The Bugle - Bugle 4032 – A truly British democracy

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

It's the election that no one wanted, no one won, and yet everyone is celebrating. Andy, Helen and Aparna Nancherla try to work out what just happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more ...information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Dancelaguard fans, you will be thrilled to know a book is coming out if you fund it via Unbound. We are publishing the Dancelaguard Reader by Alice Fraser and Dancelaguard, a glorious insight into the world of Dancelaguard, self-published romance maven, and online bestseller. If you would like to find out how to support it, go to thebugelpodcast.com. If we get enough support, we will publish the book. That's a real thing that's going to happen. Thebugelpodcast.com to support the Danciler Guard Reader. The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, you blues! And welcome to issue 4,032 of the bugle audio newspaper for an unapologetically visual world.
Starting point is 00:00:54 For the week beginning Monday, the 12th of June 2017, I am Andy Zoltzman and the Thrum of the pencil still democracies through the nerves in my voting arm. After yesterday's action a box-traveganzer, and I'm in London just literally yards away from where Theresa May, as we speak, has reportedly just finished being cuddled by the queen. Whilst the monarch said to her, don't worry, we all make absolutely colossal unnecessary f**ks every now and again love and whenever you comment as real I sure can't hack the big stuff move over over and let Lizzie take over joining me this week to Officially chronicle the events of planet earth so that future generations have an objectively proven record
Starting point is 00:01:35 And what the f**k actually went on that's what this show has always been about firstly back on the bugle for the first time since the election From radio topia's very own the illusionist podcast blood relative of the year and the annual bugle co-host awards all the way from a the same womb I used to live in and be upstairs in my house that couple of weeks that's a couple of weeks in our attic has turned into a couple of weeks with quite a lot of other weeks in between them Helen it's the woman who puts the
Starting point is 00:02:03 lodge into etymological and the linger into linguistics. The founts of all worldly wisdom. It's Helen's ultimate. Hello Andy. Hello. What a wonderful introduction. Thanks you, welcome. Yeah, thank you for recreating our mother's womb when you're attic.
Starting point is 00:02:20 It's very graphic. Right. Right. A lot of wreckage in there from when you occupied it. The graffiti, do you just say? That was rich as full. We spent a long evening watching Telly last night. We did. I wasn't going to stay up and watch it because I made a resolution to myself not to stay up all night watching things that would upset me after in 2002 I watched the Japanese horror film Ringu at 2am but then you came running into the room very excited when exit polls came in.
Starting point is 00:02:52 I love an exit poll. I think more excited than I've ever seen you. Really? Running with more energy even than when you were delivering your own son upstairs in the same house. And so I sat there to watch it with you and you kept going, Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out. Someone's got to say it. Yeah, and four-nil, four-nil. So I think for you, it's just a sporting event in which people were wearing worse garments. Yeah, well, that's how I see politics.
Starting point is 00:03:16 I mean, you know, label were four-nil up at one stage. It looks like an unproven, but they should have sat on that lead. But they got cocky and tried to get more seats. They should have sat on the four-neil and taken it. Also on Team Bugle this week, for the first time joining us here in London from across the pond in the USA, she set foot in Britain just days ago, and her mere presence here, had brought one of the oddest general elections in British history.
Starting point is 00:03:37 That is the kind of power she will. It is a pardon and Sherlock. Hello. Hello, welcome. Welcome to the view. Thank you so much. I take full credit for the election result. Well, almost almost nailed it. Try my next time. It was my first attempt. So it was not bad, but go for more socialism next time.
Starting point is 00:03:53 We are recording on Friday the 9th of June 2017, making this the north anniversary of the most spectacularly unconvincing victory in British political history. As always, a section of this Google is going straight in the bin. This week, a future of British politics section that I'd written 24 hours ago, including will a new left-wing party emerge from the wreckage of a now obsolete labour. We're now for Jeremy Corbyn, with some newspapers calling for him to be tried at the International Criminal Court for crimes he could quite easily have committed had he been someone else somewhere else at another time. We ask, will Europe now do the right thing and send all their money on a hundred head of auction to sacrifice to our great indomitable Imperial leader, the Great Theresa May, and a poetry section,
Starting point is 00:04:33 also going in a bin, just in case Lenin does take over on a minority government after the Conservative DUB alliance collapses, and he wants to get that new gulag ticking over, those sections in the bin. and he wants to get that new gulag ticking over, those sections in the bin. ["The Wind"] Top story this week, an election that's no-one-one, and everyone lost two various different degrees, and some people were quite happy with how little they'd lost,
Starting point is 00:04:57 and other people were quite upset with how little they'd won. It was a confusing slab of democracy. Isn't that very British though, because we know like a grandstand in a victorious way. It's a good metaphor for life that you just lose to various degrees. There's no real winner. Why could Theresa May not have come out and said that? Instead of all this bullshit about worth needing stability, if she said, now this is just a metaphor for life people.
