Bugle 246 – Selling The Drama (And War and Guns And The Planet)

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 246 of The Bugle for the week beginning Monday, the 16th of September, 2013, with me, Andy Zoltzmann live in the center of the universe sorry London Caf hit the centre of the universe and joining us for this very special anniversary 390 years to the second on Monday since the Mayflower began her voyage to North America with the pilgrim fathers on board the original P.

Diddy's took their non-luxury transatlantic cruise and on that anniversary we're joined by another Englishman who fled these shores in the pursuit of his religious freedoms uh his religion involving uh a one that believes in him being on telemore often it's the Victoria and Alberts of voicing over animations.

It's John Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

First things first, Andy.

Great news out of Afghanistan.

And there is a sentence that has not been spoken for hundreds of years, possibly in the history of civilization, unless you really hate giant Buddha statues.

They are so annoying.

In which case, there were some amazing news a while ago.

What is the good news?

Well, is there peace there?

No.

Is it any closer to being a functional country rather than a series of chaotic warlord-run provinces?

No.

Have the Taliban decided to act a little less like a bunch of record-breaking dick bags?

Of course not.

But it's better than all of those things, Andy.

Afghanistan has won its first ever international football tournament.

Yay!

That is better than all three of those things combined.

Afghanistan beat India.

who were the defending South Asian champions 2-0.

2-0

in the final in Nepal.

Now, this is especially impressive considering that in the the Taliban era the entire sport was banned even for small children.

I don't think they even fielded a team in an international competition for over 15 years but the point is the celebrations were in classic Afghan style Andy, uncontrolled and incredibly dangerous.

Despite an official plea from the Kabul police for people not to fire weapons into the air to celebrate, the sky was apparently full of gunfire all night and reports said that many of the most intense gunfire actually came from inside police station compounds.

There was a welcome home event at the stadium in Kabul where General Akbar gave a speech saying, Now, this is the time Afghan politicians should learn from national football.

And of course, he's right, Andy.

He's exactly right.

Afghanistan should go and fight India.

Isn't that what he was saying?

That's where true happiness lies.

It

sounds eerily like

the aftermath of Gillingham 2 Halifax 0 back in 1993.

Well, that's good that that football stadium is being used for more football-related activities than it

had been under the Taliban when, you know, if someone went down pretty easily, it wasn't that they'd just been the victim of a foul, more that they'd been shot in the head.

So

thanks to all buglers who've been to see

my satirist for High Show at Soho Theatre during the first week.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

If you are are coming

for the rest of the run, do send in your satirical requests, particularly if you're coming on Monday or Saturday next week, when Saturday's looking like it might be a pretty short show if the ticket buyers do not start sending me some stuff.

This is Bugle 246.

What a number, John.

The highest test score ever made by the legendary England batsman Geoffrey Boycott.

That's what everyone was thinking right then.

He was famously dropped because he scored it too slowly, was dropped for the next

test match, which was

basically, I think,

his own personal satire on the history of the British Empire that we were dropped by the Empire for not ruling quickly enough.

As we record, it's 50 years since sex was legalised in Britain in 1963.

85 years since frowning was made compulsory in public places in this country after the government decided the nation had become too frivolous in the rather skittish 1920s.

And 25 years since the World Bank agreed to impose a tax on shoulder pads and hair boofing products to try to stop the seemingly uncontrollable expansion of the top 20% of 1980s women.

The UN itself was concerned that if clothing and hair volume continued growing at the rate of the 82 to 87 period, no one would have been able to move in the world by the year 2014.

And thanks to their long-term foresight, we are still able to walk around today.

And that's the kind of long-term planning that the world could really do with in the 21st century.

As always a section of on the bugles going straight in the bin.

This week, John, I know it's probably something you've been intimately involved in.

It's been New York Fashion Week.

Yeah.

Of course, Andy, I've been up and down the catwalks like an actual cat.

I have no business being there.

But fur really suits you.

So we, for our section in the bin, we have a review of all the hip new clothes this week, including all the things that have really caused a stir in the Big Apple on the catwalks.

The dead calf headscarf.

That's from the rhyming garment designer J.

Perkin Gansch.

A twist on the classic 1950s

headscarf, but using a freshly hand-slaughtered veal calf.

