Bugle 194 – Global Election Round Up

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The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, Buglers, and welcome to issue 194 of The Bugle, the official podcast of the planet Earth, with me, Andy Zoltzmann, husband, father, Bar Mitzvah survivor, langua management therapist, and freelance javelin describer.

It's a pointy stick that goes up and down when you throw it, but it's best not used when dealing with an annoying moth fluttering around a glass lampshade or your wife will get crossed.

That'll be £25, please.

I am live in Olympicsville, UK, and joining me from the Big Apple, it's the Big Pip himself,

one of the world's top 5 billion Marilyn Monroe impersonators.

It's the syringe of satire injecting jokes into the juggler of injustice.

It's John, the human toasting fork, Oliver.

Hello, Andy.

Hello, buglers.

Andy, death is a dick.

Every now and then,

yeah, death will take someone who deserves to die, a bin Laden, a Colonel Gaddafi, a Hitler, if you will, but even then it's usually far later than would have been appropriate or indeed useful.

Most of the time, death is a dick.

And that has been sadly particularly true this week, with Adam Yauker, The Beastie Boys, and Maurice Sandak, writer of many amazing children's children's books such as Where the Wild Things Are both passing away.

Both of their deaths made the world a slightly less good place and when I was looking over some of the tributes of what they both achieved I found an incredible interview with Maurice Sendak and in it he revealed that he tried to reply to every child that wrote to him and then he told this fantastic story which significantly brightened my week and I thought it was worth sharing.

I quote, this is what he says.

A little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing.

I loved it.

I answer all my children's letters sometimes sometimes very hastily, but this one I lingered over.

I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a wild thing on it.

I wrote, Dear Jim, I loved your card.

Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, Jim loved your card so much he ate it.

That to me was one of the highest compliments I've ever received.

He didn't care that it was an original drawing or anything.

He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

I guess there are two immediate emotional responses to that, Andy.

Rest in peace, Maurice Sendak, and nice work, Jim.

And Jim, of course, grew up to be Heston Blumenthal.

So this is Bugle 194 for the week beginning Monday, the 14th of May, 2012.

And as we record, it's Friday, the 11th of May.

So happy birthday to Eric Burden, Britain's greatest blues singer.

And it's

200 years to the day, John, as we record, since Spencer Percival became the first and to date only British Prime Minister to be assassinated.

That is, if you exclude Harold Macmillan, who was assassinated by natural causes in his sleep at the age of 92, the 12th century Archbishop and celebrity Thomas Abeckett, who was assassinated but wasn't Prime Minister, the 1977 Wimbledon champion, Virginia Wade, who is 0 for 2 on being either Prime Minister or assassinated, for which we should be eternally grateful on both counts.

I have nothing against her politically.

I'm just happy with her as a tennis pundit.

Also, if you include John F.

Kennedy, who was American and not Prime Minister, but could have been if America hadn't fked us over in the late 18th century.

Good point.

And championed the Wonder Horse, the 1950s fictional horse.

Who wasn't assassinated, Prime Minister, or a horse?

Well, I mean, all those three.

I think we'll let history be the judge on that.

But anyway, Percival was bumped off in the lobby of the House of Commons by lone gunman John Bellingham, who was hacked off with the government and dealt with that hacked offness in a slightly silly way with hindsight.

The way he did it was he'd taken a friend to see a watercolour painting exhibition and then casually remarked he had some business to attend to, went to Parliament and shot the Prime Minister.

That's a nice bit of classic British understatement, isn't it?

Excuse me, I just awfully relaxed.

I have a little bit of business to attend to.

He died in the House of Commons, presumably to jeers from opposition MPs about how he had broken a manifesto promise not to be shot dead, whilst his press secretary hastily issued a press briefing trying to spin the story as Percival showing how in touch with ordinary people he was just by, like ordinary people would, dying.

And an inquest was held the following day.

And can you guess where it was held, John?

I don't know, Andy.

Where was it?

It was held in the Cat and Bagpipes pub on the corner of Downing Street.

Naturally.

Some say it was in the Rose and Crown pub.

Either way, it was in a pub, or more likely, in two pubs.

Right, before we get down to business, pint.

Yep, pint.

Only a half of you driving.

Go on, have a pint.

As long as your horse doesn't drink it, it'll be fine.

Pint, Bloody Mary.

Too soon, Jeffrey.

Pint, pint, pint.

Right.

Okay, I'll get some Chris.

I'll get four packets.

We can share them.

Okay, Damn, let's get to business.

Three hours later.

Who's around?

Is it?