Starting point is 00:05:24 Now let us all get on with things. We'll leave this clarity of vision for me, Ophana, it's laughing in our politics. It's because Ophana is human and Theresa may have not had a software update in quite a while, not since the 90s. How do the, I mean, obviously you had your election last November, how were the, the,
Starting point is 00:05:41 the churn of emotions through that night as it unfolded? Oh, I I would say last night felt like almost like an alternate reality that could have happened. Like I was like, oh, this is what would have happened if Hillary won. Like we would all be like, good. Because it was the opposite. It was kind of like, oh, things are worse than we expected. And then as as the night went on, it was like, it was like cycling through all the stages of grief and coming back to the first one. I remember the next day in New York, everyone was walking around like they had just been dumped
Starting point is 00:06:18 or something. They've been dumped by demotivated. Yeah. It was a tough break up. I was in Chicago the day after and because we'd already been through Brexit five months before which was a similarly miserable experience of I was going, tell me how to feel. I was like it's the stages of grief you have to work through it to submit to it. But not today. Well, no and and I mean it's a measure of how
Starting point is 00:06:42 little was expected of Corbyn and the Labour, but that it's sort of felt for them like a victory, even though they still lost by what 50 seats. In this world, that is what I'll take, Andy. Yeah. I've got to take my non-despairer, I can get it. It was a very odd election in the Conservatives. It got basically exactly the same vote share and number of votes was Tony Blair in his biggest triumph in 1997. They got the same 42 and a half percent of the vote
Starting point is 00:07:07 was Thatcher in 1993 when she walked home with 144 seat majority. More than a factor in 1987 when she got 100 seat majority, they're resurgent in Scotland where they basically been, spent the last 20 years checking into a mortuary and whacking tags on their own toes. And yet the result is a total f***ing catastrophe for the Conservatives
Starting point is 00:07:27 and the Prime Minister clinging to office by some extremely ill-kept fingernails. Context is all. It was amazing to me how quickly the Tory party turned on Theresa, which firstly suggests what a noxious culture there is within the party. But secondly, suggests that she has both been shaped by that culture, having been in it for such a long time, and has shaped it having been in it for such a long time. Yeah, it feels like that happens a lot in the Republican Party, in the States that people will put someone up on a pedestal and be like, he's the next, you know, he's in the next saviour and then he does one thing, they're like, we never liked him. And I liked very much Anna of Suberies.
Starting point is 00:08:09 Victory speech seems wrong. It had the tone of a concession speech, even though she won. But it went on for many minutes and it was like a one woman performance of Abigail's party. And middle of the night, she looked kind of haunted and she basically kept saying,
Starting point is 00:08:24 well Theresa May is a ship pile.'s a shit pile I'm paraphrasing she's got to go because she's fucking shit and I thought you're supposed to be on the same team thank you for interpreting those words of course of course an asymmological master I just call it like a seeker Corbin although he lost he got his biggest share of the photos as Blair in 2001 when he won, way more than David Cameron got an either of his two election victories, one of which he actually won. And yet he's still lost convincingly.
Starting point is 00:08:57 The Liberal Democrats were a few seats up, but lost Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, still got a pitiful, small proportion of of vote down to 7.2%, which is lower even than their disaster performance two years ago, but even given that they're still woefully underrepresented in terms of seats I think they've ended up with 13. So in terms of their percentage so they've managed to do simultaneously slightly better and still fucking shitly and been the victim of horrifically fair unfairness. I can't make head-on tale of it. And yeah, this is ultimately very British. This is what keeps us modest. Arrogance undercut with extremely low self-esteem and under-achievement.
Starting point is 00:09:34 I like to tell John Prescott told everybody that upon the exit poll's been published, Rupert Murdoch stormed out of a party at the times. Rupert Murdoch was about 9 million years old. Can you really storm? And my dad's quite elderly. When he storms out with somewhere, it's like a tumbleweed slightly blowing across the road. I like to think it was like a sustained five minutes, one step at a time. Everyone just had to watch. You saying Rupert Murdoch does not gloriously respect the democratic will of the people who buys newspapers and satellites is how could you possibly suggest such a thing? Or you'll be in the tower by the morning.
Starting point is 00:10:13 Then your attic will be free won't I? You keep stuff at the kind of overwhelming defeat that will possibly the only thing that might keep them alive by losing by so much that they can start bleeding on about how Brexit, meaning Brexit, doesn't mean enough Brexit anymore and Nigel Farage will come back like the unslayable vampire that he is to suck on the twitching corpse of British freedom. He is the dildo that does not die. That sounds like a good product. Well that's a separate career for him if only he would take it. The male seemed particularly subdued in its coverage rather than I thought it would lead with some extreme bile.
Starting point is 00:10:59 But instead it had some reflective headline and then above that, the Banner story was, woman gives birth to her own brother. I like it. Is that a, is that a Theresa May story or not? I can't tell whether it's a metaphor or some horrific incest that they're selling us a kind of amusement.
