The Bugle - (Strong)men Making Friends

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

This week, Andy Zaltzman is joined by Alice Fraser and Nato Green for a world tour through... 🇨🇳 In China, the latest “conference” brings together a rogues’ gallery of global strongmen. At least it’s nice to see Men Having Friends—even if those friends are terrifying.🇺🇸 In the US, the rebranded Department of War makes a bold statement, and bad rhymes.🇬🇧 Meanwhile in the UK, the government is serving up yet another omnishambles⚽ And in sport: once again, Trump nearly ruined it. Because of course he did.Plus we announce major guests for our live show...exciting! #JohnnyShowbiz🎧 Support The Bugle! Get bonus episodes, exclusive videos, and that smug Team Bugle glow: thebuglepodcast.com📺 Watch Realms Unknown on YouTube, and pick up A Passion for Passion here: Bookshop.orgProduced by Chris Skinner and Laura Turner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bugle, Audio Newspaper for a visual world. Hello, buglers, and welcome to issue 4,351 of the bugle. I'm Andy Zaltzman, live from the shed of phenomenal factivitiveness here in South London. We have hiatus the crap out of the last few weeks, but we're, back and better than ever, or better than we've been over the last few weeks when we've not been recording, I hope, at least. And we are here to hold September to account on behalf of all humanity. Summer is over. Autumn is shuffling into place here in London and winter isn't that far off. Spring is doing some early preliminary training and next summer is already starting

to put some plans in place. So we do need to get going and to help me catch up on what is happening on this once happy planet of ours. I mean, admittedly that is going back quite a while. I think to just before the first single-celled organism thought I won out, I'm going to divorce myself and everything started going south. Anyway, I'm joined by, from Switzerland, bringing unquenchable neutrality in the sound of mountain goats, frolicking on ski lifts.

It's Alice Fraser. Hello, Alice. Hello, Andy, hello, buglers. Definitely have been on hiatus, putting the ha-ya into hiatus. I'm here in the fine Alps of Switzerland, and I'm running a righteous retreat, which is, we're basically hide and seek with a bunch of writers. I approach, they retreat.

They're a shy creature. I just want to help you with your structure. No, it's been genuinely, it's genuinely been very lovely, and I feel quite relaxed, as relaxed as you can while juggling 12 writers and two babies. That's a dangerous, I mean, I don't know, is that the right balance of writers to babies in terms of... It's always harder.

juggling mixed-sized things. You want the same volume of chainsaw, I think. Okay. So maybe next year you could do six writers and six babies. Or just get the babies to write and the writers to lie around screaming. How was the Edinburgh Festival for you, Alice? It was so much fun. I did my show, A Passion for Passion, which is about my book,

A Passion for Passion. But we're going to do a tell-all all about that on Realms Unknown, the sister podcast to this podcast, all about the shenanogonyry that took place there. But the show was heaps of fun, and I love Edinburgh. I know it's all expensive and stuff, but I still love a place that just turns into art for a month. Well, joining us from neither Switzerland nor Edinburgh,

but from San Francisco, it's NATO Green. Hello, NATO. Hello, Andy. Hello, Alice. Hello, buglers. Good to see you all. Welcome back from hiatus. Also, a special shout-out. I was, uh, I have been on a bit of a tour and I was in Fort Collins, Colorado at the Comedy Fort, which is an excellent club there. And in the middle of my show, someone shouted, you, Chris. Um, so, uh, which, uh, I really enjoyed. And someone. of the other members the audience found completely perplexing. Well, f*** him and fucking Colorado. Well, I mean, Chris, it's, well, just over 16 years since we first worked together on a BBC cricket show.

And, you know, did you think at that point that, you know, just over a decade and a half later, someone would be saying you to you in a comedy game? club in Colorado whilst you were thousands of miles away? My career has gone so much better than I ever hoped it could have done. And if only my parents fully understood that I was being serious when I say that. I mean, I must say that the bugle audience, as an audience, the buglers who come and see shows, are a delightful creature on the whole. There was a part of my show this year in which I said, is anyone here listen to the bugle?