We might as well get a couple of whiskey chasers too.

Okay,

so how do we reckon the bastard died?

Shot?

Yeah, I reckon he was shot.

Yeah.

Anyone think he got septicemia from a rusty bullet?

No, he was shot.

Right that downcase closed.

Let's see these off and head down the rose and crown for a couple more.

And the golden typhoid for a quick boogie.

I'll tell you what, that Jane Austen.

Oh, yeah.

And I'm not saying that system was wrong, John.

I'm just saying it was different to the one we have now for inquests.

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

This week, it's a history of inventions.

Part Part one of 5,000, collect one invention each week until you find solace in the merciful arms of the Reaper.

Part one is the party blower.

The party blower was invented by Florence Nightingale as a medical aid during the Crimean War.

It was used in field hospitals where Flo No and her fellow nurses would put a party blower into the wounded soldiers' mouths.

As long as there was a noise coming from the soldiers, they knew they were okay.

As soon as the honking stopped,

they called the priest.

Party whistles continued to be used in battlefield situations well into the 20th century.

Indeed, in World War I, soldiers were given party whistles when going over the top, and if wounded in no man's land, would try to attract medics' attention by blowing their whistles.

Indeed, World War I's top-ranked poet Wilfred Owen wrote these very moving lines.

Most piteous sound across the night, from the lungs of the fallen in their final fight, amidst the restless rhythms of the mortar blast, floats the tuneless music of the soldier's last.

As a wounded owl hoots departing call to its beloved eggs so small,

save me from this song of death, from my comrades' honk of final breath.

As if to say, man, this war sucks.

The Hun really are a bunch of fks.

And Lord Haig, as safe in your tent you sit, your tactics, mate, they're a pile of shit.

Walking straight in machine guns, well, that's a clever stunt, you mindless, fuck-witted, shit-brained.

Then, silence, but for the gentle flit and flutter this way and that of the brave dead hero's pink party hat.

There's something so incredible about seeing Andy blowing one of those.

It's amazing.

I don't think there is.

I mean, I don't know what's better, the thought of it or the reality.

I think they're both amazing.

I also think that might be the first time ever that someone has laughed at a Wilfred Owen poem.

You're basically saying that Florence Nightingale invented the heart monitor.

Yeah, that's basically what you're saying.

Yep.

I'm fine.

Top story this week, election bonanza.

Andy, elections are like buses.

You wait years for them to turn up, then a bunch all turn up at once, a number of them stink, and a few contain some very suspicious-looking characters.

All in all, you're left thinking there must be a better way of getting where you need to go.

Now, we all know that there is a presidential election going on in the US right now between President Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Lord Mitford of the Michigan Romlingtons.

But there are and were a number of other elections around the world that happened recently.

So all aboard the election roundup.

French election news now.

And this week, France elected a new president.

Now, I know that most people are currently thinking, oh, but hold on.

Who gives a shit?

And

ordinarily, I would agree with you.

But this campaign has been been pretty interesting.

Just maybe a little bit of background for you.

The two main candidates were Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, the tiny Frenchman, and husband to an inexplicably attractive wife.

And running against...

He is batting so far above average.

So far above average.

He's kind of in a different sport.

I think, yeah, we're both men who speak as gentlemen who are batting well above average.

No question, Andy.

But he is batting even further above average than we are, John.

Which is really saying something.

And running against him, the socialist candidate, François Hollande.

Interestingly, the socialist candidate was actually supposed to have been Dominique Strauss-Kahn until that whole legal misunderstanding of exactly how New Yorkers traditionally tip maids in hotels.

That incident and all the revelations that came after it meant that Dominique Strauss-Kahn's political goose wasn't just cooked, it was force-fed, slaughtered and had its liver served up as a delicacy.

The revelations are too many and too shady to go into here, but to sum them up, it seems that Dominique Strauss Kahn's watch seems to have been permanently stuck at bang o'clock for the last 20 years

so

the French people enjoyed their first and only presidential debate of the season where Sarkozy and Hollande argued like two French people sitting at the table next to you in a restaurant fighting over who was going to pay the bill

and my favourite part of the election was that before before the election A great clip came out of François Hollande's mother talking about him as a little boy.

She said, he used to say something that always made us laugh.

When I grow up, I'll be president.

We didn't believe that at all, and still don't.

To a gelant,

presumably said, oh, wow, thanks for your support, mom.

You really don't need to be a psychologist to work out what has driven his career in politics, Andy.

I'm surprised he didn't open his victory speech with, see?

I did it, mother.

Now are you proud of me?

