The Bugle - Bugle 4049 – Grafting Harder Than Ever Before.

Episode Date: November 11, 2017

Andy is in the former New Amsterdam, Anuvab Pal is in the former Kalikata.Andy's been on tour, Trump's on Tour, Prince Charles is on Tour. Has india been cured of corruption? Another British MP resigns. Andy looks for Classical influences on the USA.Support us at Radiotopia.fm 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- Audio newspaper for a visual world. Hello, Bee Eugles! And welcome to issue 4,049 of the Bugle I Am Live in New York City, in the Argo Network studios where, of course, former American president Dwight D. Eisenhower recorded his

novelty 1954 Christmas single, Big D's Dung Along, and it snowed, touristy controversial for the time beside Bootylicious later covered, of course, by Destiny's child. As I record, there is a slightly alarming photograph of Eike shaking it on the wall, claring me in the face. Also, this is more relevant to the bugle, and perhaps even more factually, where John Oliver used to record a long-running podcast down a phone line with a British guy in London called Andy's Zulksman. Hang on, I know someone that name. It's me, Small World, Small World. I am Andy Zulksman and this is The Bugle, the audio publication which in its 10-year

existence has now outlived the vast majority of the world's ferrets whose standard 5-9 year lifespan is no match for this show. Thank you everyone. I'm not saying all those ferrets had to die to make this podcast live, but I am saying if I had a choice between doing the bugle for 10 years or being a ferret I would definitely choose the former. So, testifying brothers and sisters. And I am here in New York, the city that never sleeps and in doing so is doing serious long-term damage to its health. I don't get how many salads and smoothies hit forces down to compensates. And joining me from a city where I once inadvertently ate an other Calcutta in India it's Anuva Pal. Yes, hello Andy, I'm sitting here in the New York of the BF

Bengal which is not really a landmark but I am in Calcutta, thank you for having me. And I'm happy to report. It looks exactly the way you guys left it. Now much has changed. We haven't prepared a single building or a road sign. And it continues to this day as it was in 1947. So hello, Buglers, and hello Andy.. And I have a quick question. Now that Donald Trump, a resident of Midtown Manhattan, is in Asia, does Manhattan look any different? Is there a collective sigh of relief from the tri-state region? Well, it's just non-stop partying and as soon as it gets back,

then they just return to normal, so he doesn't notice. But just on the streets, it's like the Rio Carnival, but 10 times more so and with more baloney and hot dogs. So it's very late. It's what one I am. And is it, should we call it Calcutta or Colcatta? What are the locals call it? It's a bit confusing.

Well, a bit of history here, and a job charter, a petty trader and a thief. A British gentleman found himself on the shores of an unknown Indian port in 1666. He got to do a slight altercation with the farmer and he said to the farmer, who owns this place? What is the name of this place? And the farmer thought that he was being asked when did he cut the harvest? Another classic case of British Indian miscommunication. At which point the farmer said, Calcutta, by which translates to, I cut the harvest yesterday, to which, Jonathan that I mean, that was the name of the city, and he promptly moved in and took over. Now, how somebody talking about the harvest should immediately lead to invasion, I do not know

Andy. I don't know much about how the empire was built, but it seemed like a nomenclature confusion led to the beginning of one of the largest economic invasions in the world. LAUGHTER We've seldom needed more of an excuse than that. On the subject of which, we are according on Friday the 10th of November, on this day in 1674,

the Treaty of Westminster was signed, this was during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. That seems like quite a lot of wars between Britain and the Dutch, but this was the Third Anglo-Dutch War, and the Netherlands gave New Netherland to Britain. Now that was a sweet old chunk of North America, including this very studio, or at least in 1674, the land beneath this studio. New York, of course, was a rather different place than it had been bought by the Dutch Chancellor Peter Minuitz about 50 years before, for about 40 bucks in a bag of spanners, according to, well, let's call it history. And I've now come to claim it back on this historic anniversary.