And then I would pick a sort of a middle-aged man who had put his hand up and I would refer back to him in a number of points in the show. And they were all very good-natured, and only one of them tried to be funny. So I feel like that is a real mark of quality, perhaps in something, perhaps I'm instilling something beautiful in the middle-aged man of the species, which is a lack of confidence in his own funniness. And if that's my legacy, I am okay with it. Yeah. Yeah. Also, there was another bugler who came to the show in Colorado, who came up afterwards and said that he had brought his entire union of National Park Service employees. And he said, we want to let you know that we work for the, we're federal employees, we work for

the National Park Service on climate change. And thanks to our dear leader, we have just lost all of our union rights and they're trying to scrub all of the references to climate change from our work, which is all of our work. and so things have been horrible and were miserable and this bit of comedy was some of the catharsis that we needed together as a team so sometimes it feels indulgent to be writing dick jokes under fascism but apparently social movements have an ecosystem that do require the occasional dick joke well there will be definitely definitely some dick jokes in this show.

I know because I've seen the things that I've written myself. If you put a sufficiently excited dick joke in the right place, you can lift the world. I think it was Margaret Mead who said, never doubt that a well-crafted dick joke can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Well, I mean, we are recording, as I said, on the 8th of September 2025. On this day in 1504, Michelangelo's David was unveiled in Florence

in many ways. The world's greatest dick joke, the most beautifully sculpted dick joke, certainly Michelangelo's smash hit sculpture of the famous giant slayer, Sling fan, an Old Testament star, who was known to enjoy going commando, David, of course, even in battle,

and once confided to the media that he thought, quote, dangling pair of nagers can be a great distraction in close combat. And if that gives me advantage against the likes of Goliath, then I'm happy to junk out for the team. Obviously, there's different ways of translating the original press conference footage. But the thrust is clear, which is also the move that he pulled to distract the big phyllis before knocking out the big lad with a surprise slingshot to the noggin,

then knocking off his head before the video rest could even begin to checking if there were any technical infringements before or during the delivery of the slingshot. Another less well-known angle to the story is that. David refused to wear sponsored kit during the contest. A local funeral director had offered to provide a sponsored kit,

expecting the plucky youngster to lose to the experienced 9-inch megastar Goliath. And he tried to get David to wear an armored breastplate with his funeral director's logo on, but the former shepherd and professional harpist was holding out for an online casino

and a bit more money. Anyway, Goliath had reportedly wanted to postpone the contest after suffering a hamstring tweak and intercostal muscle twinge, practicing his trademark helmet crusher, reverse swivel, head slammer move in training and being kept up the previous night by Israelite fans chanting outside his hotel room

and setting off fire alarms to try to ensure that the Philistine number one was not at his best the next day. But the contest went ahead as scheduled to keep the broadcasters happy and the rest is sort of basically made up history. Anyway, just two and a half short millennia later, Michael Angelo Buenarotti, Mickey Chisels, as he was

known at the time of course, was commissioned to create a David-themed trophy for the attack Italian stone-slinging championships, but an inverted spinal tap-style misprint on the order slip resulted in the celebrity artist making a sculpture 17 feet high rather than 17 inches high. Michelangelo, who also dabbled in interior decoration

as long-term bugle listeners. It's the same joke as the tiny pianist joke, Andy. Clinton clunked away at a slab of marble until he'd turned it into the sculpture. Do we know today as the hunk with the junk from the chunk? David won multiple golden chisel awards in 1505, including best six-back, cutest butt and shapely as Willie and Balls combination. And Michelangelo was soon in hot demand among celebs of the day

to sculpt their genitals and arces too. And that happened on this day in 1504. Andy, you can tell it's going to be a rough news week because you've written so much nonsense up top, just as like a buffer for your soul. Basically, that is what the bugle is, a buffer for my soul. It really drives home the point that the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu represents the decline of the Jewish people from our peak with David versus Goliath. I think the Israeli occupation of Gaza would be more bearable if the IDF were fully naked.

I mean, that's, I think, in terms of the negotiations that have gone on, such as they are, I don't think that has been, that has been suggested. Maybe that could be the breakthrough that the world needs. As always, a section of the bugle is going straight in the bin. This week, an advert for the Bugle's 18th birthday live stream show is going in the bin. We are counting down the days until this podcast turns 18 and can legally marry, former religion by Nuclear Warhead, drive an amphibious Horton cart across the Atlantic and do karaoke unattended without having to bleep out swear words.