Starting point is 00:11:20 Right. Have you been impressed with our media, since you got here? I feel like it it feels a great deal more measured than our media. I mean short of short of hearing just about this birth story, but maybe I've been maybe I've been filtering out the more ostentatious stuff. If you haven't been looking at the print media then you might think it was reasonably august. Yes, I think that's what it is. Because I know I know there's
Starting point is 00:11:47 the daily mail and I thought the print media was supposed to die. When will it bloody die? My friend Simon it was his birthday on election day so I was a trick for himself. He went to the news agency and bought every copy of the mail that expressed in the sun and put them in the recycling bins. Do they have joke candidates in the US like we have? Because when they were announcing that Theresa May had won her seat in Maidenhead again, there's a whole row of people. There was someone called Lord Buckethead who had this big black tube on his head and someone else wearing an Elmo costume. So whenever the BBC replayed the footage of Theresa May winning someone putting his
Starting point is 00:12:25 Elmo head back on because it's really hot. Oh that's so good. We definitely do in the we sort of like the same way American Idol has those first few rounds where it's just for fun to see who can really not sing. I think we have we had like the rent is too high guy and you know Rick Perry is always good for a laugh but no one in a massive Elmo costume. No I wish we had more colorful characters but they're usually it's more the words they say that in a pink colourful. Last night Tim Farron beat a fish finger. Yes I saw that. And actual fish finger. He's got a Mr. Fish finger. An anthropomorphised fish finger.
Starting point is 00:13:07 But what I love is that the announcer announces them all with equal seriousness. So in Made It Head, it was like, May, Theresa, 30,000 in blah, blah, blah. Buckethead, Lord, what's happened? Elmo, he only picked up three votes, sadly. So just it's not really a big issue for the voting party if you're like, they're quite happy without Elmo for whatever reason.
Starting point is 00:13:28 I don't know how Mr. Fishfinger did, but... Didn't win. But Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, clung on to his seat narrowly. And that would have been a disappointing way to get toughed out of office if 20 people vote you for a giant Fishfinger. Change the course of political history.
Starting point is 00:13:46 Mr. Fish finger got 309 votes. Oh, I lost his deposit. That's pretty tidy after that. That's not a bad showing for a fish finger. Yeah, because they can't speak. Right. And fish don't even have fingers, so it's really a stretch at any level. I don't know if it was something to do with EU fishing quotas.
Starting point is 00:14:06 But, I mean, he's raising the issues that other politicians are scared to address. I wonder whether he's run before. Also, all these novelty candidates mail. Is there something in the mouse like he does that does seem to be a preponderance? I mean, it is obviously to reason may is put on a costume of a human. And how those that woman running against Jeremy Corbyn for the communists, she got seven votes, but she seemed very happy to have been beaten by another communist. Oh, that's good.
Starting point is 00:14:33 Yeah. That seems like a very communist reaction. Exactly. They're all in it together. And also, there was that moment that Jeremy Corbyn tried to high-five Emily Thumbrie, but she wasn't high-fiving back, so they see slap on the moon. Oh, no! Oh, no. Good times. Radist good times. to High 5 Emily Thumbrie, but she wasn't high 5 in Baxie, they see slap on the moon. Oh no! Oh no!
Starting point is 00:14:45 And times! Rartus, good times. What democracy is all about? It was, maybe a hundred years ago Andrew, don't go back. For Theresa May, she, essentially, she called the selection for absolutely no reason. She put the future of the country on the roulette table, thought right, this is going to come down on blue and then it came down on either red or black, essentially. So it was a bad bet. And as you've probably heard upon it, her whole stick was this strong unstable phrase, which she repeated, I mean, even in defeat,
Starting point is 00:15:21 essentially. I mean, she's been essentially, She's shown the strength and stability of a softball egg on a circus tightrope. It's very strong and stable to have three major national votes in the space of two years, isn't it? Yes, and now, as we record, she's just visited Lizzie in Buckingham Palace. Girls night? Do that.
Starting point is 00:15:43 Girls morning Africa. I'm stuck with I'm breathing. Does it symbolize anything? What what what what what does it mean when you go visit? Well queen technically the queen can refuse anything that parliament wants to do. So parliament has to go and request that she can form a new government. Oh I see.
Starting point is 00:16:04 And because this one is an uncertain result, she doesn't have the outright majority, then the queen could tell her to f*** off. Right. But the queen is 91. It doesn't really give a shit. So she visited the queen and has come out and said in a speech in Downing Street proclaiming her not so much her victory as her not having lost by 100%. What the country needs now more than ever is certainty. And she said, as she accepted the
Starting point is 00:16:36 victory in her constituency, that the country needs stability now at the start of these Brexit, and perhaps something she should perhaps have thought of before stabilizing the nation by splunking her micro mandates in favor of an even less convincing nano mandates. If there is one fucking lesson that you should have learned from managing not to win a certain victory is that certainty is on certain these days and I think we've probably had enough of it. We've had enough of experts and certainty in this country. Are you sure that because she says things like Brexit means Brexit,
Starting point is 00:17:10 another totally vapid semantic constructions that certainty is certainty and uncertainty is uncertainty would not be better? Well there's very no muc-upferences, isn't there? She's like a... It's like a broken, Delphi-curricle. Yeah. Day the drugs went bad. Yeah, so she's still on this great, strong, stable leadership platform.
