wanted to get some balance.

I went to two different

political organizations, the right-wing Thatcherite think tank, the Clawhammer of Practicality Institute, and the left-wing pressure group, Marxist Mark and the Fund Bunk.

And one of these

that needed more work.

One of these simulations.

Look, even masterpiece painters, Andy, need to know when to stop, and you stopped at the right time.

It was finished.

Without Thatcher, apparently Britain today would be a cultural, industrial, and ethical wasteland haunted by the post-imperial ghosts of the nation it could have been.

And the other showed that without Thatcher, Britain would have been a thriving financial centre with higher standards of living than it ever had before, consumer choice and unprecedented commercial freedoms and opportunities.

Oh no, sorry, no, that's sorry, those are the wrong reports.

Those are both just reports on what has actually happened after Thatcher.

But from different parts of the nation.

There'd been real concerns about protests during the funeral procession, but these luckily were limited to a few people shouting, booing, and then others lining the streets only to turn their backs.

And that seems to be a quintessentially English insult, Andy.

Standing outside for hours in the cold and rain, only to then snub the procession with a devastating gesture of poor manners.

There was also one.

My favourite protester was just a guy standing by the roof.

And similarly, he must have waited there for hours.

And he just held up a placard about a foot across and a foot high with the word boo written on it.

If you chucked 10 million quid and 700 soldiers in your ludicrously inappropriate garb at one of the tasteless but understandable death parties that were going on at the same time in shattered former mining towns in the north, you'd have had something similarly serious.

And I think the BBC coverage of it would have been well worth watching.

And a respectful silence falls across the town square now.

A silence reflecting the absence of hope that descended on this place when the mines were closed down, some would argue, prematurely and replaced not with new industries but with absolutely nothing.

And just as, of course, Lady Thatcher would have wanted and did want

and did.

And that silence now is punctuated by the distant sound of a single London city trailer snorting cocaine off a prostitute's back.

Respectful applause there, both for Nigel Polk, the trader, and 23-year-old Olga, both in their different ways products of the Thatcher years

and well here comes the effigy now borne on the gun carriage by six horses of the North Snutterbridge third Royal Dragoon followed by a platoon of the long-term unimportant as defined by the Conservative historian Charles Moore this week and in front of them carrying a ceremonial match for lighting the effigy is fifty six year old Gavin Huish who's been unemployed now for twenty eight years that's exactly half his life which from the looks of him after the physical and mental health problems he's suffered over the years, is going to be about as much as he can hope to get.

And the crowd bowing their heads in silent disrespect, spoiled only by a handful of dissenting voices.

Protesters rather silent this occasion.

I think I can see one millionaire there holding up a black card saying, I raked it in in the 1980s.

I don't know what your problem is.

Much minority view on this occasion of solemnity and dignified reflection.

And I think one of the prophetic protesters just threw a credit card at a horse.

No one wants to see that.

We approach the pyre built from kindlings from the Royal Forest in the Sandringham Estate, of course, with one single piece of coal that

has been kept on display in the nearby British Museum of Willful Industrial Decline.

This ceremony really is laden with history and meaning, and the past descends.

A single tear falls down Mr.

Hewish's cheek, even though he only actually met Mrs.

Thatcher once.

Could be grief, could be joy.

And yes, the effigy is now lit, and polite applause breaks out and that really shows for what this woman meant to these people and this nation farewell

it's beautiful andy

we do do pomp and service we do and that's what we do in this country and uh the reaction to amanda thatcher being uh was it well it was just it was extraordinary john i don't know if you picked this up uh in the state i'm afraid i'm afraid i did it's almost the only thing that did make it over here.

19-year-old Amanda Thatcher knew Pippa Middleton.

It was absolutely...

I just don't know how comfortable I am with that at all, Andy.

It's borderline okay for a nation to lust after a 28-year-old bridesmaid at her sister's wedding.

It is a significantly greyer area to do the same over a 19-year-old girl mourning at her grandmother's funeral.

That is really creepy, Andy.

Really creepy.

Particularly when most of the press that were doing this lusting were the ones who'd been saying how important it was to mark this occasion with the depth of seriousness that it deserved.

And again, the reaction was sort of along the lines of, well, what a

great honor an occasion this is for a woman who represented everything great about this country, Margaret Thatcher, of course, the greatest Prime Minister in the history of the world.

And there's her granddaughter, Amanda Thatcher, who...

Oh, I oh, I would put it in that.

Oh, would you look at...

oh, do you think you'd let she'd let me call her Margaret?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Britain is saved.

