The Bugle - London Crime on the Down, Party swapping and Trump trying to buy Greenland - it's THE BUGLE 4365!

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

This week on The Bugle, Andy is joined by Alice Fraser and Anuvab Pal, as they discuss Trump's Greenland spending spree, London's crime rate lowering, and a women busted for drugs, found in a bag labelled "Does Not Contain Drugs"🇺🇸 Trump on Greeland: Andy, Alice and Anuvab breakdown Trump's old fashioned approach to trying to buy other people's land💂 London's Crime on the Down: London's crime rate falling to it's lowest in a decade, but at what cost?🇬🇧 Reform's Big New Signing: The three also break down Robert Jenrick's controversial move from the Tory Party to Nigel Farage's Reform. 🎧 Support The Bugle! Become a Team Bugle subscriber for bonus episodes, exclusive video editions, and the righteous satisfaction of funding satire:http://thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTubeProduced by Chris Skinner, Laura Turner and Harry Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

newspaper for a visual world. Hello, welcome to the bugle. This is issue 4,365 of the world's only ever and one remaining audio newspaper for a visual world. I am Andy Zaltman and as part of Elon Musk's reputation rehabilitating efforts. He has let the bugle use as controversial AI grok technology on this week's bugle to make me sound like I'm wearing more clothes than I actually am. I am not in fact wearing a full suit of armor,

nor am I wearing a 1920s feather boa although they do suit me very well and nor am I wearing flippers with bells on but such is the power of technology for once being used not to debase humanity I am actually wearing a wirefronts made of lobsters I always do that on the bugle they're just a bit over-excited today because of the two co-hosts who are joining me

favourites of the lobster community joining me from Australia Alice Fraser and from India Anuvam Powell. Hello, both of you. Hello, Andy. I am delighted to be favoured of the lobster community, although I think lobsters might be the name that the fan base of Jordan Peterson stands call themselves or a tribute, or maybe are mockingly attributed that name by people who don't like them. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure that it's a Jordan Peterson lobster situation because he thinks that lobsters get dopamine from fighting but hasn't realized.

that for lobsters, dopamine is like not the same thing as it is for people. I don't know if you've noticed, Andy, but people are not the same as lobsters. Well, I mean, not everyone, Alice. But anyway, I think it's time for us to reclaim the lobster. Anuvab, is there much lobster support in Mumbai at the moment? You know, there are quite a few people that get confused as lobsters. I often wonder, is this a person or is it a lobster? It happens on a regular basis.

I mean, that's just a British tourist who's got too much sun. At this time of year, we get a lot of them. Look, I was late for this podcast because I landed at the new Mumbai airport. They've built a new Mumbai airport. I'm in Mumbai. And I landed. The only thing they forgot to tell us, is that the new Mumbai airport is not in Mumbai.

It's closer to the town of Puna, which is a whole different city, and it takes two and a half hours to get to Mumbai now. This is a travel update on the bugle for anyone coming into Mumbai. Realize that your airport is not the city that it promises to be in. Well, that's a great global trend. But, I mean, two and a half hours, there's times in Mumbai when that is basically just down the road. So, I mean, the distance is immaterial, really.

I mean, time is a very flexible concept. It's absolutely true, yes. I remember for my times in Mumbai that, you know, what, two and a half hours in Mumbai, it's a very different unit of time. I mean, the Mumbai five minutes is, you know, anything between 20 minutes and an hour and a half, if I recall from my Indian promoter saying, I'm just around the corner. I'll pick you up in five minutes.

So just two and a half hours, what does that mean? What is time? That's absolutely correct. The current Mumbai airport, the old one, is 20 minutes from my house. And it's sometimes taking me three and a half hours to get home. So two and a half hours being the actual distance is quite good. There are many Ubers on the algorithm in India where time is very relative in Einstein terms. It'll say Uber arriving in eight minutes and then they'll say 32 minutes and they'll say two minutes and they'll say four and a half hours. So, you know, these things don't, I don't think happen in other cities. We are recording on the 19th of January, 2026. On the 20th of January 1841, Hong Kong Island was occupied by the British during the first opium war.