Described by the fashion reviewer from the Harvard Journal of Applied Mathematics and clothing accessories as quotes: warm and cozy once the blood has stopped splurting everywhere.

Gansch's other rhyming products include the Schnauzer trouser, made from the pelts of the distinctively bearded German dog, the sweaty goat petticoat, self-explanatory and potently erotic, and the egg flea prey negligee, part omelette, part blood-sucking parasite and part religious cassock.

We also review the ever-descending

waistband of youth trousers, reaching its logical conclusion with Brooklyn designer Dabenchdorkelli's ankle jeans, the must-have trousorial funkwear for today's urban aware teenager.

The ankle jeans are designed to sit around the feet of the wearer, modelled on the jeans that the rapper Moggadishus Kaye wore around his ankles on stage at the Bilstorm Festival of Misanthropic Arts in 2012, when he performed his hit RB infused rap anthem, Finish My Crossword or I'll Punch You in the Face, while sitting on a giant toilet and pointing a gun at a woman dressed as a scantily clad thesaurus.

And also, we look at the latest products from the Parisian wine fan and celebrity milliner, the hat designer Flavinique Le Flobleur, with her Chateau d'Ouf du Pap, a hat or chapeau which consists of a bird's nest shaped like a human breast or pap containing a roosting kestrel and its eggs, or as the French call them, oofs.

Ideal for social functions and gala film launches.

The bird nests on your bonce throughout the event before its young hatch, and it flies off around the room, picking up any remaining canopies to take back to the hat nest and puke into the baby kestrel's waiting mouths.

A genuine fashion talking point.

That section in the bin.

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 warmongering version of the sham wow guy on late-night infomercials.

Hi, it's Barack 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 stuff 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

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 ass.

That is something that I will do.

But that's not going to happen, obviously.

So within milliseconds of Kerry saying these things, and it was sounding pretty cross, kind of JK growling kind of act he was putting on, within milliseconds, Russia had jumped on his sort of casual offhand 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 bombed shitless 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 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 But it appears that it only...

They fluked it, John.

It is incredible.

Russia broke the deal with Syria.

Seemingly, partly just out of spite.

No, 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 in 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 he's 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 band called Slapstick Gandhi.

It is absolutely extraordinary.

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

It now 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, gold 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 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.

Now, apparently out of nowhere, we do seem to have a non-military solution to this crisis, and that's got to be good news for the Obama administration, right?

Well, not if you listen to the media here because on CNN Nick Payton Walsh said the Obama administration very much caught on the back foot really struggling to catch up with the news now if I was the president Andy and I am not I really wouldn't worry about too much about struggling to catch up with the news because from my experience of watching it you can just stand back and watch the news run around in a circle like a headless chicken before tripping over its own dick then boom guess what you're all caught up

this also this this level of high-end gaffe work work from John Kerry really begs the question where the f was Joe Biden in all of this

is he really gonna let him get is he gonna let himself get out piece gaffed by John Kerry I've got to believe that he's in the White House right now in a pair of tear away pants saying put me in coach put me in the game I can bring Israel and Palestine together by running my mouth off I guarantee it

But it's extraordinary that asking nicely

has basically worked.

I mean, I guess it does work more effectively after you've initially asked less nicely and tried to look threatening.

I mean, that's just basic parenting.

Yeah.

John, as I'm sure you've discovered with

your delightful doggy.

Yeah.

You know, because I have from my parenting career as well, Daddy can sort of can daddy have a go on your scooter?

No.

Okay, look, what's outside your bedroom window?

A child-eating bear.

Yes, it is.

Now, can daddy have a go on your scooter?

Oh, good.

Thank you.

Excellent sharing.

Well done.

So

that's the negotiation protest, John.

It's a dance as old as time itself.

Perhaps one of the reasons that this administration jumped on the deal like a jacked up kangaroo is that polls suggest here that Americans were overwhelmingly against any kind of military intervention.

Surveys suggested at the start of the week that around 70% of Americans were against airstrikes.

Americans supported airstrikes about as much as they supported Crystal Pepsi.

And look what happened to that.

The Democrat sales strategy on Syria has been a mess from the start, but that's hardly a surprise because Democrats are terrible at selling things things in America.

Syria is just the latest example.

They're currently struggling to sell healthcare to Americans when it will only do the country a huge amount of good and it's also already law anyway.