And to celebrate 18 years of the bugle, we are doing a show on Sunday, the 26th of October, live from the Leicester Square Theatre. That will be live streamed across the entire universe. I will be joined in London on stage, not only by Chris, but also by Nish Kumar in 3D, reduced to 2D for the ease of broadcast. Alice will join us from Australia, provided that the world has not sheared in half along the equator by then.

And we can exclusively reveal to you now, buglers. We will also be joined live at a live-bugel live, live stream show for the first time from New York City by the ultimate blast from the bugle past himself, still second behind runaway leader Andy Zaltzman and most issues of the bugle co-hosted. John Oliver will be linking up with us

live for this unique event in showbiz history. I mean, admittedly all events are unique in their own way. but this is slightly more unique than most unique events. Tickets to the live stream are available via the buglepodcast.com. Do join us. We hope to set an all-time record for most people live streaming a show involving me, John, Nish and Alice. Caution there will be puns.

Chris, what's the price point for tickets? Ten pounds. Ten UK pounds, which... It's still, I think, a legally accepted currency in the world. So do join us. Tickets at the buglepodcast.com. That section's in the bin, so you can ignore that. I also couldn't stop thinking I'm actually by a live mountain stream.

So am I live streaming? Oh, there you go. Not by any commonly understood definition. Top Story this week. Oh, God. The world is still... Look, there's been an interesting conference last week in China. Now, the bugle...

I'm sorry, Andy, for the listening audience who can't see you, Andy is announcing Top Story while clutching his head. Yeah, I mean, there's quite a lot of weeks where that seems to be the best. way to do it. The bugle has proudly proclaimed its World War III will almost certainly not be a good thing credentials. It's down with despots

schick and its military grandstanding is for losers thrust on life. We've been doing that since 2007 on and off at least. So last week's Congress of the Crackpots, the meeting of the Megalomaniacs, the symposium of the self-proclaimed strongman was not our personal

kettle of sardines. It did provoke some frankly, hilarious responses from America's so-called president. What did you guys make? We had Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un. It's kind of bro-bonding in the way that despots do. Well, it's just nice to see men having friends, actually, Andy. You know, we are having a crisis of mass.

Skillity and part of us that the men don't form these strong social groups with people of over common interests. On the other hand, it does show some of the flaws in the way that we model heterosexual male friendships. Like, why does it always have to be events-based? Can't you just catch up for a chat? Why does it need to be a massive military parade or a football game or paintball or nuclear war? It just, it feels like this is, it was a bit much for inviting your friends around for tea. It showed maybe some insecurity. on the part of G. The parade began with an 80 gun artillery salute, which marked 80 years since the end of the war, because nothing says peacetime like firing guns at the roof

of the world. And then G. said the world must choose between peace and war, thereby proving that despite his friendly approach to Russia, he hasn't bothered to read Tolstoy. It's war and peace, but I mean, with that choice, it's such an odd choice to be presented with. If the world is choosing between peace and war. You're like, obviously, I'm going to go for the peace. But it feels like a classic iTunes terms and conditions situation. What are the sub clauses that we're agreeing to when we click peace? There was helicopters, fighter jets in formation. There was the release of 80,000 peace doves and 80,000 colorful balloons.

Imagine the insane cost in doves. Doves dodging balloons. Doves fighting balloons. Doves mating with doves. Balloons mating with doves. The balloon dove babies coming down the pipeline, nine dove months from now. It's chaos, Andy. I mean, 80,000 peace doves.

Is that enough, really? Is that enough to balance out the weaponry on show? I'm not sure it is. It depends how many doves get caught in the mechanisms, Sandy. Well, I mean, we've probably talked about this on the bugle before. I think that 1988 Olympic opening ceremony they released some symbolic doves as part of the opening ceremony

and something that they flew off and some of them found a nice perch on this ledge within the stadium. What the doves hadn't realised was that ledge was where the Olympic torch was going to be lit by a flaming arrow. So what was supposed to be a moment of expressing how sport can bring the world together

in harmony and peace became an imprompt. to barbecue of doves. So that's, I guess, always a risk when you involve doves in something like this. NATO, I know you're a huge fan of massive military parades and have conducted many yourself in your life in San Francisco. What did you make of this one? I mean, I certainly agree with Alice that for the three of them, you know, the whatever was, thousand guns salute is a interesting way for men to say they need a hug.