One of the great days in Britain's career is the Pablo Escobar of the 19th century. just the first of the opium wars we were a very very enthusiastic drug pusher back in those days but we've learned and we've moved on 20th of January also is Penguin Awareness Day Were you aware of Penguin Awareness Day

Either of you? I was not aware of Penguin Awareness Day But I didn't need Penguin Awareness Day Because I'm at all times aware of penguins That's some very few people are You're a role model and an inspiration And I've had Imagine Penguin Awareness in a moment

is not high on the social agenda. We've not seen them. There are some hot countries where certain creatures like seals and penguins, they're mostly meant for BBC documentaries. No one's actually seen one. And many people don't believe they're true. Well, it is 20th of January Penguin Awareness Day. And the reason that it's 20th of January is because the penguin, nature's bollard,

was founded on the 20th of January in the year 61 million BC. So do try to spend the 20th of January being as penguin aware as possible, if you can. A few things to be aware of when it comes to penguins. Penguins are flightless by design. Do not try to help penguins be better at being a bird by throwing them in the air or off a ladder or a building and encouraging them to learn how to fly. Everyone loves penguins, but did you know that Jesus Christ didn't even know about penguins? The professional Messiah finished his career without once mentioning penguins,

despite the flightless bird, being a pretty obvious candidate for a parable. of some kind. You'd think his dad would have told him about penguins. So why Jesus didn't mention the entertainingly odd creature as a metaphor for something or other, or as an example of how we should accept those who are different to us, well, it's frankly inexplicable. Maybe he'd have got to it at some point if he hadn't pegged out quite literally in his early 30s, but still, it's a disgrace. If you want to treat a penguin on Penguin Awareness Day, remember that although penguins do famously like sushi, they much prefer it without wasabi. And finally, on Penguin Awareness Day, do try to be aware of penguins and make others aware of penguins

too. In business meetings, ask how your company's actions or plans for the future would impact on penguins if those plans were to be enacted in a penguin rich part of the world, such as Antarctica or aquariums. If arrested by the police, ask them if they would treat you differently if you were a penguin, if performing a medical operation on someone, remember how lucky you are to have a scalpel and qualified medical colleagues such as anaesthetists and nurses rather than wings and other penguins. And on dates, casually drop into conversation how penguins meet and fall in love whilst seductively swallowing a whole live herring. So do celebrate Penguin Awareness Day.

As always, the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, we have a special 2.8 million to one shot special. This, after all eight first round matches at the Master Snooker in London, ended with a 6-2 scoreline. And I'll crunch the numbers on it. I'll work that out as a 1 in 2.8 million chance of happening. So we give you some other one in 2.8 million combinations of events to have a bet on. In the arts, these add up to 2.8 million to one.

The next James Bond to be the former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Turner Prize, the UK's provocative modern art prize, to be won by former golfer Ian Woosnam and Iran boss Ali Hamunay to release an album of songs by the early 19th century Australian composing celebrity, Fran Schubert, entitled Supreme Leader. that's my favorite German song-based pun of the year so far

in sports these combine for a 2.8 million to one shot Martina Navratelova to win a Grand Slam singles title this year 36 years after her last victory at Wimbledon in 1990 one of the Super Bowl adverts on February 6th edition of the NFL showpiece final

to involve Leonardo DiCaprio taunting a crab in a bucket for five minutes with a series of foul-mouth antichrustation barbs before releasing it into a hospital ward and former Formula One stars Nigel Manson and Nelson P.K. To win this year's Kentucky Derby. There's two halves of a Pansmime horse. And our final 2.8 million to one shot involves these three events.

A coin landing on heads or tails twice in a row. Elvis Presley not recording any new songs this year. And Donald Trump to say one love, peace out, while signing a $10 trillion package for AIDS to further educational opportunities for girls and women in the world's 50 poorest countries. those 2.8 million to one if you multiply them together. That section in the bin. Listen, I'll listen to any band that has Iran's supreme leader in it.

Pop jazz, doesn't matter. Top story this week, crime. Yeah, we're leading with the crime section this week. In many ways, the ability to commit crimes as what has elevated us humans above the other creatures and the evolutionary bun fight. and where else to start in our crime section than with the world's most famous active felon

the man who despite being given the chance to sort himself out from his criminal ways with a four-year rehabilitative work placement as president of the United States of America has struggled to change his ways Don Don, as he likes to be known, the man who puts the lie into ally is currently mid-crime as we speak

attempting to steal Greenland the world's largest non-continent qualifying island I'm trying if Australia is getting a bit worried, Alice, that he might... Islands might not be enough for him after this, and he's going to look for entire continents next. He's inspired me. I don't know much about it, but look, if they're for sale,