Please, New York, come back to the mothership. We can do each other good. Also, on this day in 1983, Bill Gates launched Windows 1.0 launching a new era in home swearing. People swearing at inanimate objects in their homes has increased by over 99% since the launch of Windows. So that's a historic moment in human language. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week,

the Country Music Awards section, hot on the heels of my visit to Nashville, Tennessee, they're holding the annual country music awards, interesting place in Nashville, incidentally. For those of you who don't know, it's my first time there, and I had not known before I went there. What Nashville has, you wouldn't necessarily expect a city in Tennessee, USA to have in the year 2017, is a full scale replica of the Perth and on the famous ancient Greek temple that sits proudly on top of the Acropolis in Athens. It was built in 1897 for the Nashville exposition and it's still there. I mean, it's quite fascinating, Anuva, one of these relics from time gone by, but clearly Nashville sat around in the late 19th century and thought, well, we're a growing city.

What do we need? What is going to see us through the next few thousand years? Any ideas? How about a fucking path then on? Why not? Which leads to a number of questions, Andy. A number of questions. Americans have always had a fascination for antiquity. They like picking up stuff. The Senate's called the Senate. At some point, they're going to build a Roman circus, and they're going to have Republicans versus wild boars and stuff in there. But my question here is, is there anyone in Nashville

who thinks that this is the real thing? Well, I'm not sure. I didn't see many people, you know, bowing down and worshipping the goddess Athena, which was disappointing for me, because I think she's the goddess of wisdom and I think America could really do with her right now. Also, to add to the list of classical influences on America, of course, they currently seem to have an emperor who's acting like Nero. So it really goes pretty deep. Big awards at the country music awards,

there's always a lot of speculation over who's gonna take away the big gongs, including biggest hats, most hats, least original song, best beard to hat ratio, most objectively sinister lyric about a young woman, that is always very hotly contested, and least original album as well. So there's some very tightly thought categories. Some of the big stars of country are performing live, including

Hinckley Struggins. He'll be singing his hit song, I'll give my soul to the devil, but he ain't getting hold of my truck. And Grave on Hudge showing the influence of Donald Trump with his recent country chart number one, I'll build my wall around your heart though because I've seen you looking at Ricardo. Anyway, those sections in the bin. Top story this week, Donald Trump in Asia. Now, Anu Vabazar, Indo, Pacifico, Asia, Northeast, Quarter Sphere, Correspondent. How is your continent enjoying the visits of Mr. Trump? Well, you know, Andy, he flew over us, because that's the only way you can, you can get to China, because he's not going to fly over Russia.

It just looks bad. I mean, even though it's, it's the fastest route. It just doesn't look nice. You can give him where we are today. But one of the things that's going on in the world and is that India loves American presidents. He loves American presidents. And he flew over us. And I think he made a flippant comment, like,

boy, am I flying over India? Or something very generic like that. And we would run that as a headline that said Donald Trump flying over us desperate to land sadly the winds took him to China. So that's how we're looking at this trip. But Andy, I have a question. If you remember a couple years ago Donald Trump tweeted very angryly about China. He said they were a currency manipulator and so

on. He said they were not nice and that he you know he would come down hard on them. But it seems like from the photographs, I'm not a very intelligent person and it seems in the photographs when he's having champagne with Xi Jinping that he's not really, I don't know if that's the world has changed drinking champagne and laughing is not really coming down hard. Not generally, no. I mean, he did also say it a rally in May of last year. We cannot continue to allow China to rape our country and that is what they're doing. It's the greatest theft in the history of the world. Now, you as an Indian and me as a British person

may be able to slightly argue with him on whether it's the greatest theft in the history of the world. But that was a common that all the delicacy of language and tone, the rigorous or most fanatical devotion to historical accuracy that so rapidly became Mr Trump's campaign trademark. Sorry, I must stop letting that to strangely seek the guy Yevgeny wrote my material. But as you say, it's fair to say that he has scaled back on that angry rhetoric,

maybe having watched a Chinese army parade and thought, holy shit, these guys have some serious military manpower. And this time, they have not made the mistake of making them out of terracotta. Is it safe to say then, how we deepen the presidency to sort of make the relatively inaccurate observation that nothing he says really means anything? And is that a presidential quality? I mean, does that need to now go into the annals of a presidential quality? You know, tenacity, rigor, fort-rightness, leadership,

and your word, not meaning anything. Well, I think that would make a lot of sense actually because if you think about it, it's only because people listen to what he says and interpret his words according to what they mean that they get angry about them. So if you just assume that they are completely meaningless, then it just becomes almost like a branch of

Experimental jazz. I mean not necessarily the kind of jazz that you want as you first dance at your wedding But maybe you've stumbled upon the great contribution of Donald Trump to global politics You know saying completely meaningless words so meaningless that eventually people will just stop listening and it'll just be noise I mean, it's kind of the verbal equivalent of the Queen's wave. Maybe this is the future. Also America complaining about international trade practices of other countries is somewhat reminiscent of the parable by Jesus' age Christ, the alleged Messiah and parable still. The famous parable of the baby eating crocodile complaining about the mosquito bite.