Look, public opinion has never stopped America from getting into wars before, so I don't know why it has now.

A senior White House advisor attempted to sum up what should be one of the president's greatest strengths on the news last weekend, but which is actually one of, in this context, one of his greatest weaknesses.

He said, one of the things people like about this president is that he talks to people like adults and he will make clear that there are two sides to every story and that these are complicated issues.

You see, that is your problem right there, Andy.

You're trying to sell a war.

This is not a time for complicated issues.

First rule of advertising, when you're selling something, you cannot acknowledge complexity.

It's kryptonite.

You don't advertise milk by saying milk.

It does your body good.

Unless, of course, you're lactose intolerant, in which case it can be a nightmare.

It does sometimes have have that weird aftertaste doesn't it let's accept that that's a fact you know what in the west we probably have way too much dairy in our diet in general to be healthy but still milk no you don't do that

it's that acknowledging your complexity which is why democrats will never be able to be the effective military snake oil salesman that republicans are look at the the white house chief of staff dennis mcdonagh was all over the tv here at the earlier in the week making the case for war saying you've seen video proof of the outcome of these attacks all of that leads to as i say a quite strong common sense test irrespective of the intelligence that suggests that the regime carried this out do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable beyond a reasonable doubt evidence or this is not a court of law and intelligence does not work that way what the f was that andy

common sense this is not a court of law intelligence does not work that way nice sales job idiot you just lost 300 million potential consumers.

Now, this is not complicated, Andy.

Well, the point is it is, but it can't be.

That's the problem.

Politically speaking, you can have no nuance if you want to sell a war.

So if they really wanted to get this done, they should have called in the guys who could have really sold it.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush, Andy.

The A team.

And I'm not telling you what the A stands for there.

Those guys were the best at selling America a war that it didn't want and definitely didn't didn't need.

They were the Sterling Cooper of warmongering.

They knew that selling a war is about brand discipline, Andy.

Rumsfeld said in 2002, the idea that this is going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind

is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990.

Five days or five weeks or five months, but it's certainly not going to last any longer than that.

You hear that, Andy?

Iraq certainly wasn't going to last any longer than five months.

Was that based in any kind of fact?

No.

Did he say it anyway?

Of course.

Because Rumsfeld knew how to shove a war down people's throats.

And it turns out that if you weren't happy with the war you just bought, you could call his complaints line at 1-800-GO yourself.

We need to put this in some kind of context as well.

A lot of problems.

You say, I mean, a lot of the complexities are caused by the fact that the rebels are not the kind of nice, cuddly rebels that you might want to take home with you after a war.

Some of them are, you know, not

less than polite, it might be said.

They've been accused of war crimes by the UN.

And so it's very complicated.

Should we be giving arms to extremist rebels?

I mean, there's always a risk, John.

History shows that generally arming people like this is about as risky as training your dog to eat nothing but sausages and scotch eggs and then taking it with you on a nudist holiday.

You know, it might be fine.

In fact, the dog might even find the whole experience liberating, but it may very well come back to bite you.

No sooner had Putin spite helped America in this, he was with it again.

Yesterday, he published an op-ed in the New York Times, which didn't seem to serve any real purpose other than pissing everyone off, which is, of course, the ultimate purpose, it seems, when it comes to Putin.

In his piece titled A Plea for Caution from Russia, Putin presents himself as a level-headed peacemaker, which is an interesting, if jarring, character development for someone who most people view as a chillingly ruthless sociopath.

In the op-ed, he argues, we must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

I mean, sure, Andy.

Sure.

That's true, I guess.

I don't think there'd be many people.

who would deny that other than of course Putin himself occasionally.

But the quibble count really started to get higher when he wrote we need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today's complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos.

That's just a little hard to take Andy coming from Russia who have systematically vetoed the shit out of any attempt the Security Council has made at getting Assad to cool it on the killing a bit.

You know, just to get Assad to take a genocide chill pill for a bit.

Sort of like being lectured by Michelangelo about painting fewer naked willies on ceilings.

He closed his op-ed, Putin, saying, My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust.

I appreciate this.

I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday, and I would rather disagree with the case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States policy is what makes America different.

It's what makes us exceptional.

It's extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.

There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

Their policies differ too.

We're all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessing, we must not forget that God created us equal.

Okay, hippie.

Few things there.