I can pay up to $3,000, $7,000 if I sell my electric bucket bike. Is there anyone on the Sunshine Coast who wants to buy Ariser and Miller Pax to E-bike? Hit me up. No, it's, look, first of all, he's out for it. He really wants it. He's serene peacefulness and Nobel Prize acquiring presidency. is fully set on getting Greenland. He says he's going to tariff countries

who can test the project to within an inch of their lives. It is an extraordinary thing to witness by the light of Trump's star by comparison. How little people just do stuff? You know, it's quite inspiring to some extent. People are held back by the imagined consequences

of a bygone era where if you did stuff that was against norms or law or even table manners, you could be stapled to a wall or frozen in carbonite or poisoned at a banquet. You know, like, on the other hand, if you were a tyrannically minded,

conquest-driven king a little bit before that, if you had the largest army in the world, you could basically take whatever land you felt like, but you were constrained in your ambitions by the range of the average horse, the idea that the world was flat and the possibility of dying from an aggrieved tooth. Yeah, I mean, look, Andy Alice,

I think that it's a shame that more countries are not up for sale, you know? it's so difficult to keep an economy going to keep your population fed, you know, to control your borders. Why not just put yourself up for sale and see what happens, you know, rules-based order, you know, this whole idea of stability in the world since 1945. It's had a good run, right? It's pretty good run.

I've been, I've always been a huge fan of the mid-18th century, right? The 1750s, big fan. 1750s, lots of countries were up for sale, including the British East India company when they were in India. A lot of people thought there was a battle to conquer India. But there was actually a purchase price. A lot of people took a bribe and gave up lots of kingdoms to the British, who then consolidated and later made it an empire. But stuff used to be available for sale, and it's not anymore. And I'm sad about that.

So just getting humanity back to its innate state of ruthlessly purchasing people and land. So I guess nostalgia comes in strange cycles and forms. Trump has threatened tariffs against, well, several of America's supposed trading and military partners if they don't bend over and let him do what he wants with Greenland. And what he wants has discussed last week is to steal Greenland, and it's a luring cocktail of geographic location, commercially advantageous mineral wealth, spare ice, and being something Donald Trump does not yet own

and has not yet personally violated, which is an increasingly small subset on the global Venn diagram. But it's put many countries and European allies and the European Union, Denmark, written in difficult positions, dealing with America, the world's most militarily and economically powerful failed state, under the rule of its current monarcho-despotanical chaos-mongering demander in chief.

That's one of the toughest challenges for leaders of the world's few remaining vaguely sane nations. So Kirstama this weekend said the use of tariffs against allies is completely wrong. And aside from the sole deep disappointment of living in a world where those words needed to be f***ed out loud, there is a cosmic futility in the use of the word wrong. because appealing to Trump's moral compass is as pointless as appealing to the geographical compass of a snowman at point north, Mr. Carrots now, it's not going to work.

Even if the snowman coincidentally happens to be pointing north, you know it's not going to last. But I mean, it's sort of the idea, it's sort of the idea of consequences is completely absent from his calculations. When, you know, he took Maduro, couldn't happen to an nicer guy, but sure, it was against international custom

and the norms that say we're not going to descend into tit for tat, mapping global leaders, less, you know, retaliation mean a drone swarm descend on Kirstama to hoik him off to France for a post-Brexit fishing rights fight to the death in a bare pit surrounded by Marine Le Pen and eight rabid poodles swinging sharpened baguettes. Like, I don't, the reason that the norms are there is so that if you do it, then anyone can do it. The EU is trying to stand up for itself. They're saying they are going to deploy countermeasures. But I mean, what are the countermeasures?

countermeasures to be. Here are my list of possible countermeasures to Trump tariffs. From most realistic to most likely in that order. Number one, they could call in the trillions of dollars of US debt to the EU by dumping US treasury bonds, thus bankrupting the US. That wouldn't work, of course. Trump would declare a cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency and blow up the mint declaring that he's always preferred other flavours of toothpaste. The US would go back to a mostly barter system and all the podcast Manusphere bros would revert to a state of nature and start trying to machine gun raccoons for dinner. The second most realistic, but slightly less likely, slightly more likely,

is we could say, as the EU could say, that Trump can have Greenland, but you gerrymander the borders of Greenland, so it's actually just a patch of ocean. He is not going to check. The EU could say he can have Greenland if Italy gets to take Florida. why not swapsies i think that could work or everyone just show up to the g8 with no trousers on he strikes me as the kind of guy who has a phobia of loose junk just flat dongles dingling and scooching i think would unsettle him um and if it didn't it would still be funny so you know i i'm always quite attracted to trump's lieutenants you know the the people that execute on his

behalf because every day they have to explain to the world press and justify a new kind of insanity. You know, it's not often that you get a president that kidnaps a person from his bed. And the next day you see, you know, all the spokespeople going out and saying, you know, not every world leader should have the benefit of sleeping in their own bed every night. It's quite likely that one of them could end up in Manhattan in a federal court. So I like the rationale that's provided for the insanity. That's kind of good. And also just for a second, just for clarity, I grew up thinking that the capital of Greenland was Godfab.