It seems a little bit rich, given quite how much America has profited from this planet. And Trump said, as part of his conciliation, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefits of its citizens? Now, let me just repeat that question and please try and bear in mind some of the things that Trump has said over the last couple years. Who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens? Well, I have a few quick answers to that. Answer A, anyone. Anyone can blame a country for doing that or raise anyone with a vague sense of social conscience and a global collective good. Anyone who thinks of countries as more than just a base commercial entity, anyone who can measure national success

in terms other than how much it swings its economic junk in other country's faces. Answer, be the people who can blame the country for doing that. Are the people of the country being taken advantage of? Historically, they often get a little bit pissed off. Answer, C, Tibet. Tibet can blame a country for taking advantage of another country for the benefit of his citizens.

Maybe Trump might like to mention that to his new buddy, Mr. G. Answer D, international law can take, can blame a country for taking advantage of others. Answer E, America. America can do that. If you recall, 1776 and all that, America seemed to get a bit knocked off

with Britain taking advantage of it. In fact, the whole foundation of the country I'm currently sitting in is basically a country blaming someone else for taking advantage of its citizens. And answer F, Donald Trump. Donald Trump does that all the time. And he basically did it almost immediately afterwards when he started complaining about how unjust the world

is to America again. Now, Donald Trump is not going to India as part of his 10-day talk, which is a little bit odd given that India is, well, in layman's terms, fucking massive and increasingly fucking important in the world. But his daughter, Ivanka, the thinking nepotist's first lady,

she is going to India, she's going to Hyderabad. And as a result of this, Hyderabad has taken some action to ensure that Ivanka has a lovely trip, Anu Vab, just explain exactly what they've done. Well, what they've done is they've taken a lot of homeless people and they've put them in dormitories. And as you know, in India, there are loads and loads of people on the streets. Some of them are homeless, some of them are just walking. I don't think the government discriminated. I think they just looked at the path

that Ivanka Trump was going to take from the airport to the hotel and picked up whoever was on it. So right now, there are some homeless people with much better homes than they could have deserved. And then there are some people just kidnapped. So they bet he just cleared beggars. Or frustrated beggars. I think the goal was to clear beggars.

But in India, it's hard to tell who's a beggar and who's a millionaire because everybody's just walking on the streets. So India looks quite empty now, I think. The police commissioner in Hyderabad said this extraordinary thing. It has come to my notice through the public that many beggars are begging arms in an indecent manner. Now I've been to India a few times and if you need someone else to let you know that there are lots of beggars there, you really are walking around with your eyes shut. And if you are a police commissioner there, then that frankly beggars belief about how you got your job as indeed many people in important jobs in India. Beggar belief.

So, yeah, several hundred of these alleged Beggars and bystanders have been lost at a, basically a rehab center at a local jail. Now, a rehab center, I don't know what exactly what type of rehab center it is, even criminal rehab, I'm not sure how this is going to work in terms of curing people of begging. They're going to have some kind of rehabilitation psychologist or something saying, right, you've got a duty to yourself and society to go out there and not have absolutely no money

having been left with basically zero life chances by centuries of entrenched inequality and exploitation. Off you go. Is that going to work to cure India of this, this obvious social problem? The answer Andy is, of course, yes. Of course, yes. Because, you know, basically, historically, economics are shown, you know, from the Friedman School of Economics, so down to Adams, everybody said, the best way to alleviate poverty is to kidnap them, put them in some sort of rehabilitation

for a problem they don't have, like alcoholism. And then once they get used to these new housing situations, make sure that they never leave, creating a further burden on the government. Because now they're in housing, they actually quite enjoy it government because now they're in housing they actually quite enjoy and now they're never going to leave so if I'm going to Trump will leave on a Monday morning but the government of India will just have its jails filled with beggars and that's the last thing you need a