First, one thing that America is objectively exceptional at is overreacting whenever anyone accuses them of not being exceptional.

So Putin knew exactly what button he was pressing there.

Secondly, the whole we must not forget that God created us equal malarkey rings a little hollow when it's coming from the same guy who seems to equate gay people with mosquitoes.

And then thirdly, Putin doesn't act too equal himself, making sure that he's constantly photographed shirtless on horses, shirtless fishing, or shirtless in a submarine.

Not to mention the way he talks about Russia.

At a rally last year he said, we will not allow someone to impose their will on us because we have our own will.

it has helped us to conquer we are a victorious people it's in our genes in our genetic code Putin Andy is saying that Russians are genetically exceptional which is even more dangerous

we need to give this some some context all this debate about arms this week in London it's been the good side of arms John there's been the DSEI

biannual arms fair at the XL

arena the world's leading arms trade, kaboom bang, bastik, death deck, jamboree, or, in its own words, a defence and security event.

I know we like to live in a free world where it's a nation's right to sell it.

Love it.

Love it.

It's a nation's right to sell stuff that goes bang and makes people fall over, and also to sell stuff that stops other people making different stuff go bang and make other people fall over.

The arms trade, John, of course, very much a two-edged banana.

And it's one of the things we're best at in Britain, alongside, for example, the selective recollection of history and having been better at stuff ages ago.

I think the best there ever was at that, Andy.

I mean, we're the best there's ever been.

We've got to avoid allegations of hypocrisy, which there have been quite a few flying around the world over the last couple of weeks.

And if you and I, John, are free to sell bugle t-shirts, mugs and caps at thebuglepodcast.com, weaponized with the awesome brand power of the bugle, then so should our weapons manufacturers be free to flog their multi-billion pound high-tech weapons.

and basically their commemorative merch.

So I guess it would just be nice if we had the decency to stamp all our exports with A, a Union Jack and B the arms trade spiritual logo, the crossed fingers, symbolising both the fingers crossed hope that they won't end up defensively securing the wrong type of people and the fact that when we bang on about freedom here and democracy and human rights, we may very well have our fingers quietly crossed behind our backs and not entirely mean it quite as much as our honourable British faces suggest.

So I guess, you know,

there's always a risk with these things.

It's probably fine and we only sell them to nice despots.

But when you flog your bang bangs to countries which have an at-best frosty relationship with themselves, then

you are getting into trouble.

That's the problem though, Andy, because, you know, Britain's arms trade has had a hypocritical hippo honking at it all week after a scandal that emerged.

The British government was accused of breathtaking laxity in its arms controls last week after it emerged that officials authorised the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make sarin gas.

As recently as last year, Andy, a British company was granted export licenses for the substances of potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride, dual-use substances, for six months back in way, way back in 2012, Andy, a time when Syria's civil war was very much raging and concern was already rife that the regime could use chemical weapons on its own people.

Now, business secretary, business secretary Andy, he's responsible for business that is just defending business, Vince Cable, and acknowledged that he authorized the export of chemicals, knowing full f ⁇ ing well that they were listed on an international schedule of chemical weapon precursors.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman pointed out that no chemicals were actually exported during that period saying look you see the system working with materials not exported.

The facts that the licenses were revoked and the exports did not take place.

The Prime Minister's view is that this demonstrates that the system is working.

No, it f ⁇ ing doesn't, Andy.

That is not the point at all.

That just proves that the system, in this particular instance, is extremely f ⁇ ing lucky.

That's like giving businesses license to possess rocket launchers, but trusting that they won't use them if they don't think it's appropriate.

Vince Cable said the licenses were granted because at the time there were no grounds for refusal.

What more grounds do you need?

Yes, he's a murderous dictator with a proven track record of attacking his own people, but to refuse to sell him these chemicals would be to suggest, Andy, that he might use them, which seems so rude that I, you know, Britain just didn't want to risk causing a fuss.

That's the British way.

And what about

Assad in the middle of all this?

Well, John,

9-11, the 11th of September, is President Assad's birthday.

Is that true?

Yeah, I mean, that is an inflammatory birthday to him in the circumstances.

Oh, that is.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think the diplomatic thing to do would be to change your birth certificates on September the 12th back then.

You know what?

I'm just going to budget a couple of days.

It doesn't really make any difference.