Starting point is 00:17:33 And then her campaign was the equivalent of a new school teacher trying to get control of a disruptive classroom by sticking an eye-m-fucking-loser sign on her. Then turning round, facing the blackboard, pointing together back with one hand and writing, I left my last job because the children teased me facing the blackboard, pointing together back with one hand and writing, I left my last job because the children teased me on the blackboard. LAUGHTER This sounds like something you had personal experience with when you were an 11 year old boy.
Starting point is 00:17:54 In terms of ineffective slogans of history, I mean, this is, this is right up there for me, you know, most useless political slogans of history. The Richard III's, My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse. That's just economically illiterate. That's just short-termism of the worst kind in politics, isn't it? Just selling this like Gordon Brown on the gold all over again. The hamlets to be or not to be. That is the question. That's too vague for a political leader, don't you think? You want concrete policies, not existential quandaries.
Starting point is 00:18:25 My thought he was just in line for leadership. Right, you think he's keeping it nicely electrically vague? Yes, because then you appeal to both sides. The Tories in 2005, they're famous, are you thinking what we're thinking, to which the electorate is that? Is that really the, was that really their slogan? Yes, and the electorate responded,
Starting point is 00:18:46 a f***ing hope got. Now, of course, make America great again. Where, where for you upon a Zat stan in the pantheon of great slogans from politicians? Well, I think it's already, I mean, I hate it. That's, I won't mean sports about that, but I think it is also vague, but it's vague in a way that still,
Starting point is 00:19:11 like if you're like a sports fan or something, you'll be like, yeah, even though you don't know exactly what it means. You're just like, it's like when people start to fight and then are like, fight, fight, fight, fight. You just start yelling and then you're like, yeah, I guess I'm on this team now. To be fair to Trump, he's, he's niling it.
Starting point is 00:19:28 I mean, he's successfully carrying out the necessary phase one, which is making him, making America shit. So we can then become at some point in the future great again. Better than shit. Yeah, so it's, this is just phase one. Well, that's comforting. Yeah. Thank you, really? Stalin's, that's comforting. Yep. Thank you, I really,
Starting point is 00:19:45 Stalin's famous vote for me, or I'll, you can kill you, slogan. That's pretty effective. Very fragile message. As I've said before, if you play the strong and stable card that hard, it is easily undermined if you do things that do not exactly extrude,
Starting point is 00:20:00 strengthiest stability. Like essentially, she did hiding behind your sofa, so all the other leaders are having a TV debate saying, I'm busy getting shit done. Sorry, that wasn't. Just cut that bit out, I hadn't quite finished writing that. The late again, but the Tories went with was by attacking Labour by saying there is no magic money tree. This seemed to be the height of sophistication of the economic debates that we had in the bill of this election. There is no Magic Money Tree. Yeah, George Osborne cut it down in 2010. Well, look, I mean, I don't know, I'm not an economics expert.
Starting point is 00:20:34 You wrote a book about economics in 2008. Many people have written books about economics who are not economic experts. And I am amongst the least expectations of them. Yours is taught in universities. Where do they get copies though? Poundland. I mean, just because it sold so fast in the shop, so that it was almost impossible to get a hold of a physical copy.
Starting point is 00:20:53 Still available on the internet. Also, I think voters heard this. There is no magic money tree. And then they looked at the city of London and the profits and tax contributions of some of the large global corporations who are the benefits to our workforce and economy. The amount of money flying around in global hedge funds, the wages and assets of the hyper-its and they thought, you know what, I think there might be a magic money tree somewhere if you really look hard. Someone has at least,
Starting point is 00:21:22 at the very least, got a magic money shrub, and we could ask them for like a little cutting off it, see if we could make it grow. So I think that's one of the reasons the Tories can really hit home. Because of the deforestation they've been doing. The deforestation of magic money trees. Very short-sighted.
Starting point is 00:21:37 But all in all, and we are recording this whilst we've not really had full time to digest the whatever has happened. Who has Andy? Who has? I mean, it still does need now, seem, that's what Brexit means, is now even less clear than when it just meant Brexit. Oh, good. I've managed to spin out a whole other series of that. Yeah. It was essentially, electrically. So he's made not so much missing an open goal
Starting point is 00:22:10 as building a goal when she thought no one else was on the pitch. And still managing not only to blast the ball so wide of the goal, did it hit the corner flag, but then the ball then rebounding back up the pitch into her own goal. That is how much of an own goal this was. That is why people won't broadcast women's sports. Of course not the first story to miss an open goal in recent elections. David Cameron, hammered one against the post in 2010, but then they're all ricocheted. Luckily, the Liberal Democrats
Starting point is 00:22:36 suddenly ran away, celebrating as if he just killed in a perler from 25 yards. You get any references, Helen? Thrilled by them. Right. You are such a disappointment to me. And again, in... And you, me. In... In... That's my new catchphrase whenever you're on the show.