convict and hydrobat to be facing solicitation from beggars he's already murdered a bunch of people it's rough for him in's already murdered a bunch of people. It's rough for him in prison, and now a bunch of people are begging in there. Well, it's the first role of social cleansing out of sight, out of mind. That is beginners-level stuff. For any politician wanting to put a lovely little glycetate on their tummy to cover a festering gaping wound. And Andy, you know, you know, just to add your Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales and Lady Camilla Parker-Boltz, they were here. They were here. They were in New Delhi. Oh, right. And they were in New Delhi yesterday because his Royal Highness runs a big trust,

the British Indian trust. And the thing is, of course, they were going to clear the roads of Delhi of Vegas, but I don't know if you've heard, but the Delhi air is so polluted that Israel Highness couldn't actually see anyone. So it wasn't a problem. It wasn't a problem. Nothing had to be cleared because he couldn't see beyond his hands. So we didn't have to take it. This is a significant problem for Prince Charles, because as widely recorded, his mother, the queen, now, is world record holder for longest ever reign by a British monarch. Yes. And so he's been waiting to, basically, waiting to get his new job for what, 65 years now.

And, you know, he's getting on himself now. And basically, on current standards of Delhi air, spending one day in Delhi, knocks about 15 years off your life expectancy as far as I can make out. According to CNN, breathing is equivalent to smoking 44 cigarettes a day. That's correct, that's correct.

You see, the problem with the world is that, you know, you guys have different role models for Clean Air, right? You guys, you guys in the Western world, you look towards the Scandinavian countries for Clean Air. You look at their recycling mechanisms and you say, oh, look at the air in Norway, look at the air in Greenland, they're so good, look at the air in Iceland. We look at different things and we looked at the movie Blade Runner. And we said, oh look, this is this dystopian air, sort of futuristic society where, you know, where

there's just garbage and crushed metal. How about that, you know? Who said progress is only going to be positive, you know? But that's a lot of cigarette, 44 cigarettes a day. Although I think if you do also smoke 44 cigarettes a day, that cancels out the air pollution. I'm not a doctor, but I like maths, I respect maths and I fear maths. So I assume double negatives apply to matters of health as they do in basic arithmetic.

Absolutely great. And the totology. True, true. Yes, true. Yes true. But apparently the pollution was so bad that it went beyond what the city was able to measure using the pollution measuring instruments at its disposal. Now that's, that's impressive because I mean it's been a long-standing problem in Delhi. So I presume they got some pretty I mean, it's been a long-standing problem in Delhi. So I presume they got some pretty high-tech kit that they could turn up to 11.

But now basically, just breathing, it's equivalent to eating 50 kilograms of coal three meals a day. Do you know what is being blamed for this, for the current pollution? And in reports, say, a wind of some sort from burning crops or something, that's apparently what's causing the haze.

I read slow winds and slightly colder temperatures have been blamed. But I mean, that's really blaming, that's a very short term blame. That's like a young spiv in a flash car, blaming the fact that he just had a crash on a deer running out suddenly in front of his car, rather than the fact that he was driving at 130 miles an hour in an unlicensed Lamborghini without a license, having never driven before, whilst winging from a whiskey bottle in the middle of a zoo. It's really not blaming the underlying causes. And one of the great things about India

is that it's always good to look at a temporary solution to a much larger screw-up that we've done over the years. If there's a wind blowing over our heads, why should we blame the fact that we have thousands of trucks that are bellowing our thick black smoke for the last 55 years, which are troubled without any sort of pollution regulation, did a rampant corruption. Why look at that? When you've got a bit of a yellow cloud above your head, you know, it's clear to us that the temporary solution, you know, in India we have a word for it, it's jugar, which is just literally means plugging the gaps. Well, I guess in a country like India, I mean, I think I've said this before,

when you've been on the bugle, I've been three or four times to India, and the population has more than doubled in 25 or 30 years, and to me, the miracle is that it works at all, not that it has all these problems, but that it even functions to the extent that it does. It's a logistical miracle. Well, I don't know.