I wonder why was North Korea there? Like, you know, North Korea, Russia, China, one of these things is not like the other. China, emergent superpower, had an empire. Russia, former superpower, had an empire. North Korea, not only not an empire, not even all the Korea. The top export of North Korea is fake hair. You want to know what the top import of North Korea is? Processed hair. I looked it up on the OEC website. And according to the OEC, North Korea is number 208 out of 209 in lowest per capita export.

Now, I'm no economist, but maybe that has to do with the weird hair thing. I wouldn't buy from a man with that hairstyle. So it's sort of like, like, I wonder what, what Kim was doing. You're like, hey, guys, I was just thinking we should build nuclear catapults. And they were like, okay, good boy. Now, go outside and play. The grown-ups are talking. of of relations between china and russia putin said and i quote we were always together then and we

remained together now um now one of the maxims of contract interpretation is to give meaning to all words in the text we were always together then and we remained we were together and on the other hand we are also still together only more so um they described their relationship as a friendship with no limits, clearly a reference to no limit records, the 1990s, New Orleans-based hip-hop label, because Putin and G make him say, uh, nah, nah, nah. The only Western leaders that attended the summit were the presidents of Slovakia and Serbia, clearly trying to get the Cold War band back together. You've heard of Czechoslovakia, but are you ready for Korea, Slovakia?

There was a military parade with 50,000 people watching in the unveiling of a nuclear arsenal. It was a response to Trump's pitiful military parade that he had for his birthday that no one came to. It was the Kendrick versus Drake disc track of public spectacle in which Trump is clearly Drake, except not the Jewish part, or the ability to rap badly. And because we are all very serious adults, the world has entered the era of parade-based forces. in policy. And I think unavoidably we have to accept that if parades rule

the world, this may have the unintended consequence that gays become the superpower. Really, you have a lot of tanks, but do you have dykes on bikes? You know what I mean? Zee said the world must never return to the law of the jungle. Sorry. I'd say we would all sign up for that world, I think. I would highly sign up for that world. Same, same.

Zee said the world must never return to the law of the jungle where the strong prey on the weak which he said while standing in front of his own nuclear arsenal There were some extraordinary thing I mean obviously this took place in the context of America having effectively divorced itself from the rest of humanity resigned as de facto country in charge of the Western world and formerly constitutionally banned basic common sense human dignity

in the concept of cooperation. So a new world order is emerging into this void in which China's ruling so-called Communist Party, not always a leading contender for most jovial political organisation and not quite as susceptible to the temptations of human rights as might be ideal. It brings together the likes of your Vladimir Putin's of this world, you're Kim Jong-un's, or is it Kim's-Jong's?

Do you have to pluralise all three names of North Greenlee? I forget, anyway. But it's Kim Jong-dose. Oh, sorry. Sorry, my mistake. I'm behind normal languages. For those hoping that Putin might experience a kind of miraculous conversion and become a hardcore fundamentalist peace and harmony fan,

there was the disappointing sight of him, you know, cuddling up to Xi Jinping as they happily watched a massive parade of Kaboom-Bambastic military hardware in Beijing. And just picking up on what you said, Alice, about Xi saying, today mankind is faced with a choice of peace or war. He carried on. So he said mankind is faced with a choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum, at which point Putin leapt out of his chair shouting, I'll have B, B and B, please. And he also talked about standing, quotes, firmly on the right side of history,

to which Putin responded, good plan, I'll stand on the left side of history, you trip it up, I'll put a bag on its head, and then we can wrap history in a carpet, wear it down with bricks, and dump it in a canal. So at least we all know where we stand, you know. And Xi said, we must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics and practice true multilateralism. And he did that without winking at pooting