That's not the case. It's a place called Nook. And this has been bothering me for years. I just, this is nothing to work about that. I just wanted to get this off my chest. I'm no one to share this with because people would just say, you're dumb, it's Nook. but I just want to know how you guys feel about this capital name change. Well, I'm not.

I similarly remember that. And I get the feeling, Annavab, that you and I in very different parts of the world had similar childhoods, learning pointless trivia that would serve us, serve us through life. And, yeah, but I mean, these things change. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is,

I mean, the world is in constant flux as we learn. We learn every day. But no, I mean, the changing of capitals is, it's something that has confused me for the last, what, 30-odd years. It shouldn't change. I mean, the whole process is another classic trumpet cocktail of threats, bribes and ongoing tantrum. And most Americans, according to surveys, oppose the idea of taking control of Greenland, stroke, an act of war and perfority against an ally, stroke naked economic imperialism. They prefer their economic imperialism. least a jockstrap of demurement or their country defecating in the face of the concepts of

international law and cooperation. I'm not sure quite how they phrased the question which of those phrases they put for the people of America, but that's the implication, essentially, America is broadly against this. And however you view Trump on the spectrum from heroic bringer of freedom to the oppressed to cancerous polyp on the scrotum of Beelzebub, the questionability of this Greenland fetus is highlighted by the fact that even Republicans are against it. Not all of them, obviously. Many Trump fundamentalists still on side and would seemingly still back Trump even as he personally kicked them off a diving

board into a pool of sharks. But many Republicans are, and when Republicans are starting to query Trump's words and actions, maybe a line has been crossed. You would have been forgiven for having thought the Republican Party had forgotten its safe word at some point in the last decade, given what it's been prepared to submit to over the last 10 years, but maybe

act of war against NATO ally is making it wonder whether it really wants to stay in its political, imp outfit for the rest of time. One other quick bit of US political news. America is apparently considering granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK.

And can I just put on record, I sincerely hope this is not going to be compulsory. In other crime news, a woman from Prior Lake in Minnesota has been arrested with a bag of drugs, which she had labeled

definitely not a bag full of of drugs. Alice, as our bag labelling correspondent of many years, this is quite an impressive effort from this woman. An extraordinary effort. It's one of those stories where it just gets more intense the longer you read past the headline, which is why we should never read past the headline. In fact, why don't we just look to pass the news through a set of posts summarising the headlines so that we can be sure of building a comfortable buffer between us and any index of reality. But police arrested a 48-year-old woman in prime. Lake just before midnight on New Year's Eve, on suspicion of drunk and driving,

because she was veering around the road. This feels like a victory for feminism, Andy. 48 years old, it's nice to see an older woman being mental. They asked her if she'd been drinking. She replied a lot. She added that she'd had a Jaeger bomb just before she got in the car and that she'd been drinking Jamison and Red Bulls. They had a breathalyzer test.

It came back 0.1.19. which is more than twice the legal limit. It is so impressive that she is even alive. I assume she's going to blame this on perimenopause. She told them that they were going to find a bunch of shit in her car, quote a bunch of shit. And in this bag, labeled definitely not a bag of drugs, there was marijuana brownie,

14 individual psychedelic mushrooms, more marijuana, cocaine, three pills of modafinol, which is a neurotropic that keeps you awake and a pill of the antidepressant Nardil and a pill of oxycodone. I just, I think the thing that bothers me the most about this. And a nice green leaf. A nice green leaf.

And it feels like the modafinil there, just like just make sure that you can stay awake to experience all of this. Sometimes life just wants you to go to sleep, I just think. I mean, look, there's a, it's a, it's really nice of her that this lady's completely drunk carrying a bag of drugs, you know, because I think that, again, rules-based order, right? Driving sober, not carrying drugs.