I think strong measures are being taken. The Delhi crisis, for example, the government immediately stepped in and said, right, we need to do something about this. So they decided that if you, if you own more than one car, if you have a number that that ends in an even number, you can bring out the car one day. If you have a number plate that ends in a not number, you can bring out the car another day. It's a complicated thing, but it has to do with odd and even a number plate. I know you like mathematics, Andy. There was only one small glitch in the problem, which is that the air was so thick and orange that no one could actually see any

number plates. So people decided to bring out three or four cars at once and see what the hell happens, just a mess with the government. So there you go, we've got all the right things in place. You've also got all the right people breaking the rules. So it allows for a thriving democracy. So I really don't know where the complaints are. The latest fashion trend in Delhi is a lot of people dressing up like the Batman villain Bane. That seems, that's if you're very popular in the malls, you know, getting that mask going, getting that outfit going and, you know, the Bane look is the winter Party look for Delhi. So as I said, we are recording on Friday the 10th.

I did the final show of my US tour in Washington, D.C. on the 8th Wednesday, the 8th. And thanks to everyone who has come to see my shows here in North America on this tour. It's been hugely enjoyable for me. And thanks, it's been great to see so many bugle fans out there. And well, I mean, apart from bugle fans,

I think I could have done the entire tour in one gig in a lift. But the eighth was the one year anniversary of the election. I was in Washington, DC. The, obviously the home of American politics. But it was also the one year anniversary of the demonetization foisted upon the Indian people by Narendra Modi last November when he basically took out what about 80% of all functioning currency was just made instantly illegal. 80% of the currency and they made illegal.

And you're down the line apparently the analysis after a lot of study is that it wasn't perhaps a very good idea. Um. So I think you did your first ever show on the bugle, I think the week after that happened, didn't you? And I think you said that something very similar at the time that it was a very good idea and it's interesting that history seems to be backing you up on that.

Well, you know, I'd like to quote the comedian Andy Zoltzman, I don't know if you've heard of him when he talked about the subprime mortgage crisis and he had said, and I caught that if you give money to people who can't pay it back, you won't know unless you actually try it, unless you give money to people who can't pay back, and then they don't pay back. You have to go through that process. Like I think the parallel you had given us was something to do with slamming your door. On your testicles. Yeah. Precisely.

Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that, yeah, you have to know, you have to do it before you know for sure if it's definitely going to hurt. And as I also said, you cannot build a global economy on hypothetically painful testicles. Direct quote from J.K. Galbrary. And to take it from testicles to the Indian economy, which is a transition many have made, unless you actually take away 80% of the people's currency, theoretically it seems if you take away 80% of people's currency, they would be disappointed, confused and poor, But unless you actually do it, Andy, you won't know. Just to add that the leader of the opposition, the inheritor of the Gandhi

dynasty, if you will, Rahul Gandhi of the Commerce Party basically said that the Prime Minister of Modi himself, single-handed leaders responsible for removing 2% of the GDP of an economy. It seemed like some sort of a theft of some dusted or something. You know, he made it sound like he'd taken a chunk of a reasonably appetizing dessert. And he wrote this in one of your newspapers, Andy, in the financial times. I just want your view and on whether you thought that that was an, I always thought that the paper was very objective, you know, middle of the road balanced. But I think if the leader of the opposition, the party that hits

Narendra Modi, if that guy goes in there and says, Prime Minister Modi, I hate you, I'm not sure how balanced that argument was. Well, I guess that's a nature of modern media, isn't it? And I'm sure the financial times will give Modi the right to reply, it has pink pages after all the financial times, which pink is of course the colour of objectivity in journalism. I think that's why they use it. But the other idea was that it was to stop corruption and money laundering, so has removing almost all of the functioning in India cured India of all graft. It has Andy. It has. I'm glad you made that. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. It has Andy. And what happens is that once you've got no money, you can't be corrupt. I think they've gone for the all-in game, if you will. You know? Right. If you remember, one of the best quotes

from what we discussed last year was that the Prime Minister had burned down the entire forest in search of two corrupt wolves. And once you do that Andy, once you remove all currency, you realise that some people are less corrupt because they don't actually have any money. Right. Well that's interesting, interesting way of going about it. I like the term graft, we don't really use it in Britain, but I like that as a term for corruption. I prefer it because it gives a sense of the efforts and tedious logistics involved in stealing millions and millions of dollars worth of public money. I like that. It needs

to be graphed more in Britain. Yes, there's an update in India. We find corruption that scams in so many various areas, you know, there was a corruption scandal in India involving cow feces. There's been corruption scam in India involving mineral water on trains. There has been corruption scandals in India involving uniforms of railway workers. So once you've taken corruption to a level where it's an art form, you have to use a word that sounds like art, so we use graphed. So I can't remember if we did this on the bugle