and having a quiet giggle, which was superhuman restraint. Andy, I have a song about all of the new weapons that were unveiled by Xi Jinping's massive military parade. It goes like this. Hypersonic missiles. to kill ships at sea, lasers for troop ships and aircraft make three liquid fuel ballistic nuclear might, space defence systems to shoot satellites when the war starts, when the trade

flags, when a guest overstayed, this is a dictator's favourite thing, a heavily armed parade. I go on, sea drones and air drones and ground drones and meat drones, wet drones and dry drones and cold seek or heat drones, nuclear missiles intercontinental. These are the things that are driving me mental also they have fucking robot wolves Andy they have a robot yes wolves do you know what this means this means we are six months max from a cheap kindle romantic see book about a retired school teacher falling in love with a robot wolf mark my words it's coming and when it comes it's not going to be the only one coming if you know what I mean I'm talking about orgasms Andy also robot wolves they're the same thing as the robot dogs they had before but they got rebranded to sound less

cute after they listen to about 80,000 hours of Alpha Bro podcasts, and now they're bigger, deadlier, and keep hitting on women. Yes. And these robot wolves, apparently, much improved on regular wolves. They will be able to blow down houses, even made of brick, which is going to make them militarily indispensable over the next. Hang on. I got to call bullshit on robot wolves.

Okay. Because I read about the robot wolves, and I was like, oh, shit, robot wolves. And I saw a picture of the robot wolves, and it was just an end table with legs. Like an end table that has legs already. Yeah, right. It's with legs that have joints and some sort of locomotion and an antenna. And so it's like you could use the robot wolves to attack your enemies on the field of battle or at a cocktail party to bring deviled eggs to your guests, either one.

Imagine a Victorian gentleman seeing that end tables with legs marching down the street, willing to destroy the world. He would have immediately felt obliged to put little skirts around the legs of the end table unless someone be scandalised by a sight of robot wolf ankle. I know. I mean, the concern is that these new generation of robot wolves can eat one grandmother every 15 seconds and chew them properly. They can't eat.

They can't be respectively uneaten. for those you missed the military parade in case you didn't see it and I want to picture it it was like a cross between the Rio Carnival Mardi Gras in New Orleans and a cake stall at a village fate in Britain but different from those things in every possible way so I hope that paints a picture of what you missed Andy the press coverage of the summit was weird how the press tried to sort of rationalize in both sides of it watching the spectacle of the Chinese military

there was all this like military analysis of that and the vibe was like well it looks very impressive that China has this massive military with high tech weaponry and it seems terrifying but can they execute of China hasn't

had to use its own military in decades they don't have operational control blah blah blah they're too top down the military is too top down is what they're complaining about in contrast with the American military which is, let's remember, currently led by Pete sexting war crimes to the group chat, Peg Seth, while boozy unboxed wine and drawing Nazi crosses on his notebook.

I feel like the Western analysts just want to act not impressed. Like, let China be impressive. You don't need to neg it. You know what I mean? Like, you feels like, yes, the Urukai are relentless savage orc warriors, but will they be able to sustain operational discipline when they learn that, in fact, human meat is on the menu? The BBC also said

Some say Beijing is just trying to give a veneer of respectability for authoritarianism. Good. Finally, someone's doing it. It would be an improvement. As an American, if I have to have authoritarian, which apparently I do, at least give them any amount of respectability. Also, I guess we should just be impressed. that in this entire parade of military strength and China and not a single thing made of terracotta

which shows that people can learn from their mistakes. Amongst Donald Trump's responses to this, and I don't know if this was directly provoked or maybe it's always been on the cards, is basically trying to improve the economic fortunes of ordinary working Americans and enlighten the load of this difficult time on people's wallets

to put food on their table and to provide food and children for their clothing. Food and children, food and clothing for their children. And to do that by renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War, which is what working Americans have been

thirsting for. That's why they voted for Trump in is to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War. The idea apparently is to, quote, project strength and resolve and also presumably to project the sense that America is being run by a bunch of escaped teenage wargames fans who live on a

dot of absinth and sheep's testicles. It's going to cost a billion dollars to do this. You had me in absent, Andy, and lost me at sheep's testicles. It's my favorite, Amyneuxon. You had me at teenagers, Andy, and you lost me at diet. A billion dollars.

