The Bugle - Bonus: Sochi and The Gargle

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Andy revisits Sochi 2014 and plays some unheard gold on Tr*mp and Britain in 2021. Plus we have a NEW SHOW. Subscribe to The Gargle now: https://pod.link/1552687312Buy a loved one Bugle Merch (or some for yourself, it's allowed).We have a sister show, The Last Post, which you can still hear here. Follow us on YouTube or Insta and see parts of this episode with actual video.The Bugle is hosted this week by:Andy ZaltzmanAlice FraserNish KumarJohn OliverNato GreenAnd produced by Ross Ramsey Golding and Chris Skinner. Listen to Chris' Travel Hacker here: http://pod.link/1480712081  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A illuminati and all other interested parties to try to reach an agreement on sorting everything out forever. Still, no concrete progress to report, I'm afraid. But at least things have stopped getting actively worse for the first time in a while, so maybe in two or three thousand years, it will all be fine. Do keep tuning in to the bugle in the

meantime to find out. Instead of a full bugle, we have a sub-episode featuring some, or indeed all of the following, a delve into the archive for some exclusive Winter Olympics action from Sochi. Exclusive because no one is still covering the Winter Olympics in Sochi in the year 2021. We also have some Britain news that you weren't allowed to listen to at the time because you'd all been too naughty and or because it was simply too damn true to release into the wild. Some further buglacious musings on the final days of the mega glitch, also known as the Trump presidency,

and we have a trailer for something new from the Bugle stable. And a trailer for that trailer, plus some lies about our premium level volumptuous subscribers to join them or to make a one-off or a current contribution of any size to help keep the Bugle Advert-free, independent, alive, and digesting, and regurgitating everything that is, and is not happening happening in the world so you don't have to go to the BuglePodcast.com and click the donate button.

Also, we have some news about a forthcoming Bugle live stream live Bugle show at 8pm on Saturday the 27th of March. Tickets are £7 plus a booking charge so let's call it £8.31 for you lot, available by clicking the live link on the Bugle website or by finding the Bugle Live on the Citizen Ticket site. There are discounts if you are a premium level voluntary subscriber. In fact, let's start with that news about that show, which I've just given you at 8pm on Saturday the 27th of March, there will as I just said be a Bugle Live stream live Bugle show tickets available on the internet, which also contains the bugle website via which you can buy those tickets or specifically go to Citizen that's ctzn.tk slash bugle and you can chuck an http colon slash slash on the front of that if you want to look really cool

Or simply ask your local warlock or military jeunter very politely coming up later A trailer. But not just any trailer. A trailer for The Gargle with Alice Fraser. The trailer you always knew you wanted to hear, without knowing that you knew you wanted to hear it. That's coming up later. In this sub-a episode of The Bugle.

At which we now begin with some brick news. Driving license and potentially fatal virus news now, Nish, you are of course the bugle's driver's licensing correspondent as well as a veteran of the COVID-19 era. Tell us what's been going on with the British DVLA. Well listen Andy, I feel uniquely qualified to speak on this subject, given that I do not have a driving license. So if anything that positions me in this post-expert world that we now live in in Britain, that positions me ideally. Yes look, it's all well and good America has got its president in inverted commas who believes in science in equally inverted commas. But I'll be honest, given what's happened with our government's response to COVID and the most recent outbreak of terrible

news, it is starting to feel like in the UK, it's starting to feel like America has reneged on our suicide pack the second after we down the coolite. Like it really is like, the special medicine is still swilling in our mouth as America looks at us and goes, you know what, I think I'm probably okay. You know what f*** you America? The weasel didn't jump out of the car and leave Thelma and shout, good luck with that grand canyon, bitch. This is a terrible state of affairs. It's been a week of horrific COVID news.

We've been regularly hitting 1,000 deaths a day. And more than 500 new cases have been recorded at the Driver and vehicle licensee agency office in Swansea and employees are claiming that people with symptoms were encouraged to return to work and vulnerable workers have had requests to work from home denied. Now a lot of this has landed a lot of blame for this has landed at the desk of the transport secretary, Grant Shaps. Now here's the thing about Grant Shaps, alright? The man is addicted

to failure. He is absolutely addicted to failure. It is drug of choice. He's a Jonesing for his latest hit from Sweet Lady f*** up. Shaps down shot after shot of shit show source. He's forever chasing the dragon of defeat and disgrace. To give you some background on Grant Chaps, these are some of the controversies listed in the controversies subsection of his Wikipedia page. Now that is an accolade that is largely reserved for disgraced former presidents and male comedians,

but that's not how it's that. He was, he at one point in his career, he had to deny that he had a second job, while he was an MP, a second job that he did using the pseudonyms, Michael Green, Korean stock heath and Sebastian Fox. So not only was he using pseudonyms, he was using shit pseudonyms, okay?