Why aren't you proud of me?

I just want you to be proud of me.

He'd played heavily on his Man of the People credentials,

but

having promised to only travel by train, he celebrated victory by spending the evening in his hometown of Toul,

which is a good town for a politician to come from.

Then popped in a £12,000 an hour private jet and flew to Paris.

Now, this, of course, was probably logistically necessary given the tight time constraints, but it was immediately jumped on by his critics as being the new world record fastest ever reenactment of George Orwell's Animal Farm.

He was accused of being a champagne socialist, or as they say in France, C'est Louis who comes avex especially in this de la mode of socialism, and all

political issues,

or

joy

to coffee, la bubblérès, de la mère boutilisme de champagne, dans abus français, who left

Not the most concise people linguistically, John.

That's basically what I'm saying.

The general sense of celebration in France seemed not so much to be that François Hollande was now president, it's that Sarkozy was now not.

President Hollande polled just under 52% of the votes, and the turnout was a massive 80%.

There were instant concerns from global markets that France was about to become a lot more French as the markets seemed to have viewed the election as being a battle between Sarkozy, embodying a modern, competitive, industrial nation, and Hollande, representing a nation sitting around in cafes all day chomping on croissants.

They seem concerned that Hollande is going to return France to the 12-hour work week and a retirement age of 35.

And if that's true, then frankly, France made the right choice, Andy.

You don't go to visit France to see them speedwalking to work like it's Tokyo.

You go to see them leaning on a wall, shrugging at accordion music.

That is just a fact.

I think also, you know, we've looked at the speedwalking to work driven economies in recent years, and perhaps the cross-site-driven economy is the way forward for the world.

How did that work out for everyone?

Now you're tired and you're broke.

He's promised massive tax hikes for the wealthiest French people.

75% for anyone earning over 1 million euros, which with the Euro collapsing as a currency is now equivalent to £820,000 or £1.3 million.

That's roughly £810,000 now in today's money or $1.15 million.

Only really applies this to anyone earning over $1 million or £755,000.

prompting fears that France's wealthiest could flock to London and provoke a catastrophic run on London's limited supply of baguettes.

Now, it's quite a brave move.

There's not many leaders, even given what's happened to the economy in the headlong rush for unearned wealth, not many leaders have had the, have dared to say, excuse me, the rich, but since we're all a bit strat-for-cat at the moment, is there any chance that you could just fork out a little bit more for a little while, given that you have built your wealth in this country on the efforts of people in this country?

And while things are tough, maybe you could prevail, we could prevail on you to stump up a little bit more, to which the rich would reply, Sandra, could you just check the prices of flights to the Cayman Islands?

I'm sorry, Monsieur Hollande.

I'm absolutely right on board with this.

How much were you thinking?

75%.

Sandra, can you check the price of property in the Cayman Islands, please?

Mr.

Hollande, I would absolutely love to help out, but unfortunately, I have now left the country.

I have left the country.

In his concession speech, Sarkozy wished good luck.

to President Hollande with the glint in his eye of a man who has seen a breakdown of recent French finances.

Yeah, good luck with that.

If you need me, I'll be at home ignoring your calls.

One of Alain's campaign pledges was to rework the deal on government debt in member countries, in EU member countries.

And apparently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called him the night of the election to congratulate him and tell him that that was not going to happen.

That literally might have been all she said in that phone call before hanging up.

Hi, Francois.

It's Angela.

Just wanted to say, well, huge congratulations on becoming president.

Oh, one more thing.

Shove your renegotiation up your ass, Frenchie.

Have a great night.

Click.

Sarkozy has insisted that he is not sorry that he has lost the presidency, showing in defeat that rather than being out of touch, as some said he was, he can still, when the mood is right, say what ordinary French people are thinking.

And Hollande immediately stated that he would pursue alternatives to the austerity packages that are currently being forced onto Europe.

Those austerity packages are very much the bullets to the torso that have proved so effective at waking up the European economic corpse.

So we'll see how we'll see how that works.

Yeah, well, currently is perhaps.

I don't know.

It won't work

because the Germans won't have it, Andrew.

And if the Germans won't have it, it's not going to happen.

Chancellor Merkel.

I think history has proved that time and again, John.

Yeah, and they've got a track record.

Chancellor Merkel warned that there is no magic bullet to resolve the debt crisis, but that there was an actual bullet for anyone who tried to break a deal that they'd made.

You break the deal, I break your legs.

Greek election news now.

And look, I've said it before, Andy, I'll say it again.

Greece invented democracy, and if you judge what's happening in Greece right now, it seems they are intent on destroying it.