Starting point is 00:22:52 And again, in 2015, Cameron trickled the ball towards the goal. It was maybe just dribbling over the line, but then Ed Miliband sprinted back into fence and hammered it into his own. The system had been some great goals in British electoral football. How come they didn't have Jeremy Vaughan on a big computer-generated football pitch instead of that fake house of comments that he was spending all night in a loan? Yes, it was...
Starting point is 00:23:14 Yeah, if you didn't see the BBC coverage, there was some... It was kind of like a... I don't know, it was like a 1990s computer game, we seem to be stuck in. It was like a second life house of colleagues with various bits of infographic happening around him, one broadcasted by himself for many hours. So they could have given him any environment. He could have had a total pleasure dome.
Starting point is 00:23:36 Instead, he went to a worse approximation of a real place he could have probably been in. Oh, that's so strange. What if there was a second life parliament? He's still trapped in it. No one has busted him out. Should we not be run by a second-life Parliament? Would that not be more efficient and make more sense if we can just outsource human politics to? It would- Second life? Yeah who would who would want to do it though?
Starting point is 00:23:59 There must be kids who'll do it. Yeah, it's also such a children. Just get some Indonesian children. So you're off the trainers for the week. You can run our follow-up instead. Would it be any worse? I'll take the risk with it. Yeah. You think that this election result indicates that people who voted for Brexit have maybe changed their mind about it? Well, I did bit hard to say that because now we've seen and pulled people not so much in favour of Brexit but accepting that Brexit was voted for but I still I don't think they've particularly changed the mind about it
Starting point is 00:24:36 being a needlessly idiotic high-risk gambit of essentially sticking a finger in a plug to see what happens. What do you think Helen? I thought it was refreshing that the election campaigns turned out not to be about disgusting racism just for a little while. Just a very nice change of pace. Yeah, so instead we're about real things like healthcare. Right, yeah. You're in favour of healthcare. Oh, thumbs up to healthcare. health care. Right, yeah. You're in favour of health care. Oh, thumbs up to health care. There's enough people alive in Britain as it is. Corbyn said to the BUC that it was pretty clear who's won this election. What does he know that no one else does? Seven vote communist women has got a big stash of ballot papers in the bag. Yes, I mean Labour has had certain
Starting point is 00:25:22 issues with mathematics during the course of this campaign, but You're fundamentally no on one this election maybe Democracy to democracy win this election or is it just lying in a corner looking confused rocking backwards and forwards? Like a bear in a zoo. Maybe it did British values win the election the British values of calling bullshit on obvious bullshit Maybe that's the yeah, I mean democracy won in the sense that everyone voted for their own interests and it appears there's no majority of interests. Labour, what did well by compassion with the last time, by compassion with how they're expected to do
Starting point is 00:25:54 and by compassion with how the majority of the media told them they were going to do, but winning, I mean, maybe they won against themselves, which in the grand tradition of lefty infighting is quite a good result. If maybe they attacked more than a month to do some decent laboring, then they would have won, but they pulled it, pulled it together in the last minute, like when you organised a wedding on three months notice.
Starting point is 00:26:15 I organised it, I didn't so much organise it, as I said to say yes there. You got a tie. I got a tie and I drew a cartoon for the invitation and that was about it. But on such short notice, well done. Thank you Helen. My favorite thing I learned from reading British election coverage was that the reason some people don't like Jeremy Corbin is like he's had sort of extremist ties in the past but also that he makes his, he makes jam. Well you can't trust someone who preserved fruit, it's the first rule of democracy, isn't it? I think does that mean you're out of touch? Yeah he's vegetarian, he's right about a bike.
Starting point is 00:26:51 Yeah, that's hugely out of touch. You can buy jam in the shops these days. I think you don't know that, how's he going to run the economy? I like that he's been going around the last few hours like he's Mick Jagger or something, just arms in the air. Yeah. Oh, what Theresa May also claiming victory? Is it a bit like Captain Smith smashing into that iceberg and saying yes first, beat those losers on the car by the air, get in. News from our home county of Kent Andy, on the Monday before the election, a gigantic effigy of Theresa May appeared on the white cliffs of Dover. Several stories high, flipping the V, and draped in a massive Union Jack. And nobody knows who put it there. When people were putting up the massive scaffold for this huge effigy, they said, oh, we're getting it ready for filming. And because everyone's
Starting point is 00:27:42 like, oh, filming, they just left them to. And because everyone's like, oh, filming! They just left them to it. They did not have permission. It's on national trust land. Oh, right. And then, and then on Wednesday, upon a, have you ever heard of the Sir Nabbest Giant? No. It is a 180-foot drawing etched into a hillside. So it's like a chalk outline of a naked man holding a club. Well, when there's one, I'm just going to get a picture of the Sir Navis Dioin up for you now. And I've never seen him before. What would you say is the most distinctive part of his anatomy? I would say his an anatomical club. He does have what can only be described as 11 meter long genitalia. Well, on Wednesday someone, so also on Monday, someone wrote Theresa in massive wooden letters along his penis.