At least Anthony Wiener went for Carlos Danger. That's both corrupt and profoundly unimaginative. In 2012, the Guardian reported that he was editing his own Wikipedia page. He was sacked originally from his job in the Conservative Party due to allegations that he ignored allegations of bullying that were happening under his watch. So at this point, it's all, it's not surprising that he's f**king this shit up. The problem is that Grant Shaps is now f**king shit up in a way that could result in a lot of people dying. And Grant, Britain needs to deal with this outbreak, not of coronavirus,

but of grant shaps. Grant shaps is the most pressing outbreak facing Britain today. That's a big claim. In other British news, British firms claim that they are being encouraged by government officials to set up subsidiaries in the EU in order to avoid disruption caused by Brexit's new trade rules. So I don't know if irony, I mean we talked about irony just basically packing up retiring saying, I'll work on earth is done. I mean, this is, this is, I mean, in many ways, this is peak Brexit, isn't it? This is sort of everything that we hoped would happen and dreamed of happening, that the freedom to negotiate huge, great swathes of red tape in order to conduct the exact same business that we were conducting previously.

Another breakthrough story in the aftermath of Brexit. Trading cheese has become a nightmare, according to business. Isn't English cheese firm has reported that £30 gift boxes of cheese sent to consumers on the continent now need a veterinary approved health certificate, costing £180. I mean, this is, again, this is true freedom, isn't it? And this is the freedom to stop other people sending cheese. One hundred percent. That's, that's what my vote was all about. I'm just voting leave over cheese. More cheese for you. Yes, but more British cheese as well. That there is no suite of former freedom than administrative irritation.

sweet of formal freedom than administrative irritation. And, you know, this sense of national fit, more than makes up for business becoming unprofitable in practical and or impossible. I mean, I would ask you this, Nish, I know you're a Brexit skeptic. Yeah, when Henry V was leading the RAF into battle in the skies of Aging Core, to stop the Spanish armada from building unnecessarily straight roads all over Britain, he didn't think why thousands of businesses go under as a result of it. He did not think that. He just thought we have to win.

And let's deal with it afterwards. This food delay is very frustrating because we're seeing things that could affect our supply of meat, cheese and fish and Andy. This is so frustrating. NATO is an outsider, you can't understand this. We had just discovered cooking with flavour. We just found out that food didn't just basically need to taste like whatever it tasted like when it was alive. We just discovered cooking techniques that weren't boiling. You don't understand.

This is going to set us back into the 1970s. There's also a absolutely extraordinary, by which I mean, f***ing terrifying article in the financial times today, about the lead up to and the initial stages of the fallout from Boris Johnson's amazing Brexit deal citation needed. And the article, like my attempts at sexting, makes for grim reading. And there's a heavy suggestion that the principal player is in over their head and has no f***ing clue of how to get through it. Now, there's so much to unpack here.

There's one section that's particularly... Which is one of your sexting methods. LAUGHTER Oh my god, it was not a great career move for me to go into writing meals and bone style f***ing fiction. The whole article is absolutely incredible. It tries to highlight all of the sort of porosity of the deal in terms of its coverage for the service sector, which is the biggest part of the British economy. It highlights the fact that we prioritise the fishing industry, which is a very small part of Britain's economy, and yet the fishing industry is now finding that the Brexit deal that was supposed to provide for it is actually f***ing it over in about 11 different ways.

But there's two sections I briefly want to look at. One of them is that the Theresa May deal, which was actually seemingly a better deal, a series of studies suggested that it would leave Britain's GDP almost 5% lower over 15 years than if the UK had stayed in the EU. And this is from the article, according to government officials, successive chancellors, Sajja Jambid and Rishi Sunak, stopped officials carrying out a new analysis of the proposed deal which would have come to the awkward conclusion that Britain would be left worse off. As one official recalls, someone would occasionally propose doing the work and everyone would say, no, listen, the British government is basically

me in my mid-twenties with my attitude to checking my bank account. Okay? Richie Soonach and Sajja Javid, if I wanted to deal with a brown man heavily in denial about the state of his finances, I would have just recalled my own biographical detail. The other section that is mind blowing is an exchange between Boris Johnson and Ursula von Leyen. Boris Johnson said, we need to defibrillate the talks, a bit like the scene in pulp fiction with Umar Thurman. The commission president was non-plast by the reference to Thurman's character getting a dreddend and shot, and this is how von Leyen replied, be careful Boris who replied, you're talking to a medical doctor. Now initially I thought it was incredibly offensive for the prime