So

he was 48 this week.

And I've tried to understand, because

he's a strange man.

He has this kind of bizarre

relationship with his own public image.

And I've tried to understand what motivates him.

And here's a few facts I dug up, John.

His first child was born in early December 2001, which means that it was conceived in late February or early March of that year, around about the exact time that the 2001 UK foot and mouth crisis began.

And it's the same time that the Taliban started smashing up those historic giant Buddhas,

Obamian Buddhas in Afghanistan.

And John, possibly even on the day that the greatest cricketer in history, Don Bradman, died at the age of 92.

His second kid was conceived around the time the war in Darfur began and the space shuttle Columbria exploded.

And the third, whilst Kodak and Sony were embroiled in a court case relating to patents on digital camera technology.

Now, I'm not going to judge other people's personal and sexual proclivities, John.

But the Assads are into some fing weird shit.

That's the kind of man we're dealing with.

I don't know what point you've made there, Andy, but it's a memorable one.

Environment update now, and unfortunately, when it comes to the environment, the no news is good news concepts does not apply.

Environmentally, no news means outrageous journalistic laziness overlooking mounting global crisis.

But look, there may be a plan B for the environment, and not plan B in the American sense, which would be to give the Earth a pill that would essentially abort the planet.

Not that.

Lord Rees, one of Britain's top scientists and the inventor of Reese's pieces, delivered a...

Super little scientist.

Reese.

Super scientist.

Super great science.

Loves himself a peanutty chocolatey treat.

He delivered a major address on potential scientific backup plans if carbon emissions can't be curved within a couple of decades due to, I don't know, probably debilitating disease of people not really being bothered enough to do it.

Some of the options are apparently essentially hacking the planet's climate by launching mirrors into space, seeding clouds and triggering

blooms in the oceans.

And if that sounds like a series of desperate moonshots, that's because they basically would be.

Reese acknowledges that geoengineering is controversial and also admitted that it would be an utter political nightmare.

Although, you know, I think my utter political nightmare, Andy, would probably be going to sleep and, you know, maybe dreaming that, you know, David Cameron was a fly and that he was landing on like a horseshit and then he was flying over and landing on my face and i couldn't swat him away that would be a political nightmare wouldn't it that god that would be a complete nightmare but uh i mean this john to me this is absolutely fantastic news because we could be looking at absolutely cataclysmic rise in temperatures over the next hundred years you know six degrees centigrade changing life on earth irrevocably leading to massive political and economic instability and as you say the boffins have said we may well need a Plan B.

And this, of course, whenever anyone says we may need a Plan B, this is translated by the world as, Yay,

no need for Plan A.

We are in the clear.

That is true.

And also, this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of language, John, that politicians will understand.

I mean, let's just take as an example, look at these mirrors.

Launching mirrors into space.

If you tell little Vlavlav Vladputin, no lover of the Russian greens, that he's going to have to reduce Russia's carbon emissions by 20% over the next 40 years.

Well, he's just going to glaze over and start thinking about what journalist he wants bumped off next or how cool gulags were.

But if you tell Vladimir Putin that he can launch a giant mirror into space or change the sea, you will have his full, undivided attention and probably a complimentary ex-KGB goon.

This is the way to get these things done.

The mirror technique would apparently involve blasting mirrors into space and strategically placing them so that they reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

Of course the other option, Andy, would be to turn the mirrors the other way around to force people to see what complete self-involved short-termist arseholes they're being by not addressing this massive problem in any significant way whatsoever.

That would be either way.

Either way.

Just depends how you want to play it, which way you want to point them.

There are various other plan Bs, as well as the giant mirror.

A plug at the bottom of the Atlantic

find another planet we've heard this week that the Voyager spacecraft has left the solar system

and could easily come in contact with another star at some point in around about 40,000 years time and that star could easily have a planet attached to it so that's that's something worth cleaning to pray two percent harder at weekends

Also with you know with the ozone layer having disappeared those prayers get up to God a bit faster as well

To combat rising sea levels, there is a possibility we could put all land on a five-metre hydraulic platform.

Alternatively, just ask Kevin Costner about stuff or leave our fridge doors open for 20 minutes every day.

So, you know, there are things we can do, John.

Let's call those plan C, Andy.

Failing all that.

In which case, we can just ignore plan B altogether.