The Greeks seem to have looked at the French idea of renegotiating their European debt deal and said, hey,

let's do that.

Hey, EU, we'll see your crippling austerity measures and we'll raise you absolutely none of those.

how does that sound how does absolutely none of them sound things are pretty miserable in Greece right now and under the economic deal that they struck or that was struck for them things are set to remain that way for around the next 20 years and in a depressing tango as old as time the far right has risen from the economic morass like a shaved-headed phoenix from a mountain of shit

The ultra-nationalist party golden dawn, about the least accurate name for that party imaginable, they're more like a murky dusk or a gloomy nightmare, won a vote share of around 7% increase, catapulting the party from appropriate obscurity to winning 21 seats in parliament.

Since last week's election, TV and internet pictures have come out of party members in heavy metal makeup, splashed with fake blood, brandishing hunting knives, making nazi-style salutes or smiling next to an Auschwitz oven.

Linked to racist attacks on immigrants, Golden Dawn says it wants to seal Greek borders with landmines and its election flyers promise to rid the country of their stench.

Andy,

if Solon, Plato, Pericles and Aristotle were to be transported to Greece now, they would feel like parents returning home early from vacation to see that their house has been trashed by a party their teenagers had that got out of hand.

What the f ⁇ happened here?

We were only away for 2,000 years.

What the f ⁇ have you done to this place?

Wait, who are those morons with swastikas?

Please tell me this is a joke.

Please tell me that you didn't use democracy to actually give these pricks any power.

What the f is wrong with you?

And

holy shit, what happened to the Parthenon?

You trashed it.

How do you not take care of a building like that?

Why aren't any of you wrestling?

And why isn't everyone naked?

What the f has happened to this country?

Hold on, hold on.

Calm down.

This is still the most powerful country in the world, right?

What do you mean, no?

Who is then?

What the f ⁇ is America?

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

But the name Greece is still synonymous with the greatest minds in human history, correct?

Please tell me that you haven't even trashed the greatness of our reputation.

We're still the philosopher kings, right?

What are you looking at your feet for?

Look me in the eye and tell me what Greece is most famous for.

I beg your pardon.

What the f is a Moussaka?

It's almost like you did a classics degree like I did, John.

Bit of fun.

Yep, bit of fun.

I'm so sorry, Pericles.

The value of the Greek stock market has fallen almost 90% in just five years, John.

Now, I'm not an economist, but that does not sound very good.

And it's probably fallen around about 99.9% in the last 2,500 years as well.

As a result of all this, the celebrity currency, the Euro, is in big trouble.

Started off as a symbol of peaceful cooperation in an age when Europe, the famous continent, had after a couple of thousand years, finally weaned itself off everyone slaughtering each other in territorial and ideological wars every couple of generations and turned itself into a symbol instead of catastrophic economic mismanagement and political failure very much out of the frying pan and into the fire whilst being smashed around the head with the frying pan

Mexican election news now and on July the 1st the Mexican people go to the polls to elect a new president for them currently President Philippe Calderon is ineligible for re-election because no president in Mexico can run for office twice.

The post-revolution Mexican Constitution

essentially states that you serve one six-year term and then you f the f off.

I think that literally might be how they wrote it in the constitution.

Mexico essentially has disposable presidents.

You use the once and you throw them away.

All four of the candidates have been accusing each other of corruption in Mexico this week, and to varying degrees, they are basically all right.

The front runner is Enrique Peña Neto, the current governor of the state of Mexico and a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and who, if the election was based on handsomeness, which it isn't definitely not, then he'd win by a landslide because with his glowing tan, his salt and pepper hair and his predilection for crisp white open-necked shirts.

Well, they've already made him the Mexican president of my heart, haven't they?

And those hats

oh those wide-brimmed hats

the highlight of the campaign so far was a presidential debate in which uh a playboy model in a tight dress walked across the stage and was patently ogled by the candidates now

some have said this is debasing a very serious political matter of who gets to be in charge of mexico's failure to adequately deal with its drugs problem.

I think, John, it just proves that distractions should be a part of all political debates.

Because when you're in office, John, you're going to be able to withstand all manner of distractions.

Not only playboy models in tight dresses wandering into cabinet meetings, waggling their gruelers at you, but other distractions as well.

For example, you have to learn to ignore your own election pledges, the temptation to let ethics get in the way of practicality, for sound policy to interfere with political grandstanding.

And you must learn to ignore, as well, public opinion, escape bears, editors of national newspapers with strange leader in curly ginger hair and a whole host of other distractions.