minister to even bring up the film pulp fiction. Firstly because there is an exchange in that where they talk about the fact that in France they put mayonnaise on chips and use the phrase royale with cheese to describe a particular burger. And obviously post Brexit, we can call anything, whatever we f***ing want, right? Anyway, we now call a wopper cow sandwich, and instead of mayonnaise, we just shave more potatoes onto our chips, just creating the digestive equivalent of the kind of blockages we're going to be dealing with at Passport Cues in Europe from now on. But I now realise that this was the perfect Brexit analogy that has been sat in front of us

the entire time. Because if you will remember the seeding question from Pop Fiction, Oomah Thurman in the film has overdosed after snorting what she thought was cocaine but turned out to be heroin. And if you think about it, that is the perfect representation of Britain in the aftermath of Brexit. Taking something we thought was one thing without really looking into it too much. It turning out to be something entirely different from what we thought. And now we're all just covered in blood and our own sick. And we really wanted with some temporary high rather than addressing the deeper underlying issues in our lives. It could, I mean, one way that it could backfire is that I read that as a result of the due policies

Trucks coming into England will will have to wait in France to be to for longer to be cleared or whatever And that that if if my reading is correct that will allow more opportunities for refugees to jump on those trucks to smuggle themselves in England. Because they won't be going as fast through the through the camp. So we'll get not only more, but less athletic. Lazy refugees who can't just hop onto a speeding truck and collet. That was Britain there, well done to everyone involved. Now take off your headphones and pop a bobsled in your ears. It's time to plummet down the icy tubes of history

back to the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014. TAP STORY THIS WEEK! MORE COALBELL! IT'S WINDER ALIMPICS TIME! Look, it's winter Olympics a clock Andy and let's be clear right from the start, I'm not in favour of the winter Olympics. Not just these winter Olympics Andy, but any winter Olympics. In fact, I've decided that I'm only okay with the winter Olympics if they are forced to swap with the Summer Olympics every four years. So, meaning every four years you have your regular summer, your regular Winter Olympics, and every eight years they switch, and you have a blistering hot Winter Olympics, and a frozen Summer Olympics. Because that would be a wonderful thing to watch, Andy, a Summer Olympics featuring swimmers flapping around on the ice on frozen lakes, javelin throwers hands sticking to their javelins and sprinters waddling awkwardly through a snowdrift.

And then a winter Olympics featuring competitors in the lose awkwardly shifting themselves down the track in 80 degree weather on their ass and just if Iably terrified looking ski jumpers at the top of a mountain of sheetrock. These though, Andy, are the most expensive winter Olympics in history, reportedly costing more than all the other winter Olympics in history combined, which is a lot to spend on something that very few people given even chantangential shit about. And it's a little hard to see where that money went other than into some frighteningly furry Russian pockets. There have been multiple photos released this week from athletes and journalists of subpar accommodations in Sochi, toilet cubicles with side-by-side toilets, other toilets without a flush function, which, you hate to be a stickler which seems key to any toilet post-18th

century. I mean something's a tradition for a reason, John, aren't they? Right, right. No one likes a maverick 100% of the time. Other hotel rooms had no bedding or no shower curtains or no running water and the Russian government have been quick to push back on this flood of photos, but in doing so, may have inadvertently revealed something even more troubling. Because Dmitry Dozak, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is responsible for all the Winter Olympic preparations, claimed that these are just stories made up by Westerners who are actively trying to sabotage the Sochi games.

He said that, and I quote, we have surveillance video from the hotels that shows people turning on the showers, directing the nozzle at the wall and then leaving the room for the whole day. Wait, hold on. So hold on. You'll say, don't worry, we know that the water works

finding your hotel rooms and the reason we know that is that we have secret cameras in the shower. Well, I'm sure John, when Russia bid for the games, for a start, everyone would have assumed that would happen. And true, that's fair. I think Putin's direct enough. They would have probably been in the original bid document anyway. So, 51 billion dollars. Yeah, the cost apparently.