Britain is saved.

I'll tell you, those things aren't the only thing at half mast now.

Oh,

actually, they are again.

Oh, in a heartbeat.

I would, and the nation would.

Oh, do you think she could bleach her hair and comb it upwards?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's all coming back.

It's all.

It's all control yourself.

And Coffin now passes into the cathedral.

Oh, yeah.

At the moment moment for this country to reflect on the greatness of its most glorious...

Oh, no, a single protester who has a Down with Thatcher t-shirt on.

That is completely inappropriate.

Oh, Amanda.

Oh, Amanda.

Much of the praise was clearly, they knew it was inappropriate, so they had to try and focus it around her reading, the lesson that she read.

And you didn't really have to read too deeply between the lines to see what was really going on.

They would say that she read beautifully, and confidently, and arrestingly, and athletically, sumptuously, and troublingly, and oh, Amanda, naughty Amanda.

Oh, no.

One newspaper in the UK even described her as the star of the funeral.

Do funerals get to have stars, Andy?

Is that appropriate?

And if they do have stars, aren't they supposed to be the people in the coffin

For a lot of people, 2013 was the year of getting cranky.

This was true in a lot of places, including Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is sitting on a pretty combustible kebab of a country right now.

He has called these protests borderline illegal, which seems to be a way of inadvertently admitting that they are actually legal.

They're actually not on the border, they're behind the border, looking at illegal on the other side.

The protests were sparked over the proposed controversial development of a park where protesters have been congregating, and it served as a lightning rod for encompassing fears that Prime Minister Erdogan is going to be imposing a conservative, Islamic system of values on Turkey, which is, of course, a secular country.

And I'll tell you what...

did not calm the situation down at all, Andy, and that was the tear gassing of a lady.

Basically, there is a very famous lady in a red dress now, Sada Songkur.

I am positive that is not how you pronounce her name.

An unassuming middle-aged academic at Istanbul's Technical University.

She found herself at the front line of a line of riot police and a series of photos show her being teargassed.

out of nowhere for no clear reason whatsoever.

The photos instantly went viral as they seemed to call into question the claim by Erdogan that the protesters were extremists living arm in arm with terrorists because this was clearly a nice lady who was arm in arm with her actual handbag.

It's so hard to tell in the heat of the moment though.

But

that is the thing.

Luckily amongst all the doom and gloom Princess Kate Middleton's magic womb splurted out a fully qualified, nought minute old professional future king of Britain and everything was suddenly fine.

It was like the Olympics, but with just one micro-boy that was probably jugling in its linens whilst the world's entire media was cooing idiotically at it.

On your knees, planet Earth, behold the baby king!

On your knees!

Everything the light touches is your kingdom.

Or it was, it was.

There'd be some quite serious

historic developments regarding it.

You said, we've still got Bermuda.

We've still got Bermuda.

On your knees, world!

The boy is here!

It finally happened, Andy.

What a magical day of entirely precedented biology.

Princess Kate Middleton, in a way that only she could, Andy, gestated a child for nine months in her inimitable way and then gave birth to it in a completely unique pushing it through her vagina motion.

Only for the queen to dive in and bite off the umbilical cord herself with her mouth, as is tradition, before dangling the baby over the balcony of Buckingham Palace in the now traditional Michael Jackson style and screaming, this boy will be king over my dead body, before pausing and saying, seriously, that is what is going to happen.

I don't like the way that baby's looking at me.

It's got murder in its eyes.

The news here.

in America Andy truly disgraced itself.

I can only imagine how bad it was over there.

Because I think the American news media officially cares more about this baby than the Queen does.

That is the only way to explain the week-long thundering babygasm that everyone has been subjected to over here.

I think the world's media in general seem to, I think they love the baby more even than its own doting parents do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the world has gone absolutely baby crazy.

And

the highlight of the coverage, though, for me, was the first picture of the royal baby on the front cover of the Times newspaper, our classic former sister publication.

And unquestionably, it had a picture of the little baby prince flipping its first ever V-side.

Did it really?

Yeah.

It had two fingers pointing out just above its blanket,

as if to say, f you, paparazzi, this one's for Granny.

That is a king I can get behind.

It's unforgivable what you did.

Unforgivable what you did.

The baby crowned in every sense of the word on Monday afternoon and is named George Louis Alexander, which is a fantastic choice, Andy, because historically Britain has had such a good experience with kings called George.

What could possibly go wrong?