Having pretty ladies interfere with the presidential debate is merely helping the public decide who is most likely to be able to focus properly on the job and then they will probably vote for whichever one of them takes his glasses off and says Ariver.

It was a truly weird moment.

Basically

pieces of paper randomly assigned the speaking order of the debate were handed to each candidate by this former nude model in a skin-tight white evening gown, with most of the front of the dress, shall we say, strategically missing.

She appeared for 24 seconds at the start of the debate, but that was all that anyone was talking about afterwards.

And Mexico's electoral commission said the woman's tight white dress with its plunging neckline has distracted attention from the important issues.

Going on to say, which were breasts.

I mean the economy.

I mean the economy.

And making this economy breaster.

I mean better.

I mean boobs.

I mean, oh.

One of the candidates, the underdog, Gabrielle Quadri,

said, it is impossible not to concentrate your attention on a woman so spectacular.

Oh, God.

He is laying his political cards on the table there.

Well, and it's, you know,

perhaps it's tricky, but it's not impossible.

In fact, I would just suggest that he concentrates his attention on the fact that Mexican drug cartels keep leaving decapitated heads in Mexican cities.

That should help take his mind off ladies' arses.

And it does also back up the point I made some time ago that when Silvia Berlusconi called Angela Merkel an unfkable lardass, it was a compliment to her as a non-distracting politician.

And also, we've already seen Gaddafi, you know, completely in control, become a valuable trade partner to the West, until he is fatally undermined by America appointing Condoleezza Rice as their Secretary of State.

Just couldn't coax him.

Just couldn't coax him.

It does seem that Enrique Peña Nieto is likely to win.

He's part of also a potentially glamorous first couple, as his wife, Angelica Rivera, is one of Mexico's biggest soap opera actresses and is also almost unfeasibly good looking.

Well, you know, he's certainly the most famous of the candidates, Andy, which, as dictated by modern democracy, as we all know, therefore makes him the most electable.

He's not been without his gaffes.

Everyone loves a gaffe, Andy, even those in non-English speaking countries.

I know that seems hard to believe.

How can they enjoy a gaffe if it isn't gaffed in the English language?

But apparently they can.

At the end of last year, during an interview with a Spanish newspaper, he answered a question about the minimum wage in Mexico incorrectly, which was bound to sting as minimum wage is just called wage for a huge number of Mexican citizens.

But also, when asked how much a kilo of tortillas cost, he replied, I am not the housewife.

He received huge amounts of criticism and mockery for this, and he later claimed that his words have been taken out of context, that he hadn't meant to offend women, and that he'd meant to say that he is not the housewife in his home and thus wouldn't know the prices.

To which everyone said, no, that's the same context that you've been criticised for.

You haven't changed the context of that sentence, you have merely made it longer.

Well, this is the problem, John, of having political leaders speaking a foreign language.

If he'd been speaking in English, it wouldn't have happened.

Yes.

Russian news now, and Vladimir Putin, the Air Brushian Russian, the professional president and

author of the hip musical Stalin, my darling, I've got a crush on Khrushchev, and Brains Never Let Me Go, has been elected back into office, albeit with significantly reduced public support, down in some parts of Russia, as low as just 103% of the vote.

He was simultaneously sworn in and sworn at last Monday, as the large protest turned ugly and resulted in trademark violence and multiple arrests.

Opposition anti-Putin leaders are now facing up to two weeks in jail, to which Putin replied, Two weeks?

Two f ⁇ ing weeks?

Man, this country has lost its edge.

Do you really mean two weeks?

Have I missed something?

Have weeks been lengthened to become 15 years long?

What the f ⁇ ?

it it feels like vladimir putin has never been away hunting and that's because he basically hasn't

he's been away for just four years acting as prime minister and writing dmitri medvedev's speeches and thoughts for him in fact it's entirely possible that this hasn't been dmitry medvedev at all it's just been vladimir putin in a very convincing dmitry medvedev costume and the dmitri medvedev has spent the last four years being chained to a radiator underneath the kremlin if he completes his six-year term Vladimir Putin will be the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.

And that's not at all a chilling comparison, is it?

How do you celebrate an achievement like that?

You play ice hockey, Honey.

That's the obvious answer to that question.

And you don't just play.

You play against a team of Russian legends.

And you don't just do that, you win.

Now, Putin has famously previously ridden motorbikes, flown planes, scuba dived for treasure, fished shirtless, shot a snow leopard, and now played ice hockey.

He has overcompensated for his masculinity in almost every conceivable way.

What's left, Andy?