That's been done, right? I think this is a new. I think there's lots of stuff middle-aged people can label in their fridge. They'll really help them. I've got stuff in my fridge right now that says not cake next to a thing that says not really tasty Biriani. So, you know, these are things that it's a good labeling system, I think, because when she's doing the drugs, she knows it's definitely not drugs. Also, I mean, you've got to remember this is in Minnesota where authority figures have recently shown a disturbing tendency to interpret

things as the opposite of what they are, such as peaceful protester, obviously no immediate threat and human being with a right to live. So you can see why there's an element of confusion in how you label things. I read today that a judge, passed an order on the Minnesota thing and one of the things in the order was that you cannot go around shooting people in the face and I just thought that that should be

that you wouldn't require a judge in 2026 to pass that as an order well yeah but the key words there Anuva in 2026 and all previous well you talk about the rules based order just rules in general have taken an Absolutely kicking in the last 10 years.

London crime news and, well, exciting news, unless you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes. London's murder rate has dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade. There's been a lot of argument over the state of London with the far right and those opposed to London's mayor, Sadie Khan, trying to paint a picture of a city that has become sort of lawless and terrifying and dangerous. The latest crime figures have shown that, as I said, the murder rate is lower than it has been for 10 years. Now, clearly, London has its problems.

This is something it has in common with every other city in the world, past, present and future. These problems include crime, poverty, inequality, a historical commitment to underinvesting in housing, infrastructure, education, and pretty much everything else, whilst the magically generated mega wealth of the city evaporates into the free marketer's ether. He struggled to deal with the riptides of global change, and most importantly of all, not having hosted any Olympics now for 13 and a half long, painful years. All problems facing London. But maybe there is some hope that we can still step outside our houses without being instantly slain. Both of you obviously spend a lot of time in London.

How terrifying do you find it as a city? No, I was just going to say I had my phone stolen, but I don't know if this has happened to any view. I think it's quite unique. The cyclist drove on for about a second, took a look at my phone. It's 15 years old, made a noise, and threw it back on the ground. So I don't really know what kind of crime you're talking about. And, you know, all of us gig all around the UK quite a lot over the years. and I'm sure London is dangerous

but it's nowhere close to some really, really dangerous places I've gigged in like Dorset. My God. You know, I had a tea there that was six pound 50 and that's just that's highway robbery there. Some terrifying places,

Tunbridge Wells, absolutely terrifying. Middle age people watching cricket. I can't think of anything scarier. I've been to a lot of dangerous places around the country. Hampshire, that was really, really scary. You know, there's, there were coffee shops. There was a court bresserie, a Starbucks, loads of ladies playing mahjong. You know, I mean, it's a dangerous country.

I sort of don't believe this, you know, the fact that murder rates have gone down. It can't be true. People have told me about a lot more murders in recent years than they did, for example, when I was a child. Also, there are more news outlets and sources. So I'm hearing often about the same murder multiple times, which I think makes it a double or triple murder. But the James Bond murders alone that I'm seeing have to be statistically meaningful.

What am I supposed to believe, Andy, facts told to me by the news, or facts told to me by the other news? This is the battle we all face. Crime rates dropping in London. What are things to wrap one's head about? What will all the Fagans do? How are you going to get a little people getting gang together? This is as much a betrayal of London's historical romantic past

as the black cab drivers no longer acquiring the knowledge because Google Maps exist. You guys can't just stop criming. What will Guy Richie make movies about? How will you colonise Australia's as an Australian, given that our culture is largely based on the work of murderers coming over here from the UK. It feels like our traditions are being spurned by our progenitors.

I, of course, of innocent immigrant blood on one side and the other side, horse thieves and forges. But they could have been murderers, too, just really good ones who didn't get caught until they tried to nick a horse and write a sick note about it. The point is you've got to murder up your murderous stats. Alice is absolutely right. You know, I mean, my favorite London is Victorian London, where there were at least five or six consulting detectives

working, you know, with Scotland Yard. And Sherlock Holmes himself, Andy, is, mentioned, said London is a cesspit of slovenly crime. But, you know, should everything be replaced by a Wagamamas and a Nandos? Is it a Wagamamas on murder? Is that the option? That's the choice. That is the choice that the free markets have presented us with. And to be fair, in mitigation, Sherlock Holmes was running for council for a far right party at the time. So we had to talk it up. But, I mean, we've got to remember.