Failing all that, we can just fall back on the old tried and tested things to do in a time of crisis.

Blame the gays, ban contraception, or call a jihad.

So

Australia might not be quite as keen to step up to the global warming plate as it previously was.

They have a new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, described as a compassionate conservative.

Two words that don't always go off.

A lot of that compassion tends to be directed towards endangered billionaires.

In fact, they've been conducting a breeding program, I believe,

in the global economy in recent years, and quite successfully.

There are now more billionaires than there were.

It's amazing.

If only they could do the same thing with pandas.

So Abbott got in.

Australian politics has been a total up recently,

as I'm sure you found when you were out there.

Abbott replaced Kevin Rudd.

And Rudd had initially replaced John Howard about six years ago, basically running on a platform of saying, I'm not John Howard.

He was then ousted by Julia Gillard, running on the I'm not Kevin Rudd card.

Rudd then counter-ousted Gillard saying, I'm not Julia Gillard.

and Abbott has now got in on a very powerful, I'm neither Julia Gillard nor Kevin Rudd ticket.

It's a dance as old as democracy itself.

But his view on climate change, he described it as, quotes, absolute crap.

Which is, I mean, you've got to admire his succinct analysis of reams and reams of scientific research, argument and counter-argument.

Absolute crap.

Science is 98% confidence, Andy.

That's a fact.

Just witchcraft.

Or it's the fact of a 98% confident scientist.

It's just witchcraft with a clipboard, basically.

But I guess it shows John, you know, he's a conservative.

And conservatives, to me, generally around the world, we've seen that conservatives are like a small magnetic boy at the bottom of a well during a coin sharpening and wish-making festival.

They fear change.

Boom!

There are still tickets left for all days of the Satirist for Har Show as we speak, although oddly, it's selling reasonably well, so you might actually have to book in advance.

And sorry to any long-term Zaltzmann fans who are used to having their own row in a venue.

I've had some very interesting emails sent in about,

some topics of great global importance, like Syria, and others of arguably less global importance, such as Billy Corgan out of the smashing pumpkins,

which was a satirical request that was sent in.

And fair enough, it's about time someone satirised that savage despot down a peg or two.

And this guy sent me a link to a story about Billy Corgan, aged 46, starring in, quotes, a wrestling-themed furniture ad for a wacky Chicago retailer.

Which I think highlights a very important issue, John, and it's well done to Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins for raising this, and that is that rock stars need furniture too.

He's also involved in the sideboards for Saxophonists campaign.

And of course, the Pumpkins, John, I imagine you're a big fan.

Outrock bands broke through in the early 90s, renowned for their density layer guitar sound and angst-fill lyrics.

But in fact, Corgan's obsession with furniture was clear in some of the Pumpkins' early album tracks, including I'm So Miserable That I Could Do with a Good Sit-Down brackets on a 1930s Chesterfield City,

also Strangely Proportioned Coffee Table, I'm As Lovely as a Mahogany Plant Stand, and of course the platinum selling My Penis is like a well-made cupboard.

So

odd things, odd things, odd things sent in.

Another request was sent in

asking me to satirise sports commentary and in particular the unnecessary verbiage spouted by sports commentators now this is obviously another massively important issue of global social and political importance in particular wrote Lawrence who sent in the phrase he's only X years of age it winds me up no end what's wrong with just saying he's 25

Does do they feel it gives their commentary an unneeded bump of pomposity or do they just get special training to to force to force the use of long-winded phrases where short ones would do?

Now I thought, well, if you're going to send that complaint to anyone, I'm probably the last person in the world you want to be sending it to.

And also, let's give the sports commentator some respect.

These people are the poets of the 21st century.

Their art needs space to breathe.

And this guy's clearly the same kind of guy who'd complain about Shakespeare wasting 14 lines of Prime Sonnet banging on about how he's wondering whether or not to compare some chicky fancies to a summer's day, when he could quite easily have boiled it down to a simple, uncomplicated

toast that beagle

or even you know the bible bangs on and on and on you know you could just summarize the old testament as

and the new testament as basically jesus saying don't be a dick and also why why did all well bother writing the whole of animal farm when he could have just paraded around with a fuck you starlin banner so um i guess uh you know

different things mean different things to different people john John.

But do email in your satirical requests, preferably about arguably more important issues than sports commentary verbiage.