Is he actually going to become a male pole dancer or an aftershave model?

Is he going to discover the cure for cancer and then claim that he's lost it?

Is he going to be happy, Andy, until it's written into the Russian constitution that he has the biggest penis in the world?

Because I'm starting to believe that he might have the smallest penis in the history of humanity.

The hockey game was between Putin's team of amateurs and assembled legends of Russian hockey.

Putin came on late in the game with his team inexplicably only one goal down and you will never guess what happened Andy.

Putin scored the equalizer.

He didn't did he John?

Then the game went to penalties and

you'll never guess what happened Andy.

Putin scored the winner.

He skated at the goalkeeper with the speed of a six-year-old before flicking the puck softly past a goalie who was desperately diving out of the way.

When it hit the nets, Andy, no one was celebrating harder than that goalie's family.

I'm sure his kids were jumping down at home in front of the TV screen, shouting, Yes!

Now we get to see Daddy again!

He must have some quality, quality chat when he's playing ice hockey, John.

When he's skating presidentially towards you in gold, he's going to be muttering at you, Hey Schmuck, see this ice we're standing on?

Can you imagine what it would be like to live somewhere where this is all you can see as far as the finging horizon?

Be pretty cold, wouldn't it?

Not much fun.

Well, I've got a one-way train ticket with your fing name on it straight there if you save this shot.

Thwack.

Gull!

Putin!

Gull!

Good decision, Tavaris.

You'll go far.

And

he compared his skills as an ice hockey player to being like a cow on ice.

to which his coach replied, yes, oh great president.

Cows are great at ice hockey.

Their udders give them natural balance as they swing pendulously from side to side.

And having four legs, that's twice as many legs as ordinary people, statistically makes them twice as good at skating.

In fact, though, great Wayne Gretzky himself was half man, half cow.

Please, can I see my wife again?

Feature section now, gay marriage.

And in a historic moment for America Andy, President Obama sat down in the White House, strapped his nuts on and announced that he personally was in favor of gay marriage.

Now, he had previously announced that he was in favor of gay marriage in 1996 when he was running for Senate, but you know, he wasn't President then and it's a bit more important when it comes from a President than when it comes from some dude.

But everyone had assumed that he felt this way, but probably also assumed that he would never say it while in office.

He was basically operating a don't ask, don't tell policy or more accurately, a policy of ask if you want, I'm not gonna f ⁇ ing answer you.

But this was a genuine moment of history and not bad history like natural disasters or terrible wars.

Good history, Andy, like the invention of ice cream and the opening weekend of the Smurfs.

This was the first ever President of the United States going on record as being in favour of gay marriage.

And whilst that will legally mean very little, it will still remain a state rights issue.

And lots of states, as North Carolina sadly proved this week, have still got their head in the past and up their own arse.

But, you know, symbolically, it could barely have been more meaningful.

It is the gay moon landing, Andy.

This is one small step for a president, one giant leap for a nation.

And what was even more remarkable was that relative lack of drama, after it, the gates of hell did not open as some were perhaps anticipating, and the media generally focused on doing their job incompetently rather than maliciously, which is, you know, it's a step forward, kind of, you know, diagonally forward at least.

Not everyone has been that impressed, though, particularly on the Republican side.

Michelle Bachman put out a lengthy news release on Wednesday in which he said, Marriage between one man and one woman is the foundation of our society.

For more than 200 years, traditional marriage has been a cornerstone of the United States of America.

And I will do everything in my power to support and preserve traditional marriage and to protect American families.

Now, fortunately, everything in her power does seem to be pretty much f ⁇ k all now, but

that's great.

I think what she might want to do before

that is just chip away at the divorce rates in traditional marriage of around 50%.

Yes.

And also, in these, well, I mean, maybe, I mean, maybe let's be hard, because in these trying economic times, divorces are actually quite good for the economy.

You know, lawyers, short-term property lets, new clothes, makeovers, divorcees and starting dating again, going out to restaurants,

remarriages, all good for the cake industry.

In fact, Michelle Bachman should be encouraging more ill-conceived, hasty marriages, particularly between gays, because gay weddings are on average 5.4% more lavish than non-gay or partially gay weddings.

That is a fact, John.

Most chose to focus less on the pure joy of this historic moment and more on whether the decision was politically motivated and whether or not it would help or hurt the president's chances of re-election.

The debate seemed to be whether this issue was deep in the president's heart or deep in his heart because it was deep in the heart of a majority of voters in crucial swing states.