Starting point is 00:28:39 And again they said, we don't know who did this prank, but Sir Navestine also, National Trust Property. So I think we know where should we be looking, because all the National Trust work, no, this is awful, vandalism, we got to find out who did it. They're so po-faced about everything, Sir Navas Giant based, that I think it's the perfect smog screen for them to do these big pranky pranks. Well, do you know the origin of the Surnabus giant? Do I know it is not merely as old and mythical as people pretend it's a couple hundred years old?
Starting point is 00:29:13 Yes, well I was reading it according to Nolesser Source then, he found of all knowledge Wikipedia. It probably dates from the late 17th century, and perhaps originated as political satire. Oh, so it was one of your forebears. Essentially, yeah, it's very much in the same spirit of satire as the bugle itself. I met a white witch once who claimed that she got pregnant by, you're not supposed to go and walk on the sown abyss giant,
Starting point is 00:29:41 but she's not stuck onto the property, then lifted up her skirts and sat on his penis up as giant, but she snuck onto the property, then lifted up her skirts and sat on his penis and lo and behold was pregnant. And later she admitted me, she had already been early stages pregnant when she went to do that, but it was nice to have it confirmed. How do you sit on Ned if it's an edgy tool? You just sit on that patch of penis grass. So it used to be quite, I think that's why they had to fence it off because so many people were going there as a kind of fertility thing, and then giving birth to chalk lumps. Was that
Starting point is 00:30:08 in the DVD extras of the Wizard of Oz? And he wasn't chalk lumps, a triccate plate for a chocky lump? Not from you Chris. I mean it's, I did a quite what kind of political sassar in the 17th century, they get man with a stonking erection and a massive club. Nothing has changed. Right. Except the club. You probably have something else, no, wouldn't you? Something to do with farming quotas, probably.
Starting point is 00:30:36 Well, you mentioned Kent. There were a lot of shock results at this election. Labour lost Mansfield, after 94 years. The SNP leader in the House of Commons, Angers Robertson, got the ballathy boot, Nick Cleggs, we mentioned, lost his seat. But most shocking of all, the Conservatives lost Canterbury, which has been a conservative seat, I think, since the early 19th century. I mean, they basically haven't voted for anyone else since Thomas Abeck, it was murdered in the 1171, I think, and they thought, no, I can't have any of this nonsense, bloody lefties. 1171 I think and they thought no, I can't have any of this nonsense bloody lefties and um so it's basically been Tory forever and they lost the incant in Kent is now a blue doughnut with a red hole. The MP was uh Sir Julian Brazier, man other people whose father was in the military, he went to Wellington College and Brazier nose college Oxford, uh
Starting point is 00:31:23 worked in corporate finance and was a management consultant and has been MP for Kent Presence in 1987 and is called Julian. He is the tawiest man in Britain. It is not biologically possible to be more of a conservative than that. 28 years in my, what's 30s? 30 years in Parliament, back bench of the year in 1996. Back bench of the, how do you win that? Despite doing nothing. Doing as little as possible on us. Not snoring too loudly. A post to gay marriage, which is still, I mean, to me, an odd position in the 21st century.
Starting point is 00:32:00 Yes. Even Theresa May voted for gay marriage. Well, but when you are being beaten by Theresa May in an issue of social liberalism, you've got to take a long, long hard bath with yourself. And when you were to thought that even someone in even an MP in Kent would have learned after what three million years of human existence that hooputs were in or near whom in the privacy of their own bedrooms probably is not an armageddon level threat to the future of the planet but you know Kent is Kent but how did the Tories lose this seat? This seems this seems unfathomable to me. I did a computer simulation
Starting point is 00:32:40 before the election of how the conservatives could lose Canterbury. And he would have had to do all of the following. One, put leaflets through every single letterbox in his constituency saying, you f**king plebs. I don't know why they stopped with Thomas and Beckett. They should have done away with a f**king lot of you. Two, you could have driven, you need to drive around Canterbury and election van with a loud hailer shouting,
Starting point is 00:33:03 I can afford to have you all bumped off by an XKGB hitman vote for me or equals going to get busy. Three, it about to fly over Canterbury in an old Luftwaffe junkers and bomb the living shit out of the cathedral while trailing a banner saying, Winniefson Space for a new casino. And four, you would have had a urinate on an effigy of the queen while screaming, why can't you be a real man like Margaret? Then and only then could the Tories of Lost Canterbury, according to my simulation, and yet it happened. I think all of those might have saved his votes.