Also, Andy, yes, it's annoying when sports commentators do that, but let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater here.

And let us not forget the finest moment in sports commentary regarding someone's age, which is Sid Waddell commentating on the dart, saying, when Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no worlds left to conquer.

Eric Bristow is only 27.

A quick quiz question for you now.

The 16th of September, Monday, on this day in 1736, Daniel Fahrenheit, the celebrity temperature scale inventor, died.

He's obsessed with temperatures.

His scale is still used for temperatures.

in America and used for body temperatures as well here.

In fact, Daniel Fahrenheit's final words were 92, 90, 87, 85.

Hang on, I'm feeling a bit chilly.

81, 76.

Oh, hang on, this is not looking good, is it?

71, 65, speeding up.

Uh-oh, 59, 54, and I'm dead.

He died on the 16th of September 1736, or the equivalent on the Celsius scale of dying on the 2nd of July, 947.

So here's a quick Daniel Fahrenheit.

That is a useless series of jokes.

That has no use

whatsoever.

In 246 bugles, Andy, that might just.

I don't know why that's more irrelevant than the rest of it.

I think that is completely irrelevant.

That's some claim you're making, John.

Because something has been

a lot of irrelevant.

I know, like, if Fahrenheit died a long time ago, he got a bunch of lies before that, and then you're converting his death into Celsius.

I think at that point, you're so far removed from any purpose of a joke.

You're in a new kind of philosophical limbo.

So have a quick Daniel Fahrenheit quiz.

Which of the following is true?

A.

Daniel Fahrenheit calibrated his famous temperature scale using such marking points as the melting point of ice, the ideal toe-dipping temperature of a bath, defined as the moment that ooh becomes ooh, the optimum temperature for the underarm squelchy, and the temperature at which an old biddy or codger starts to get really grumpy if you leave it in a car.

B, he had a lifelong fear of mushroom pizza, and at the sight of a single slice, he would burst into tears and hide in a cupboard, shouting, No, no, even pineapple is better than this.

C, his name is widely used as a derogatory term by climate change sceptics.

Well, I was thinking my summer cottage in the countryside could be turned into a coal-fired power station, but I expect little Danny Fahrenheit would have something to say about that.

Or D, Daniel Fahrenheit's favourite composer was Johannes Bon Jovinius.

And here comes the answer.

In fact, they're all partially true.

A,

he did use the armpit to scale out the temperature.

96 degrees, he marked out the temperature of the human armpit.

B, he probably would have feared mushroom pizza because his parents both died on the same day from eating poisonous mushrooms.

Which, when both your parents do that, you have to, you really have to look at yourself and say, what am I the most annoying child in the world?

C,

if

Little Danny Fahrenheit is not used like that, then it should be.

And D, Bon Jovi, the actual descendants of Johannes Bonjovinius, the 18th century Polish composer.

Their second album was entitled 7800 degrees Fahrenheit after the supposed melting point of rock.

So there we go.

It's been a long week, John.

Thanks for emails, but we're not going to

read any of them out loud.

We'll read them internally, but we've run out of time, so we're going to have to leave the studio.

Do keep them coming into info at thebuglepodcast.com.

Your satirical requests, if you're coming to my show, with the date you're coming on, to satirise this at satirisforhire.com.

And do check out our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

And well, that's it.

On this, well, historic day.

Lance Armstrong has just handed back his Olympic medal, bronze from the time trial in Sydney in 2000 after he's admitted his spectacular drugs regime

also admitted cycling with a jetpack on his back and having swallowed a 750cc motorcycle engine before the race and having sacrificed an illegal bull to Almighty's use to make him go faster and

anyway but he's turned it back and this is in fact the fifth effort that the IOC have made to get back his medal.

The first thing he sent back was a large chocolate coin Then a medal he'd won ate at a school fate for doing the best impression of a horse, then an empty coke can squished in one of those can crushers and

spray-painted bronze, and then the severed foot of a chicken.

It was getting desperate by this point.

But finally, he has returned the actual medal, and as penance, he's going to return to the course in Sydney and unicycle it backwards, dressed as a pantomime syringe.

So, at least there's some.

We're going to close that circle.

That circle's been closed.

Thanks very much for listening, Buglers.

We'll be back with Bugle 247 next week.

Goodbye.

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.