and I've done it in stand-up, but there was the Uto-Bredeche elephant memorial scam. Yes. Which was like $150 million worth of public money grafted off in a scheme to put up public statues of elephants and that's genius isn't it? Is it creativity that's gone into that? It's brilliant because Michael Angelo when he builds in stone he sees only sculpture but when the UT government builds in stone

they see Swiss bank accounts. Britain news now and well the festival of government resignations 2017 has continued this week the international development minister, Pretty Patel, has quat. She resigned after going on holiday, which she's allowed to do. And whilst she was on holiday holding 14 unofficial meetings with top level figures in Israel, which it turns out she's not allowed to do, including an unauthorized hookup with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, classic holiday activity. I think she did it because you got a discount.

Like a tooth one, if you booked a ride on the open top tourist bus and a meeting with Netanyahu at the same time. I mean, it's, and it seems an odd way to go about your holiday. I mean, certainly, I don't know what her, what Priti Patel's family situation is. I know when I go on my family holidays, I like to leave high-level trade and diplomatic talks

to one side. I mean, that's also one of the reasons why the UN so rarely meets in a beathor because the two just don't go very well together. The problem for Pretty Patel was that a certain conducting high-level meetings as a government minister without telling anyone, which is frowned upon these days, as I said, thank you, Brussels, was that she was then not entirely 100% honest about things afterwards. The classic glass of port to the standard cheese course of ministerial wrongdoing. Now, we've all done things on holiday. We slightly regret, as I believe the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said at the official closing ceremony for the British Empire in 1991. There have been times when we've wanted to do something on holiday, but it's been sold

out or too expensive or just logistically unworkable. And we've filled the gap with something else. Maybe that's what happened in this situation. It could have been a simple, oh, no, I've underestimated how much time it will take to go round Pompeii. We're staying on the wrong side of Naples. And we've got to have pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So Pompeii's off.

Never mind. Let's make the Israeli Prime Minister instead. There we go. We're not having a wasted day. Kids, I'm afraid Santa's magic grotto is not on today. It's July and we're in Spain. Stop crying. I know I promised it. But I've got something even better. Come and watch Daddy have clandestine talks with Benjamin Netanyahu. This followed the resignation last week of Michael Fallon, the Secretary of State for defense, defense,

deep cybered in America too long. After he, fell below the standards of not being weirdly creepy with women expected of government ministers in the post and the underthal age. Boris Johnson, he's also blooped at another bloops to buy, by basically shopping a British woman to Iran as a spy, whether or not Iran as a spy whether or not she

is a spy or not. It's our what is happening. Anyway, it's all a bit ridiculous given that what the government prides itself on as we know is being strong and stable. Yep. Is this the first time that a British minister has been fired for working too much? And because she's making her colleagues look bad and is this the sum of that going on? Oh, that's an interesting angle that I had not had not considered. Maybe it is that

maybe I mean she's making really doing the job that two people could be doing. So, yeah, I mean, could add to unemployment figures if we have to sack our ambassadors to Israel because he's no longer f**king needed. In other, more junior minister resignations, the junior minister for benches and public seating, clavicleer, Pertwin, Range has resigned because she thinks she might do something wrong at some point in the future. In other British news, we have a date, Anuva, we are going on a hot date with Destiny, the official date for us firing ourselves into our new post-Brexit's British orbit is the 29th of March 2019. That is when it is going to officially happen

in what's that now? That's just under a year and a half time. The 29th of March coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, is the anniversary of the Battle of Totten in 1461. During the Wars of the Roses, which sounds like a rather entertaining, floristry-based reality TV show, in which enthusiastic amateurs tried to make the prettiest bouquet for a guest celebrity's birthday wedding bar mitzvah funeral apology or court hearing. But in fact the wars of the roses was a long-running and rather bloodthirsty civil war, and the battle of Totem was the single most savage battle ever fought on British soil

resulting in a reported 28,000 dead out of around 60 to 70,000 combatants. That is a high hit rate in a battle fought with 15th century weaponry. So, and with that it's the day for us pulling the trigger on Brexit, the anniversary of a brutal struggle for power in a nation tearing itself apart. What more appropriate day could there be? Your Brexit vote, I think, was last year, actually officially leaving the European Union in 2019, and I don't know enough about your culture, so I'm just curious, is this the classic British tactic of letting enough time pass so you don't remember what you did or when you did it? So you don't remember what you did or when you did it