And I. We're fickle wenches. It's going to cost just a billion dollars, this three brand, which some people are saying could have been better off spent on something more useful to America, such as rebounding the Department of Health as the Department of Playing Russian Rulet with Viruses, because why would you trust a motherload of qualified scientists, or remodeling the Statue of Liberty to show a kicking an immigrant out into the Atlantic, or developing a robot King Kong to clamber up and down the Empire State Building every hour

to remind people of when America was great. But NATO, look, I know you've been very worried about how calling, you know, calling at the Department of Defense sends out a very negative, defensive, strategic mindset to the world. And, you know, the Department of Offense, it could have gone with picking up on, you know, the sort of sporting terminal. They've gone with the Department of War. I mean, you must be very excited by this. Oh, it's very exciting. And the new, the secretary of war, newly retitled Pete Hegseth, said that what he wants is, quote, maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. And, you know, when I think back on the torture photos from Abu Ghraib, I think politically correctness has gone too far.

clearly those were some very politically correct torturers because those the people were covered yeah in in robes um i mean the um it wasn't known as the department of war until after the second world war when the uh the popularity of sending hundreds and some of you again it was known as the department of war until after the second world war um when the popularity of sending thousands and thousands of young people to their deaths had started to wane for for for whatever reason. But Trump has banged on intermittently about the idea of this rebrand or de-brand saying that the US has had an unbelievable history of victory in both world wars when it was known as the Department of War. And it's disappointing on reflection that if only America

hadn't succumbed to the woke mind virus in the immediate post-war era. It would have conquered Vietnam in about a fortnight. It would have beaten Iraq ten times over by now. And Afghanistan, on as we speak would basically be Las Vegas too. But it's all about that, just that simple brand brand name of Department of Defence that has undermined America for 80 years.

Just jumping on the back of what NATO was saying about Pete Hegsef, there's something deeply dystopian about someone using like a cheeky rhyme to justify increased violence. Listen to My cool rap, as I deconstruct your kneecaps.

You're like, oh, I'm charmed, but also my kneecaps. Ow. In terms of why it's been rebranded at the Department of War, Trump, I just saw this just before we started recording, another one of his retweeting of images of him and basically the burning city of Chicago with the words chipocalypse now. and took a screenshot from ex formerly Twitter and said, I love the smell of deportations in the morning.

Chicago about to find out why it's called the Department of War. So it does suggest that this Department of War may be harking back to the last time America had a really good win in a war without just coming off the subs bench towards the end of the second half, which was essentially the American Civil War in the 1860s. The last time it had a proper victory, starts a finish. that that like bit of AI slop made the rounds as it should have and aside from the alarming aspect of the president of a country declaring war on one of his own major cities

which raises some concerns the thing that I found most distressing is well first of all that he was invoking an anti-war film. But also that he called it Chipocalypse Now, but it read Chipocalypse. That's so delicious. That's what I always put there at the end of a meal. I say, Chipocalypse now. And then I eat little chips.

I can't do that anymore. If it was in England, you would call it Crispopocalypse now. No, hot Chipocalypse. and then when you're later groaning in regret, you say, oh, the humanity. Away from threatening to bring war to Chicago, Donald Trump has also backed Robert F. Kennedy, his health secretary,

and who's continued to court controversy since becoming health secretary. largely because he seems to view his job as doing everything possible to spread easily preventable illnesses. And your view of RFK may well come down to your view of whether or not children do or don't deserve to die of easily preventable illnesses. And I know America-NATO remains deeply split on that issue. And some are pro-children surviving easily preventable illnesses and others aren't. Where do you stand on this? you know Andy I'm mostly anti-death is my that's my controversial stance RFK Jr has been carrying out his agenda of cutting vaccine programs and scientists in general and the Reuters news reported quote if an outbreak of an infectious disease occurs after vaccination rates go down Trump could

be blamed, which, you know, the, what's really important about a infectious disease outbreak that kills a lot of people is the political impacts. And the, and if an outbreak of infectious disease occurs because Trump knowingly appointed a head of health and human services with insane ideas, Trump should be blamed. Like, he could be blamed. He could not be blamed. He could not be blamed. I mean, this is how the American press sort of has been handling Trump is like, well, he did something knowingly that would have scientifically predictable consequences that would lead to unspeakable harm and suffering. But on the other hand, some people say that vaccines are for queers. Let's do a 30-part series investigating both sides of the argument.