Starting point is 00:33:32 Do you reckon? Yeah. I'm wondering whether it is a students in Canterbury or be, I think the constituency includes Wittsdball where a lot of Londoners have moody. Right. Polluting Kent with their fancy lefty stock. Can oysters. And oysters. I mean, there's so many people's now,
Starting point is 00:33:49 upon or in policy. How do you see? How do you see the next US? What can America pull out the bag to shock? It seems to me now that people don't so much vote collectively in democratic elections anymore as just perform pranks on TV pundits. That seems to be what it is. So what's America got up its sleeve for next time? But you already had the biggest political prank of all lifetimes.
Starting point is 00:34:12 How are you going to talk about that? How are you going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that?
Starting point is 00:34:22 How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going to talk about that? How are we going Arkey now just with the some people would argue we don't have a government right now We have sort of a reality show in place of a government. Yeah, I'm giving the people that are in there. It's good that that's not a government. Yes Hopefully it will be canceled after one season Well, it seems we're getting quite good rating Yeah, in terms of the number of people watching it. Even though they're not necessarily enjoying it, the advertisers are happy. Yeah, it's basically branded content, isn't it? There is, well, I'll tell you what, I said she will carry on. There is a possibility that she
Starting point is 00:34:54 she could be forced out of office quite quickly. If she goes on the next month, she would become the shortest serving Prime Minister since Andrew Bonelaw, headline star of last week's Reverse Chronological, Prime Ministerial Pundran, who lasted at this appointing two hundred and eleven days before retiring ill in 1923 to concentrate on spending more time popping his clogs. And she just don't shoot the messenger. It's all there in the history books and she will become the first PM if she's out within a month to clock out of the less than a year bubbling up in the Downing Street Jacuzzi which was installed of course by a Vicent Palmerston in the 1850s. First to
Starting point is 00:35:33 last less than a year since Alex Douglas Hume was voted out in 1964 and perhaps the Prime Minister had the least impact, the least lasting impact on this country since Bertie the Tortoise, stepped in as interim Prime Minister for a couple of weeks whilst Herbert Asquith went on a mate's stag weekend in 1911 and was arrested and jailed for 12 days in a beaitha for climbing onto a fountain with his trousers round his ankles singing a hit song, touch me, touch me, I want to fill your body, covered of, many decades later by the famously embuzzled model and pop starlet Samantha Fox. So, could be a piece of history coming up.
Starting point is 00:36:13 American news now and well, I mean for fans of people watching quite dry testimony in official settings, it's been exciting, exciting day yesterday. I think it was the most exciting testimony people have seen in a while. I saw someone comment that if there's anyone this is good news for, it's Bill Cosby because his trial is happening at the same time. And you know that would be blowing up the airwaves if this wasn't. So James Komey, the involuntarily retired FBI chief, he's basically his testing me. If I can sum it up, correct me if I'm wrong. If you have summarized his testimony in six words, it's, oh yeah, he's full of shit. Yeah. Is that about, I mean, is there any more detail we need
Starting point is 00:37:03 to know over here? Or is that pretty much something? I think that pretty much sums it up. Like I don't think there were any bomb shells dropped yesterday. It was more just like, yes, he's lied on multiple occasions. Right. And I can confirm that. So it's not going to bring the Trump, the Trump administration crashing instantly to ground or no, not in the way people hoped. I mean a lot of things he, I watched some of the testimony and he just kept being like, I can't answer that in an open setting. And he said that so
Starting point is 00:37:35 many times. Yeah, it was quite annoying, wasn't it? Yeah. Bore! He got hinted at these little items of gossip and they're not. Ooh, chase me, mhm. Rubbish. But people say that he likes doing these dramatic announcement. He's like that.
Starting point is 00:37:50 So I don't know if he's just pacing himself. He's like, they got enough for this week. I got something big for next week. What I found interesting was that the guys interviewing him cross examining him interrogating. interrogating, there was a lot of, I'm such a fan of your work. They were kind of like,
Starting point is 00:38:06 you were right. You know, kind of groupies. What's that thing? Do you mind if we, can we get a selfie after this? Yeah. Will you start? I've been following you for years.
Starting point is 00:38:15 Yeah. Trump also had a bit of a bony with our London mayor, Sadik Khan, in the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks in London. And yeah, he's very depressing depressing for me because amongst all the emotions that you go through when another terror attack happens, horror, the incomprehension of the pointlessly nihilistic futility of it all fear, concern for the future,
Starting point is 00:38:39 attempted, we try to be strong and defiant. Now there's a new emotion emotion which is dread about what the f*** Donald shitting Trump is gonna f***ing say about it. And he Julie stepped up to the plate to squirt his rancorously delusional vinegar into the still raw emotional wounds London was suffering. Is there any any event to which he will have the dignity to shut the f*** up. Or is that asking too much? I don't think so. Like it almost seems surprising that people are still surprised that he has the most inappropriate reaction to everything because his track record has only been that. He tends to be quiet when white supremacist commit murders. Right. No, there's definitely things he avoids talking about that also speaks very loudly too.