It does yes, it's it's it's does sniff slightly of that I Guess and I mean I think pretty much everyone in Britain would like to forget it on both sides really I've also had before the solution is just to leave maybe just one day Just leave the European Union for a day on the 29th of March, go back on the 30th, everyone gets what they want, the remain gets to remain and the leave get to complain. In other major international economics news, the paradise papers were leaked this week, which I'd always assumed when my wife's secret diary about her 21 years spent with me. It turns out they're not that. There were 13.4 million documents about tax aversion and related issues. We have talked in a greater depth than anticipated as so in the case on previous stories, so we will save the Paradise Papers for a future bugle,

but don't worry if that's what you've tuned in for talk about tax evasion. You'll get it eventually. Right, that brings us towards the end of this bugle. Just a reminder, the live bugle next Thursday, the 16th of November at the Leicester Square Theatre, do come along to that. It features Nish Kumar, Alice Fraser and me talking about everything that's happened in the world between now and then. A few emails have come in. Well, quite a lot of emails on one particular subject. Yes, I am now aware of the giant wooden penis that has appeared in the Austrian Alps. Thank you for those approximately 20,000 people who've emailed or tweeted me about that. And this, and if you might be interested in this, this was in a build up to the recent American local elections, which went very badly for Donald Trump.

There was a rather racist election poster in the small town of Edison, in title Make Edison Great Again. And it says, stop Jerry She and Falguni Patel from taking over our school board. And it had pictures of these two candidates for the local school board, one of whom was born in America and the other of whom was lived in America for decades. Within a big red box with exclamation marks in big letters, the Chinese and Indians are taking over our town so far, just basic, classic xenophobic, fear mongering, Chinese

school exclamation mark, Indian school exclamation mark, and here comes the kicker Cricket Fields. Yes, I read that Andy, and more than the entire population of India and China, I think you were offended by the mention of the cricket field. Yes, America is the sport you could have had. Had you been more sensible and open-minded when you had the chance? Luckily, both of those candidates won, because the voters of Edithson thought, oh well, clearly cricket is the greatest thing humanity has ever invented. Let's have more of that in our town. Thanks to Matthew Barnes who emailed me about that and various other people as well. And this email coming from Alex Hodgson who writes, I learnt in this week's Blue Planet

2, that's BBC series all about things that live in a sea. I mean, doing really need them anymore in this day and age, everything's gone wi-fi. There's an underwater mountain range that runs a whole way around the globe. Basically, the earth has a seam like a cricket ball. Given this revelation right, Alex, why is SpaceFot Professor Brian Cox still the go-to-guy for planetary science? And the true king of seam and swing, Jimmy Anderson, the record-breaking England swing bowler. What a put it this way, how do you think Anderson would fair,

given the blue and green cherry and interstellar conditions dry-cold, unlikely to cloud over in the afternoon? And how big a pair of trousers would Alistair Cook need to put a good shine on the Americas? So that's a very nice cricketing email. Very nice to have a second reference to intergalactic cricket within just a couple of weeks on the bugle.

Well, I think clearly the world does tend to swing in, I think, if it starts swinging, how if it starts? I think when we get to being too old a planet, you know, the swing will reverse it. And when we start reverse swinging, that's going to be tricky. We're going to fly away from the sun and smash into Jupiter. So we just wanna try and keep that scene as straight as possible. If you want more cricket stuff,

I will be starting the earn-believeable Ashes podcasts with ABC Radio in Australia, featuring Tom Wright, XBugel producer and the very funny Australian comedian, Felicity Ward and Jared Kimber, cricket journalist extraordinaire, that will begin in a couple of weeks. So do look out for that if you are a bugle fan and a cricket fan. That is a niche on the human-vend diagram that I think should include at least 6 billion people, but doesn't.

Anyway, that's it. Until next week, as I said, next week's vehicle will be live from the Leicester Square Theatre in London, tickets still available to find them online in the meantime. And who have, uh, thanks once again for your wits and wisdom on the bugle we will be speaking again soon. And until next time, bugleers, goodbye. Thank you Andy. Goodbye.

Thank you, Andy.