One of my, one of my sort of principles of like media literacy is the thing, that are in the news story that are not said as a quote that are sort of said in the anodyne voice of the of the of the press as though it doesn't need any further any further exploration. For example, this Reuters piece says Trump's willingness to take a proverbial sledgehammer to the U.S. healthcare system just as he has to academia, the law, the media and other institutions throughout society. That's a heavy cluster of words to just toss offhandedly into some report. Yeah.

Proverbial sledgehammer, you say. Here we are sledgehammering ourselves into the Middle Ages to stop woke. They're ending the West as an abstraction to own the libs. They want to see they're turning back, like it's, they're turning back all scientific progress of the last 200 years. They want to see glossy magazine articles like six hacks to get your feudal baron to let you keep some of your mutton for your own 11 malnourish children. I think the attack on vaccine science is a ploy to make the Epstein

issue go away. Look, are they still technically underage girls if life expectancy drops to age 40? Trump said, if you look at what's going on in the world with health and look at this country also with regard to health, I like the fact that he's different. That's the bar. A lot of things could be different, but different doesn't mean better. And all I want from the press is a follow-up question ever. Like when Trump says, if you look at what's going on in the world with health, for someone to say, what the fuck are you talking about? And then he said, The polio vaccine, I happen to think, is amazing. And this is a bad use of the phrase, I happen to think.

Whether a vaccine that has been demonstrated as effective over decades of scientific evidence to stop a crippling disease is good, actually, is not a happen to think. Happened to think is for, I happen to think, autumnal colors complement my eyes. UK news now and total chaos in the government after Deputy Prime Minister has to resign over a tax glitch. Angela Rainer, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Labour Government and Housing Secretary, has had to resign after the underpaying tax on a flat that she bought around about £40,000 of tax she underpaid

when she became aware of this. She referred herself to the... parliamentary ethics advisor. Now generally, of course, in politics, the basic ethics advice is don't bother with it. It makes things so much more complicated. But there's times when apparently you do have to refer yourself to the ethics advisor. As a result of which, she ended up resigning and she resigned on Friday. It did highlight also once again how on the things to ask your tax advisor if you're a frontline politician list, the question, are you absolutely 100% sure about that? Should be pretty high up. And I think that was

seemed to be the biggest mistake that Rayan made. And she placed herself thus in our proud national tradition of people following questionable financial and investment advice, which dates back really to King Harold in 1066. Falling for the advice from his advisor, I wouldn't bother wasting a budget on

arrowproof goggles, Harold, spent on chain mail speedos. And since then, we've always made mistakes like this. I do feel sorry for her, Andy, because she saw two tax, she saw two advice. She saw two advisors about it. She asked two people and they said, oh, you should probably seek further tax specialist tax advice. If you see three specialist tax people in a row, it forms a tax triangle,

and then many ships are lost at sea as a result. Can I ask a question about your system government, Andy? Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, so I've been trying to follow along, and one of the things that I gleaned is that as a result of Rainer's resignation, there's a reshuffling of other cabinet posts. And so, for instance, Yvette Cooper is going from being home secretary to foreign secretary. And Liz Kendall is going for being work and pension secretary to Department of Science, Innovation Technology, secretary. and I wonder if maybe things in your country would go better if people had a job that they were qualified to do. Oh.

Like, it seems like going from work in pensions to science, innovation, like, how are you good at both? You know what I mean? Like, it seems like you would know what, maybe if you're lucky, you're good at one of those things. I mean, look, that's a very old-fashioned way of looking at things to expect expertise in government ministries. Look, some people have claimed that, for example, having, I can't remember what the count was on education secretaries in the last, what, seven or eight years of the Conservative government. But there was one that lasted less than two days. And it was over one a year, I'm pretty sure. And as a result of which, nothing ever gets done.