To which he could respond: respond who cares who cares it's just good

some criticized the president for doing this for money arguing that he would get increased donations from his base and from gay groups essentially arguing that the president of the United States is gay for pay and Cardinal Timothy Dolan president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops labeled the president's remarks deeply saddening Andy I would like to label Timothy Dolan's remarks f ⁇ ing infuriating so it seems that we both know how to be disappointed in others.

Now, in Britain, we've had a similar debate about

gay marriage, and by debate, I mean the right-wing press going fing nuts about it, and no one else really giving that much of a shit.

And David Cameron has responded to discontent on the right-wing of the Conservative Party after the appalling local election results last week by easing off on his plans to legalise gay marriage, as if the Tories all got together and thought, we're facing terrible problems in Britain today.

The cuts programme massively unpopular with the nation as a whole, the economy disastrously stagnant, massive public disenchantment with democracy, greed, irresponsibility, corruption, rife throughout our politics, throughout our media, throughout our economic system.

Unemployment heading towards 3 million.

The whole country is a mess.

What can we possibly do to rectify all these endemic socio-political problems?

Oh,

here's an idea.

Stop gay people getting married,

everything else will fall into place.

We just have to stop the gays being happy.

It's interesting the two responses that Britain and America had as nations to the issue of gay marriage.

One defined by an act of a leader's political bravery, and another, a leader's political cowardice.

Because Prime Minister David Cameron is in favour of gay marriage and planned to legalise it for personal reasons or political reasons or who gives a shit.

It's just demonstrably the right thing to do.

But he is now going to renege on that plan after as you mentioned heavy losses in elections and he's not going to legalize gay marriage to appease his conservative base

and well how does that appeasement feel Prime Minister David Cameron must be a pretty proud feeling to go to bed at night and think well I did a really historic brave bold and ultimately moral thing today I appeased the base of my party.

I wonder where they're going to put my statue in Westminster to commemorate this historic achievement I made.

So it was withdrawn from the, it wasn't in the Queen's speech, the gay marriage legislation, and the Queen's speech, she looked even more pissed off than usual, John.

She had that characteristic, I could do this better than you f ⁇ ing Chancer's look on her face that has become so familiar over the years, as if she was just one more piss ball policy away from going off piste and shouting,

Okay, let's see what f ⁇ ing rubbish I've got to chunder out this time.

My lords and members of the House House of Commons, what a f ⁇ ing catchphrase that is.

My government's legislative program is going to set this country back.

Oh, there are more words in that sentence, my mistake.

Set this country back on the road to oblivion?

No, it's recovery.

Good one, Cameron.

F ⁇ ing good one.

My country will...

My government will stop at nothing if only that were true in order to...

Oh, I'm not reading this patronizing f ⁇ ing cuff.

Right, I've got my scepter and I'm not afraid to whack you with it.

Pathetic!

I'm sick of it.

This little beauty left some nasty whack marks on Anthony Eden's posterials.

I can tell you that for free.

Be warned.

Whack!

Whackie!

Dr.

John Santamo, the Archbishop of York, compared the Prime Minister to a dictator if he was to allow couples of the same sex to marry.

That is an excellent understanding of history from the Archbishop Andy.

Whilst all dictators have been different, they've also very much been bonded by their progressive views on single-sex marriage.

I think that's why Mussolini and Hitler got on so well.

The Archbishop said, it's almost like somebody telling you overnight that the church, whose job it is to worship God, is an arm of the armed forces.

They must take arms and fight.

You're completely changing tradition.

Well, it's not almost like saying that at all.

In fact, it's f ⁇ ing nothing like saying that whatsoever.

He went on to say, if you genuinely would like the registration of civil partnerships to happen in a more general way, most people will say they can see the drift.

But if you begin to call those those marriage, you're trying to change the English language.

Right, Andy.

Like the word arsehole.

It used to just be a word to describe the human arse.

Now it can describe a person, or a bigot, or an archbishop, or someone who's all three of those things.

Someone who is an arsehole, but who also owns an arsehole, through which he makes most of his public statements.

George Osborne confirmed that the gay marriage issue was going to get kicked to the curb down the line.

The Chancellor said that he'd taken a message from voters that ministers should be focusing on the things that really matter rather than getting distracted by too many other issues.

The thing is, this does really matter.

It really matters a lot because there will be a time in most of our lifetimes when we will look back on the time that gay people were not allowed to get married in our countries and it's going to be fing embarrassing.

And to those who are frightened of it, you just want to take them by the shoulders, squeeze them, shake them just slightly but firmly firmly, and say, this is all going to be fine, fast.

You are not going to care about this faster than you thought you could not care about anything.