One of the weirdest moments during the blanket coverage here was a commentator pointing out that the Queen likes to go to bed at 9 o'clock, so it would be a problem if Kate gave birth too late in the day.

The commentator said you do not want to rouse the queen after 10.30 p.m.

And that's true, Andy.

Why?

Absolutely.

Because she'll bite your finging face off.

That's why.

If that baby would be born after 10.30, I believe the plan was to push the baby back into Princess Catherine's womb until the following morning when it could be born at, and I quote, a civilized hour.

You don't rouse the queen after 10.30, Andy.

She's basically like a gremlin.

You don't rouse her after 10.30, you don't feed her after midnight, and you don't get her wet.

That is why the Jubilee flotilla was so dangerous, Andy.

One splash on her during that, and she'd have killed and eaten everyone in a three-mile radius.

That's a fact.

Kate Middleton, within hours of giving birth, was given advice by OK Magazine.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah, well, I know this, John, because I bought a copy, and I have to say, I was very disappointed by it.

Turns out it was just a pointless celebrity chit-chat, not an academic analysis of the Austrian expressionist artist Oscar Kokoshka.

Anyway, OK magazine, hours after the birth, chunded its latest copy onto Britain's shelves with the front page, Kate's post-baby weight loss regime.

And a magazine that had devoted its entire existence to exploring never previously imagined swamps of irrelevance was then bombarded with fully deserved abuse before hastily issuing an apology in which it said Kate is one of the great beauties of our age.

We would not dream of being critical of her appearance if that was misunderstood because of our cover.

It was not intended.

And they could have added to that, that said, yuck, big fat tummy, blah, wobbly, wobbly, wobbly.

All women should look pretend.

Prince Harry said that one of his key duties as an uncle was going to be to make sure that he has fun.

And that shouldn't be a problem for Prince Harry, Andy.

He's not afraid to ride the fun bus.

He's not afraid to even drive the fun bus at times and drive it all the way to the Nazi costume shop.

He knows what fun is, Andy.

With hindsight, wouldn't it have been a shame if that boy's entire planet had been blown to pieces in a massive global Armageddon?

Yes, but luckily, war was accidental averted by John Kerry rambling like a senile old codger in a nursing home.

Top story this week, the war that nearly was, then wasn't, but that still might be.

Syria update!

And it's been a strange week in warmongering, Andy.

When we left you last week, it seemed odds on that America was going all in on attacking Syria with the Obama administration pushing its ballistic chips across the table.

But then, the president decided that he wanted congressional approval for a strike, meaning that before the US bought that plan, the White House needed to sell the shit out of it.

So that's what they've been trying to do over the past week.

The president essentially needed to become a war-mongering version of the sham wow guy on late-night infomercials.

Hi, it's Barak here for Syrian intervention.

Damascus is a mess right now, but don't worry for a limited-time offer.

Our patented series of airstrikes will clean that right up.

All those tough to remove stains on humanity will be a thing of the past.

Sarin?

Gone.

Blood?

Gone.

Religious tensions?

What religious tensions?

With an offer like this, you can't afford not to get involved.

Call you, Congressman Now.

Offer available for a limited time.

So a 48-hour media sales onslaught was planned.

The president had six network interviews planned, plus an address to the nation on the importance of military action.

He was officially adopting his role as salesman-in-chief.

What can I do to put you in a series of surgical airstrikes today?

All seemed to be moving in the desired explosive direction.

And then Secretary of State John Kerry was asked an open-ended question in a press conference.

He began opening and closing his mouth with collected sounds coming out and suddenly everything changed.

A reporter asked him, is there anything at this point that the government of Syria could do or offer that would stop an attack?

To which the on-message response from Kerry, of course, would have been, sure, they can get down on their knees and they can kiss my angry balls.

But no.

Instead, Andy, Kerry went with sarcasm, which is always a wise tone to strike when it comes to delicate international diplomacy.

And he said, sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week, turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that.

But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done obviously going on to say i mean sure were he to do that i guess these words would within hours come back to bite me and the rest of the administration in the ass but that's not about to happen obviously in fact if he does do it i will personally get a tattoo of bashar al-assad's ass on my arse that is something that i will do but that's not going to happen obviously

so within milliseconds of yeah Kerry saying these things, and it was sounding pretty cross, kind of JK growling kind of acts whispering on.

But within milliseconds, Russia had jumped on his sort of casual offhand uh mumbling and said, Oh, yeah, that's a good idea.

We'll go and ask Syria that.

Now, Assad may be many things, but he's not an idiot.