that crime figures are statistics, and statistics, as any statistician will know, are like top quality actors. They need a bit of direction, but they can be made to say what you want them to say, and to say convincingly enough that people believe them and think what they're saying is relevant. So it's hard to know the exact truth of these things, you know, different people interpret them in different ways. And a recurring theme in the politics of the pseudo-patriotic right wing has been telling the people of a country that their country is dreadful and the only way to make it not dreadful

is via one or more of a time machine, a national festival of foreigner blaming, a reality obliterating serum smid directly into the brain and destroying the few remaining pillars left from the version of the country they pretend they want to try to reboot to. So it's always hard to interpret the real truth from statistics like this. All I will say is I've lived in London now for well, almost 30 years and I haven't been. murdered yet. So this is how we look at things in the modern news. It's all about personal lived experience and that's all I can add to this debate. Was it not Samuel Johnson who said he who is sick of London is sick of having his phone stolen while being stabbed by a criminal?

I believe it was. In other UK news, I don't know if this counts as a as crimes or not, but Reform UK Nigel Farage's party has been continuing to. to steal leading conservatives from the Conservative Party, albeit these Tories have been defenestrating themselves from the Tory window into the reform dung heap with extraordinary enthusiasm. We reported last week on the former Chancellor and being sacked for breaking ministerial code specialist

Nadine Zaharwee joining reform, or to give it its philosophically correct name, Nigel Farage. He's been followed this week by Andrew Rosendell yesterday as we record, MP for Romford, and until Sunday, Shadow Foreign Minister. And he followed Robert Jenrick, the former Remain-supporting mildly politics, non-descriptionist Tory, who has completed an interesting transformation to performative, whinge, addicted, resentment, spriking, mind-changer and opportunist. And he has joined reform.

He lost the Tory leadership election to Kemi Baderach after the 2024 general election thrashing. And he was sacked last week by Badernock after she was presented with, quote, futable evidence that Generic was plotting, not only to leave the party, but to do so in a characteristically wankerish manner, an attempt to damage his former colleagues. It wasn't initially clear where Generic was going to go, both Generic and Farage refuted suggestions that he could join reform, leading to wild speculation that the monster-raving Looney Party had pulled off their biggest ever recruitment coup, or that Generic was possibly joining the Sugar Babes, or going for the vacant Man United job. or maybe he just loved that snazzy new UKIP logo. The party that used to be the Nigel Farage party

and is now a small but horrendously unsightly tattoo removal scar on the Democratic Nation, launched a new logo that looked alarmingly like the Nazi Iron Cross. UKIP claimed it was not based on the Nazi Iron Cross. What I will say was that it did look like it had been designed by someone told to come up with something that looked like the Nazi Iron Cross but was just different enough not to fall foul. of copyright laws, a

plus a spear and a shield, because why not celebrate military technology that hasn't been effective for hundreds of years? Very on brand. Anyway, within hours. Maybe the Nazi Iron Cross is like crabs in that it can evolve from separate but a completely distinct

evolutionary pathway. Well, I guess it's possible. It's just, you know, I mean, in a vacuum, maybe. Within hours of Generic being sac resigned, he had been duly unveiled as the latest sea slug to jump from the

Conservative Titanic and join the bottom feeding throng of reform. But the question has arised as are all these defections good news for reform which built itself on its anti-establishmentism and is now becoming a hospice for the barely pulsing careers of failed Tories?

So it's in a strange time politically that reform are top in the polls but have sort of plateaued out recently around about sort of high 20s to 30 percent. All the other traditional parties have been really struggling around about 20 percent or below. But could all these defections actually undermine the undermined Farage's project?

His hoping. Well, reform needs to decide what it is. Is it, as it seems to believe, the party for people who feel abandoned by the traditional political frameworks of left and right, conservative and labor, a sort of a libertarian party of free speech and good faith, benevolent debate me bros who believe in rights in common sense, which is what it sort of keeps trying to say, or are they the place that people too frothingly authoritarian and bigoted for even the Conservative Party to stomach getting shuffled off the rightest wing of that party and splashing down into reform, which is what it seems to sort of

be ending up being. It is hard to be as sort of anti-immigration as the conservative. Party is already. Some of them don't even believe in marrying outside their own family, let alone letting foreigners into your fields to touch slash harvest your crops. Surely the serfs who are generationally bonded to your lands can do that between asking your permission to get married. That's a very good point, Alice. You know, just to build on that, I'm fascinated by the core DNA of the Reform Party, because it seems like, beyond the politics, they're in search for a certain kind of Englishness. They seem to think a certain kind of Englishness is lost.