Starting point is 00:39:24 Right. No, there's definitely things he avoids talking about that also speaks very loudly to Who he is but I I I think I read his tweets to the mayor and I was just like I'm Horrified but at the same time you have a resume full of this type of work So I know you're good at it. He's consistent. Yes, he is inconsistent in his insanity. Congratulations. Thank you so much. We're so proud right now to have him representing our country. And we're all proud of you.
Starting point is 00:39:55 Well done, the American intellectual system. BELL RINGS Your emails now and an update, as we reported a couple of weeks ago, some, some one amongst our listenership took the mature decision to sign us up to the Labour Party's emailing list under the name of Dick Wads. So the bugle podcast inbox to which you are all welcome to email your emails to hellobuggles at thereaglepodcast.com is full of stuff from the Labour Party. Such as yesterday, Dick Wads, have you voted Labour yet? If so, amazing. Very passive-aggressive that. In big red letters, today's the day, Dick Wads makes who you cast your vote.
Starting point is 00:40:49 He from Jeremy Corbyn himself. Ready question mark Dick Wads together. We've given Britain a choice. And perhaps most entertainingly a thank you message at 10. 22 p.m. last night. So what 22 minutes after the exit polls came out and showed that Corbyn had pulled a bit of a, you know, a rabbit out of the bag that was not quite as dead as people fit. There it is, says the email under the subject. Thank you from just the Labour Party. There it is. It has been an incredible effort today, and we've done everything we can. Records are both matchfully win. All that's left to say is dot dot dot dot.
Starting point is 00:41:29 Thank you, Dick Watts. Well, I can only thank and complain to the person who signed us up for those. Please, the rest of you, do not take this as an encouragement to do similar after what happened. It's too late. I know it's too late, but I've had to last on with our old email address that I had to change because of the absolute Jeroboam of filth that has been spewing onto its pages for years now.
Starting point is 00:41:57 When the f*** will you learn? Yes, certainly, please, no dating services done. Anyway, do keep your emails coming into Hallowbueglars at theBuegelpodcast. No. Anyway, do keep your emails coming into HelloBuglers at theBugelPodcast.com. Oh, this was sent in by Rob. I thought you might like the below story, which includes the following brilliant quotes. This is about Rex Tillerson going to New Zealand. I've been in motorcades for a couple of years now. I've never seen so many people flip the burden in an American motorcade as I saw today.
Starting point is 00:42:27 The world will not take it lying down. I like that he's a person by his American. And of course there was a Peruvian motorcade that was really the one to beat. But that's making America great again, isn't it? It is. That you start with everyone flicking you off. And then from there it's just up. Yes. flicking you off. And then from there is just up. Yes.
Starting point is 00:42:47 That brings us towards the end of this bugle. A few gigs to plug. I'm doing Satris Fahar at the underbelly on the 20th to send your requests in for that quite a lot of things to be talking about politically. On the 27th of June, I'm doing a fundraising gig to raise money for my children's primary school at the hideaway in Stretton with Jeremy Hardy, Sophie Hagen and Johnny and the Baptists and We've got the live bugle on the 13th of July Starring Helen Zoltzmann. I'm a mom and dad are gonna come to watch. Yes. Our parents will be starring in the crowd Probably a sleep
Starting point is 00:43:21 Yeah, listen out for that That's also at the underbelly on the 13th of July. You'll also be able to hear our dad going, what is this shit? This is crap. What is it? He has a much more South African accent when you do, he plays it up for the mic. He does, probably. Also, I'm doing a couple of weeks in Edinburgh from about the 13th of August, I should probably know this by now, and there's a couple of live Googles up there, details on the internet. You can see a partner in Soho until tomorrow. Tomorrow. So, are there tickets left for tomorrow?
Starting point is 00:43:54 I think so, yeah. So, if you listen to this by tomorrow, which is by the time you listen to this, possibly today. Saturday is the last day. Are there tickets available for Friday? If you listen to this really quickly. If you listen to this really quickly. Yes, listen to this extremely quickly. So that's so hot theatre. Listen to Helen on the illusionist podcast part of the radio topious table.
Starting point is 00:44:14 I will be back next week with further updates on... I will probably have another election on Thursday. I think... What else can we do? ...permolection. on, bring it on. You can never vote enough. I've voted so many times on Thursday, it was awesome. Every work I put an X in a box.
Starting point is 00:44:31 Until next time, Douglas, goodbye. The Bugle is a proud member of Radio Topia from PRX, made possible with great support from our founding sponsors, The Night Foundation, celebrating creativity, chaos and teamwork.

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