Actually, he is in he is he is an idiot, he is an idiot, but even an idiotic child knows when there's an ice cream dangling in front of its face.

And the chance not to be bomb shifted by America whilst also keeping key ally Russia on side was a pretty, pretty dangly cornetto.

So, Assad said, Why not?

And Kerry and Obama then then said,

oh yeah,

okay.

I suppose it turns out that asking nicely was worth a go.

Now,

I'm not saying, John, I'm not saying that asking nicely should have necessarily been plan A, but I think it should have been somewhere between plans A and X.

But it appears that it only...

They fluked it, John.

It is incredible.

Russia broke a deal with Syria.

Seemingly, partly just out of spite, though.

It was like Russia would be watching Kerry speak and said, did you just hear what Kerry said?

You know what would be really funny, of course, doing exactly what he just said couldn't happen, you know, just to f ⁇ with him.

Now, I'm not sure.

war has ever been avoided in a more childish way.

A White House official initially said that Kerry's remarks were, and I'm quoting, a major goof.

But then the official position quickly became that any deal was definitely worth exploring.

So Kerry essentially riffed his way into a major policy shift.

And the next thing you know, Russia's broken peace with Syria.

He did it, Andy.

I can't work out if John Kerry is bad at his job, good at it, or so terrible he's actually great at it.

He basically blundered his way to peace.

If there was a Nobel Prize for peace goofing, it would be his, Andy.

He's an accidental Mother Teresa.

He's a clumsy Dalai Lama.

He's a slapstick Gandhi.

I was in a bank all slapstick Gandhi.

He's absolutely extraordinary.

And it turns out that they don't actually need it done within a week.

Now it looks like it's going to take a few months.

John Kerry said, no, Biggie, I was actually thinking about a new tube of toothpaste, not handing over chemical weapons.

I'll definitely need that within a week.

Putin replied, right, great.

Hands in.

One, two, three.

Go, team, peace.

And they all lived happily ever after the end.

So

it's great news, John, that the war is over.

Or at least a bit of the war that we in in Britain and America have to give a shit about.

So that's fine.

Everything else, ah, shit happens.

Yeah, the Syrian genocide very much continues, but our part of the war is over, in which case, peace in our time, just not in their time.

Just weeks later, the world watched with baited giggles as America shut.

Andy, here America has become...

Part Belgium, part Somalia in the last few days.

The entire government has shut down pointlessly, childishly, stupidly, and entirely avoidably, leaving the whole country slamming its head into walls in frustration while being justifiably angry with themselves for expecting anything better.

There is absolutely no need for this to be happening here right now, Andy, but inexplicably Congress has decided to do it anyway.

And all of this is happening in protest over Obamacare, the healthcare system that was passed by the House, examined by the Supreme Court and which is now the law of the land.

The House has tried to overturn it with 42 separate votes, all of which failed, and now they've shut down the government for refusing to pass a budget which includes funding for it.

It is, at best, petulant and at worst, an act of breathtaking but depressingly precedented f quittery.

So now all non-essential government workers have been furloughed, which means programs have been shut down left, right, and centre.

And on the most immediately visual level, some of America's most popular landmarks have shut down.

Yellowstone Park, closed.

Yosemite National Park, concreted over.

Jellystone doesn't exist.

You're thinking of where Yogi Bear lived.

Statue of Liberty has a hood over her head.

Grand Canyon, completely filled in.

They have filled the whole thing in with sawdust, Andy, just in case anyone tried to take an illegal peek at it.

Is it true that if this goes on for another week, the Statue of Liberty will be will have to put on a full nicab?

Yes.

Yes, that is absolutely.

I mean, it could be true.

So that basically makes it a fact, Andy this is of course just the tip of an extremely irritating iceberg thousands of workers are going without pay people living paycheck to paycheck are already struggling meals on wheels has cut back head start has frozen scientific research has been held up and the lack of empathy from some conservative pundits has been mind-blowing many have been on TV this week claiming that the effects of the shutdown are not that bad essentially arguing well how can it be painful if I personally don't feel anything?

And

no one I'm personally acquainted with also feels anything.

Look, if I couldn't do my job as a bloviating, talking head for a while, I'd simply fall back on the royalties from my books or do a few more after-dinner speeches.

Why can't everyone else do that?

Because they're afraid of hard work, that's why.

And please don't bother me with sob stories.

Oh, boo-hoo!

Museums and national parks are closed.

Well, I don't go to those anyway, which proves that we don't need them.

Oh, boo-hoo!