And it reminds me of the sitcom to the manner born, where they have this line which goes, England for the English, as we used to say about India. The English identity has always been mixed because I often wonder, you know, I read a lot of English literature. I'm very influenced by English literature. And I often wonder, and I'm a foreigner. So I often wonder what reform will do with someone like me. you know, who's born in a foreign country,

but all their influences are shaped by early 20th century English writers. So I look like this, but I have all the reading habits of a Victorian racist. So, you know, I wonder what they do with someone like me, you know. Because I'm the sort of person that they would want, I would think. You know, but, you know, physically I don't qualify. Mentally, I'm exactly the sort of person they should want. that's one of my favorite phrases

ever said on the bugle one of the difficulties for Jenric and Zahawi and Farage is by coming together just Victorian races what are the difficulties

for Raj and his new recruits is that once they've come together, people have started looking at what they've said about each other in the past, which has not been entirely complimentary. Nigel Farage previously said about Robert Generic. Genric is a fraud. I've always thought so. I guess looking at reform, you might think that is a come home to mum a plea.

And they're all basically having to pretend that they haven't said these terrible things about each other in the past. And Generic was asked about this and he said, well, people say a lot of things. which is I mean, true, but also is basically saying never trust anything that comes out of my mouth, which I guess is at least honest.

I have a question for you guys. I've been watching a lot of Robert Jenric videos about these sort of some people call them pranks, but they're sort of these little exposés he does where he goes into very, very diverse parts of Britain and asks the average person on the street, you know, how English are you? Are you English?

Etc. Do you think this is the thing you could do in all countries? Do you think you could do it in Australia and India? I could just walk around asking people, how Indian are you? And then just be raped. How English are you, wherever you are? We will have full updates on the continuing decline of British democracy between now and the end of time. Shipping and other stuff in the sea news now.

And, well, some interesting manoeuvres have been going on. in the sea. This was after it was revealed that over a thousand Chinese fishing boats had formed into what appeared to be a vast barrier stretching 200

miles in length. That's one ship every 220 odd yards or 10 cricket pitches. But this could be a rehearsal for China deploying several times that amount of shipping vessels, ten times even, which would be a ship every 22

yards, which would make playing cricket on the surface of the ocean, even more hazardous than normal. So understandably, people are very worried about this. It was quite a strange and interesting story, this reported in the New York Times. What do you guys make of it? And, Andy, this is so sus. Like, of course, somebody rehearsing all of the, like, elaborate boat dance moves that would be involved in thwarting, for example.

an armada of ships from moving from one place to another. Of course, that could just be for fun. They could be doing Rock Estedford. They could be innocently forming a long line in order to meet a Guinness World Record. But it does feel like maybe like your partner has bought a burner phone and hired a hotel room. And you ask them why they've done that. And they say, I'm not cheating on you. I'm just practicing for maybe one day when I caught. For the second time it's happened, they did a similar maneuver on Christmas Day. What a way to ruin Christmas.

I don't know if I'd managed to swing that past the family. Sorry, everyone. I know I'd promised a nice late breakfast, presents by the fire. A walk in the park, a lovely family dinner in the annual family cricket stats quiz. Instead, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take part in a mega-scale cosplay Dunkirk in preparation for a Third World War. I mean, it's a tough sell on Christmas Day. But I guess it's like those athletes, you're about those athletes saying, oh, I train on Christmas Day because I know my rivals aren't going to be doing it.

Maybe this is a power move by China because, you know, it's Western rivals. We're all sitting around eating turkeys. I mean, maybe they were just trying to catch Santa. That's possible. On the plus side, it's probably good news for the fish. It's probably easier to escape being caught if all the fishing boats are lined up in a, in a 200 mile long line you've got options the reasons for this and explanations for this

this exercise people have suggested it was to practice disrupting shipping lanes or both commercial and military to monitor other countries ships to assert territorial claims or that it was simply a slow motion ship dance because when you look at the satellite tracking animation of the ship's locations they just moved back and forth in fairly small distances and if you speed that up and set it to the chicken dance music. It's actually quite cute, rather than being an ominous look into the organizational mind of control of Chinese state power.