Now, do you want to see a video of Vladimir Putin scoring an ice hockey goal?

Because it's very funny.

I guess Santamu has a point, John.

We're still a Christian nation here.

And what this legislation would mean is that the wedding at Cana would actually have been a gay wedding.

And, you know, are we prepared to take that step

when Jesus I don't know if he'd have been a fan I mean I guess he might have been a fan of gay wedding he certainly spent a lot of time swanning around in his underpants with 12 guys read into that what you want

your emails now and this one comes in from Scott who writes on the subject bugling backwards I'll keep the email short to save the show from overrunning any more than is traditional but I felt you should know this I've been listening to the bugle in in reverse chronological order,

and it's a veritable Benjamin Button of bullshit.

And there can be no higher praise, John.

Oh, that's what a compliment.

And this one might be of interest to you.

It's from Owen Wilson in Brentwood, UK.

So possibly a different Owen Wilson from the one you probably play doubles with these days.

He writes on the subject, Rafa and the Smurfs.

Yo, as you say in America.

So this clearly addressed directly to you, John.

Rafael Nadell is threatening to boycott next year's Madrid Open as he complains that the new blue clay surface of the courts is, quotes, only fit for Smurfs.

Look, we're all

up.

We're all fed up with John Oliver using his celebrity contacts for, in this case,

a totally blatant piece of product placement for the upcoming film about the blue peril.

I think the world needs to know the truth regards Owen Wilson.

He's just angry because there's not a tennis smurf.

You've angered one of the world's greatest ever tennis players, John.

Smurf tennis sounds like a really disgusting euphemism.

So that's all the emails for this week because I suggested in the first one, we have overrun.

So, just a couple of short ones.

There'll be more next week.

We've actually got a week off next week, so we'll have some bits that were too funny to go out when they originally recorded, and some more of your emails in Bugle 194 sub-episode alpha.

In any case, do keep your emails coming in to info at thebuglepodcast.com.

And don't forget to spend at least 10 hours a day on our SoundCloud page, soundcloud.com/slash the hyphen bugle.

Oh, yeah.

Oh,

yeah.

Just time for a quick sports section.

The Olympic flame is now alight and amidst various traditional speeches about what the Olympic spirit means.

Here's what the Olympic spirit means, John, and we'll do more on the Olympics in a couple of weeks when we're back.

The Travelodge Hotel in Stratford,

on the night of the Olympic opening ceremony, ceremony is charging £312 for a double room.

The same room the previous Friday, £59.50.

Now that is a £424% markup.

Now, I know we are now predominantly a capitalism-worshipping country.

And the law of supply and demand is, as the old saying goes, 90% of the actual law.

And also, the hotel, to be fair, to them, chose the figure 424 as a tribute to some of our great Olympians.

100 years ago to the month in July 1912, Great Britain won the men's 4x100 meter relay in a time of 42.4 seconds.

Thank you, Wikipedia.

And it's a touching tribute.

And also, to be fair, for the extra money on the night of the opening ceremony, you do get Sir Chris Hoy on an exercise bike powering your television through a dynamo.

And American hurdling star Lolo Jones hurdling over you whilst you eat your complimentary stale croissant for breakfast in the morning.

It still seems a bit excessive.

£312 for a room in a f ⁇ ing travel lodge.

The kind of hotel where merely looking at the carpet makes you think, where the f did my life go wrong?

And that goes up to £480 if you want the flexibility of being able to cancel that room.

They might as well have painted the Olympic rings all over the front of the hotel and in each of the five rings written the words, f off love from and London.

Incidentally, in that 1912 relay final, Britain narrowly edged out the Germans, but the Germans missed out on silver after being disqualified for an illegal changeover.

That was 1912, John.

They did not take that result well.

And it was not the last time in the 20th century that they illegally crossed a line that they weren't supposed to cross and ended up losing.

That's all.

We'll be back with the

off-cuts episode, the offal next week, which Chris you're looking very excited about putting that one together.

It's going to be awesome.

It's going to be absolutely awesome.

How are your injuries from the marathon, by the way?

I had an MRI scan yesterday.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Is that an indication?

Oh, my God.

Are you up for the dark?

No.

It's amazing what can happen over 26 miles.

And have you had the results back yet?

No, a couple of weeks.

Okay.

It can't be that serious thing, can you?

Do we need to start recruiting a new producer?

So, tune in for all the latest updates on Chris's

lifelong injury.

It will leave him confined to a chair for the rest of his life.

On that note, I hope the Hackney Empire is appreciative.

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.