So a few zoo workers get furloughed.

I am not personally a panda, so why should I care?

I've heard also that the entire five and a half thousand-mile-long border with Canada is now patrolled by one man.

Yes.

When that has to, I mean, America is basically on the brink of collapse.

Well, he's got a pair of binoculars, Andy.

He'll be fine.

So the United States of America is shit.

Sorry, shut.

What is the past tense of shut?

Shit.

Shut.

Shut it.

F ⁇ ed.

Shut.

It's shut.

Shut.

And the world's self-styled number one nation has essentially voluntarily applied for official global laughingstock status with an internal budget spat that has basically made the ancient Greeks sit up naked in their graves and admit, well, democracy was a nice idea, but frankly, in practice, it is total shit.

And I guess it just goes to show, John, the ancient saying that you can't spell Tea Party Republican without f ⁇ ing lunatic.

It's a pretty bold move from Congress to do something that pisses almost everyone off on this kind of scale for no kind of rational reason.

But again, that's hardly surprising.

There is no incentive for them to be anything other than awful.

Just look at the numbers.

Congress currently has a 10% approval rating.

Apparently, that is lower than the approval rating for colonoscopies, which actually makes sense because the more you think about it, both Congress and colonoscopies deal with arseholes, but the American public can at least acknowledge that colonoscopies serve a practical function.

Also, colonoscopies exist to make arseholes better, Congress just seems to make them worse.

And yet, Andy, and yet, even with this mere 10% approval rating, members of Congress also have a 90% re-election rate.

How is that f ⁇ ing possible, Andy?

They're somehow batting 900 whilst striking out every time they're at bat.

That doesn't obey the basic laws of mathematics.

So I guess the question is, John, will common sense prevail?

And the answer is obviously no.

It's constitutionally not really supposed to.

And currently, the American legislature is working about as harmoniously as a bunch of T-Rexes and a bunch of stegosauruses arguing over who gets first bite of the nice juicy asteroid that appears to be heading their way for dinner.

And it all basically comes down to the eternal dick jousting contest that is healthcare in America.

And there are some extremely priapic political prongs being sharpened as we speak.

And the Republicans are trying to force various compromises to stall Obamacare, including the latest one I read about this morning, John, the right for anyone earning over $300,000 a year to shoot a poor person once a year to compensate for more of them having access to basic life-saving treatments.

So maybe

that is the...

the one ray of hope.

Maybe that will be the compromise that works.

So if this is not solved, how is it all going to pan out?

Well, we've run this through the Bugles Predictor Acts 3000 future simulator and well, it doesn't look good for the celebrity nation of 300 plus million and one-time World Cup for football semi-finalist.

Within a week, UN peacekeepers will have been deployed to the capital.

There will be airdrops of emergency food and some basic common sense.

As you say, national parks have been closed, the Grand Canyon,

well, first filled with sawdust, and then there'll be a giant infestation of guinea pigs that will have to be dealt with.

The Pentagon is going to run out of money by next Wednesday, Wednesday, leaving the U.S.

vulnerable to a pincer attack by the new Canadio-Mexican alliance.

The government hurriedly supplying extra pitchforks to farmers to defend their lands.

The disbanded U.S.

military will be sold piece by piece to the highest bidder, so expect some high-profile transfers of four-star generals to the Chinese army or the Congolese rebels.

Apart from the Air Force, which is going to be made into a major league baseball franchise, the Washington Wing Wagglers.

Mount Rushmore, and this is, I mean, this really gets to the heart of it, John, Mount Rushmore under threat with suggestions that Abraham Lincoln's eyebrows are going to be raised.

Oh no.

George Washington given a disapproving scowl.

T.J.

Jefferson's mouth altered to make it look like he's about to say the second F in for f's sake.

And Teddy Roosevelt will be replaced with Lindsay Lohan seductively eating a banana.

It is that serious, John.

That's it.

And also, Washington National Zoo will become the de facto seat of government, with a barely discernible difference, but a significant cost saving.

And that was about it for the year.

A few other things happened too, but that's all you're getting.

We'll be back in 2014 with more bugles starting next week with Bugle 255.

Don't forget to check our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

Stay strong, keep in school, and don't watch their cricket, it's getting close to a human rights abuse.

Lots of love from Andy Zoltzmann, PP John Oliver, Andy Zaltzman, Andy Zaltzman, PP Producer Chris, and everyone else at the Bugle.

Yes, I guess those last words were wasted, which is something that, of course, we never do on this podcast.

Until next year, bye-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.