So let's cling to that. It does show, I think, the difference between China and America, these boats stayed in place for 30 hours. And I just don't think the American government would have the patience to stick with a policy for 30 hours without getting distracted and doing something else. In other ship news, Anuvab, I mean, again, this is a story that maybe shows the difference

between China and India as the two superpowers of Asia. The Indian Navy has built and sailed a hand-stitched wooden boat from Pourbanda in Gujarat

to Muscat in Oman. It took 17 days and this boat was based on it was built with traditional methods no nails, no metal fastenings using a picture from a picture from a fifth century painting in a cave.

So I guess that's a slight different approach, different than approach with China. China organizes thousands of civilian fishing vessels into a formidable military unit. And the Indian Navy soes a non-combat boat using a design from a painting from a thousand and a half years ago. I mean, what does that tell you about the state of the world? There's a thing going on in India right now

where people are visiting, going back to a pre-Mughal period of Indian history. So the current government are big on celebrating India before the invasion of the Mughal Empire. So they were essentially, you know, the Mughals were Persians, Uzbeks. So for 7 or 800 years, India was ruled by them. But the government's saying, no, let's go back even before that

when we had proper cool stuff. So what were the cool stuff? So they're obviously looking. So they found this fifth century AD Buddhist painting where they discovered there was trade between India and Oman. So they said, let's build a ship from fifth century AD, hand stitch sails, and they sailed it to Oman. Now, when the caliphate of Oman saw the ship,

they had one question, why? To which we responded, why not? I mean, this is the thing. India's trying to figure out, what was its golden age, you know, and it's very difficult to find the golden age without foreigners, which is probably true for any country in the world. You know, I think reform is struggling with the same thing. You know, it's, you know, the Taj Mahal built by Emperor Shah Jahan technically has a significant foreign blood, right, because he's Persian and he's from Samarkand

and those areas. So you have to go even further back. So you go all the way back to 5th century AD and then you start doing stuff like that. In fact, I'm really looking forward to some of the skyscrapers being removed and some mud huts being brought in. And if they get rid of penicillin as well,

then we can properly go back to 5th century AD and start celebrating the golden age of India. Paul Bandar, the place it sailed from, has a special place in Indian cricket history. the first Indian team to play a test match in India, their touring party was captained in 1932 on their tour of England by the Maharaja of Paul Bandar, who did not qualify entirely on grounds of cricketing skill,

but according to Krikinfa, who quotes, it was considered necessary for a prince to lead the side. And when the Maharaja of Pateala had to withdraw through illness, the Maharaja of Paul Bandar was appointed. and said, so he wasn't even the first choice Maharaja to captain the cricket side. His Crick Info profile says

a keen cricketer, he was handicapped by being almost useless. I feel your brother. He played in only four of the 26 first-class matches. So the top level games plus three of the 11 minor matches.

Didn't play in any of the three tests, didn't play the test match against England. He batted six times in total, scoring nought to naught, nought, two, and two, didn't bowl and barely played again. And that is when cricket was a proper sport. Another poor bandar fun fact, and he won Mahatma Gandhi was from there. He hated his time so much that he decided to become a lawyer in South Africa, which he hated so much that he decided to start the Indian freedom struggle. So without poor bandar, a lot of things wouldn't have happened. So basically you're saying

you can understand why someone would hand stitch a boat to escape there. Is that what you're saying? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's this week's bugle. Thank you very much for listening. As always, as I mentioned, I'm back on tour.

Shortly details at andesaltzman.com. uk. The news quiz is back on Radio 4 as well. You can get that via BBC sounds and other internet locations. Alice, anything to plug? Yes, I'm running my writer's retreats. in October in Switzerland, head over to patreon.com slash alice Fraser to sign up if you want to spend five days writing in Switzerland with me. I will also be taking my new show to Adelaide,

Melbourne and Edinburgh, eventually. So keep an eye out. Over at the Patreon, that's where I tend to put things now because we can't trust the algorithms anymore. I've thrown my hat in, in that particular platform. And so patreon.com slash Alice Fraser, all of my dates are coming up there as they come up. Annavab? Yeah, I'm back in London on the 31st of January and doing a big charity show for Medicines on Frontier. They're helping out a lot in the Middle East and in Iran. And I'll be doing a line-up show with lots of other people.

And it's at the new Soho Theater in Walthamstow, which I have never played, but I hear is very large and very far away. And I'm doing a tour show there as well. so do buy as many tickets as possible to that because that is considerably larger than my standard venue. See you all at all of those shows.

We will be back next week with another bugle covering whatever madnesses have unfolded over the next seven days. Goodbye.