That's four tons of the London games cost. As you say, more than all previous Winter Olympics combined, including the famous 1924 Winter Olympics, in Belgium, when they had to build a 3000 metre high fake mountain out of crushed waffles and frozen chocolate coated with icing sugar. Between a third and a half of that sum has been attributed to corruption and kickbacks apparently, which are, frankly, as Russian as vodka, dying early of alcohol related illness and assassinating Tsars. It was just part of the deal, John. There was an 18-mile stretch of road between Sochi and the mountain sports base at the

Krasnaya Polyanna. Apparently, this is cost not two, not five, not ten, 10 not 20 but 8.6 billion dollars. That is over half the cost of the entire London Olympics just for a stretch of road I mean I've actually got a lovely service station with at least two of those automatic coffee machines But you have to ask is that value for money and if you do have any spare winter Olympians Please send them to any country near the equator. Let's make this world a fairer place. Alright, let's have that trailer that I trailed earlier on. Now Chris, fire up the Bugle Alerting Listeners to forthcoming Things Machine.

It's balfed time. Hello. Hi, yes. Is Alice Fraser here? Yes. Yes, of the last post. Yes, of the Bugle. Oh my god. Yes, I would love to do a bugle spin-off show Yep, yeah Yeah, is that all waiting for Andy to retire and that man is looking healthy? What would it sound like? Ah, I mean

Probably like the bugle, but you know the good news No, no, no, not the happy news the interesting news No offense to the news, but I am sick of making jokes about Brexit and about stupid politicians saying stupid shit to make stupid people angry Yeah, yeah, no, yeah like tech news and arts and fun stories about animals and like science and and and and and life advice and and who's in style and Hollywood? Yes, I guess I can do celebrity news if I have to Sure I'll mention flamingos, but I won't be nice about them Cool cool. So when does the first episode come out? Ah I better get writing. Okay, and what's it called? The gagal

The gagal? The gagal gagal All right, sure. The vehicle presents the gaggle with Alice Fraser. America now, and yes, you did not dream it, Donald Trump is indeed no longer president of the USA. Instead, he is a mere unavoidable resounding echo of and portentous warning of the eternal fragility of democracy and

human progress. But still, at least he's not also president. American news now, and the Republicans have still not given up on the election from 2020, which, you know, Bueglis may remember remember do not go terrifically well for them. Mike Pence, the vice president, has welcomed an effort by senators to refuse to certify Biden's victory. Ted Cruz is leading this, this fact and they want an audit.

They want to audit the allegations of electoral fraud. This audit has in fact already been carried out by numerous courts across the USA, but only as escaped the notice of Cruz and his hench people. I mean, the Republicans are heroically in many ways

refusing to bend the knee to the combined forces of mathematics, law, democracy, sense, ethics, reality, or dignity. And continuing to dry hump at the bottom of the barrel in the hope that their metaphorical Wang chafes on some splinter of evidence. And Donald Trump still, still working. I mean, his, his, his, de-fenestration is, I mean, it's basically, he's now looking like he's taking the entire window, the curtains and the wall of the White House down with him into a mega pile of shit that he himself has deposited out of that window over the last four years.

And it's, there was this extraordinary recording that came to light in the last 24 hours or so for him telling George's top election official to find 11,780 votes to overturn the 11,779 vote margin that Joe Biden holds after counting, I believe, is the technical term for the process. And I'm a bit disappointed by this. So you're not that he's only wanting to win by one vote. If you're going to fraudulently steal an election, you can do it properly. Win it by a couple of million. I mean, who's going to be impressed by those two to Trump supporters?

Winning by one vote is as good as losing to Vladimir Putin. I mean, he wouldn't even take enough notice of this to lift this thumb off the hamster he's currently torturing for fun. I mean, do it. Do it properly swamp the swamp. I mean, I don't think this is being quite fair to Donald Trump. He's not asking them to make up the votes. He's asking them to find the votes that are written in invisible ink and then trace over the invisible ink with his name. Oh, right. Sorry.

The one that looked like empty ballot papers, he's just asking them to rectify that. Right. There's always the role of things that look like empty ballot papers that are sitting next to the toilet. He spent most of the two last two months on. Yes, those ones. I did something I guess slightly strange. I listened to the entire phone call. Oh, right. Last night. Oh, right. Not as it was happening. No, no, no, not as well. I was doing the minutes. I, for some reason, listened to the entire phone call last night and it is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever spent my time listening to. And bear in mind how many hours of this fucking podcast I've listened to. Either as contributor or audience member. Andrew, Either as contributor or audience member, Andrew, Donald Trump's commitment to bullshit

makes you look like a fair-weather friend is a fecal concept. I'm off it. It's quite an extraordinary thing. I was quite surprised at how soothing I found him. And partly because I think the reason I found it soothing is just because it's a whale song for the 21st century. Yeah, it was, it was in every sense white noise.

And I think part of the reason I found it soothing is because look, ultimately does this phone call make a difference. No, if anything, it would probably animate Trump's supporters even further because they would see it as him continuing on his righteous nonsensical crusade. But he is quite reassuring to just hear his the sort of ice sculpture of his total horseship meet the steely flame of basic facts. And there is quite an extraordinary moment where there's quite a lot of silence on the tape and it's quite fun in your head to imagine the people of the other end of the phone call. Just looking at each other going, what the fuck are we supposed to do now?

How the fuck are we supposed to deal with this horse shit? The main sort of focus of his eye is the George Secretary of State, Brad Rathonsberger, who is a Republican, which is sort of one of the themes of the whole thing, is Trump continually reminding him that he's a Republican and all this kind of stuff. But this one, after one particularly bullshitty tirade, there's a sort of long pause, and Raffensberger

replies, well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is rock. And I did just realize as I was listening to it that it's sort of one of the first times you've really heard him come up against sort of basic facts just being restated by someone within his party. Now obviously the Republican party as a whole, I think we can all agree, is a toxic entity that needs to be surgically removed from the American political sphere at this point because they've absolutely enabled Trump and we're now in for, I imagine, in the run up to the next election in 2024, an embarrassing amount of people trying to distance themselves from all the things that they

themselves have done and said for the last four to set four to eight years. But there is something like vaguely reassuring about the whole thing. My other highlight is that at one point Trump says that some of the evidence that's been presented in favour of the election being fair doesn't pass the smell test. And that is pretty extraordinary claim. The smell test to come from a man whose signature fragrance would almost certainly be called criminalite. I still don't know what the smell test when you've had Covid. Which I still don't want to smell. I still don't want to smell. When you've had COVID.

Yeah. What's that I want? Well, that's it for this sub-bugle. Don't forget to book your tickets for the Bugle live stream live show, a ticketed live stream show on the 27th of March via the website or via the internet in general. And we now play you out with some lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers to join them or to make a recurring or one-off donation to the bugle.go to thebuglepodcast.com and click the donate button.

David Reinertson thinks economists stress wrongly. David postulates, Davidically, we will pay far more attention to economists if they ditch the tedious business item and actually dress like the wizards they claim to be. Strange capes and pointy hats, and they could paint their faces with pagan style doorbings as well if it's not too much trouble. It would make people pay more attention to them, but it also give them less credibility, which I think is the right way to go, on both counts. Inspired by the Sharknado franchise, Elise Cipos pitched a film to Hollywood Studios entitled Earthquack, in which giant feral ducks roam the planet, quacking at a frequency that causes the Earth's crust to vibrate uncontrollably. After some early rejections, Elise's idea was taken up by a studio who did, however, change the idea somewhat, instead of giant ducks, archaeologists, and instead of seismic

tremors, digging up an old Saxonship. Ducks fans, rave fines, and carry mulligan, reluctantly agreed to put their beaks away and appear in the film anyway. Leo Herzog has never understood the need for spring-loaded slalom poles in professional skiing. If they're so good, says Leo, these gravity-goating lunatics should be able to miss the sticks entirely, not have to bast them out the way with their arms, put up concrete ballads instead to see what they're really made of.

In fact, I just have a sheer drop off the side of the course. That would separate the sheet from the goats, says Leo, not that either sheep or goats, particularly like skiing, he concludes. Simon Reed, however, is absolutely incandescent at Leo's use of the phrase, separate the sheep from the goats. Come on Leo, blast Simon, you're suggesting that either sheep or goats are an aty superior to the other, but without telling us which of them is good and which is rubbish, besides, at Simon. Even if I was a shepherd, I wouldn't be that fast if a goat got mixed up with my sheep or vice versa. They're two species who have evolutionarily plateaued big time and could do with trying

to learn from each other instead of constantly being kept apart by people like you. Veer Asan chips in on the great goat sheep debate and advocates not separating sheep and goats at all. If I was a really visionary farmer, says Veer, I would not only not separate the sheep from the goats, but I would also chuck a couple of hippos and an orangutan into the mix as well, and maybe an ostrich. Yes definitely an ostrich concludes veer. Christian Hovi is right on board with this idea. Give it time, reward the sheep goat's hippos orangutans and ostriches for good into species collaboration, maybe give them achievement tokens which could tot up to earn them a tasty snack, or for the farm animals, and non-tripped to the

abattoir, and soon you will find yourself with an extremely fast but powerful source of wool and feathers that is equally at home sloshing about in a river as climbing a mountain or jumping from tree to tree. Veer nods safely at this suggestion. Yup, Christian, this should surely be commercially viable. Let me make some calls. Here end it, this week's lies. Goodbye.