so everyone gets cross then the government panics and has to have a reshuffle and it's a sort of self-perpetuating cycle of idiocy and so these are legitimate questions and it's difficult for the under pressure Prime Minister Keir Stama

which is the official title of the job now. All prime ministers will be known as under pressure prime ministers and will be called UPPM rather than just PM anyway for Stama he'd just attempted to kind of resplutter his prime initiative into life with what he described as

phase two in which he promised to deliver delivery, delivery and delivery. And it's not a good sign where only just over a year into your government, you can only think of one word for a three-word slogan. That is a sign that things are not going too well. But delivery isn't appropriate enough term because I've delivered a child

as long-term buglers will know, delivered my own child, just yards from where I'm recording now in our house in my one match only career as a midwife. And delivery well it's messy noisy beset by panic and requiring an intensive cleanup operation afterwards so

that does seem to be what Starmer is aiming at and he may well achieve it this time and this is exactly my point Andy is when you were delivering your child was there any moment where you said isn't there someone more qualified to be doing this well no because that would have

that would have shown a lack of confidence in my own ability and you know so no I was on I was speaking to a genuine, well, I mean, whoever was manning the 999 emergency phone line, who I assume had some basic medical training, although they did keep it quite simple and basically just said, don't drop it. So, um, uh, did you really knit? Do you really need that level of specialised knowledge? Um, I don't know. Andy, just on the education secretary is, just to fact check that. There were 10 during the conservative administration from 2010 to 24, including five in the

year 2022. So, and ironically, we don't learn lessons from that, which you would have thought would be the purpose of education, but anyway. I mean, the most tragic thing about this cabinet reshuffle is it's too close temporarily to the football transfer season. So unfortunately, the two things have become entangled in the space-time continuum. And Stama's ambitious bid to bring Andy Burnham back from. from his loan at the Manchester City has failed.

Apparently, he wanted a guarantee of starting every question time in a cagool. And a shock move, Erling Halland has been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. And his first policies demand the Bank of England, provide him with more assists. Roy Keane has been named Secretary of State for Defence. and he's insisted on calling it Secretary of State for War and when asked about his approach to international relations he stared at the journalist and said

I'm faithful to my girlfriend or wife and not interested in foreign women that's all the jokes I could think of about football I'm sorry you've got quite a few out there Alice impressive look no hands To finish sport news now

And the finals of the US Open tennis This weekend In which Amanda Anisamova A American player Failed to complete one of the great redemption stories of sport Having lost the Wimbledon final Six Love Six Love Bounced back, Beak Egoswietek

Who she'd been thrashed by at Wimbledon And made it to the US Open final and then lost, which was disappointing for those who like a good story. And then the men's final, which the main story was a display of tennis genius by the brilliant young Spaniard Carlos Alcoraz. But it did show that nothing in the world can escape Donald Trump because he decided to go to the US Open tennis final. The added security resulted in the match having to start late

and thousands of people of ticket holders being unable to get in on time because of the added added security, just so Trump could sit in a box. The TV companies asked, the tennis authorities asked TV companies not to show negative reaction to Trump's presence. Some saw this as censorship. Others thought there's a realization on the part of the tennis authorities that people who are watching the tennis are probably trying not to fucking think about Donald Trump and the unstonchable Vesuvius of Maleficence and Tankank.

can'tankorosity that he's blasting into the world's face. So we didn't want to see it. There were some clear booze of Trump that a couple of times that he was shown on the screen. And it did distract from a sensational display of tennis from Alcaraz. So if I will, if I may conclude this issue of the bugle with a simple message to Donald Trump, which is that I don't mind what you do as president,

but get the fuck out of sport. And I'm sure all sports fans will back me up. on that. Yes, apparently he's been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, which you get from not watching women's tennis enough. Very good. Well, that brings us the end of this week's, this week's Beagle.

It's great to be back after our summer break. We will have a show every week now until the ashes begins in late November. Next week we have Anavad Palantifste. Stevenson, Nish Kumar and Sarah Barron, the week after that. We've got Josh Gondleman, Helen Zaltzman, have I pronounced the name right, Hariconda Bowling weeks after that. And of course we have the live stream live show featuring Alice Nish.

And as I mentioned earlier on John Oliver tickets via the buglepodcast.com. Also I have some more tour shows, which will be on sale within the next week or so. I'll have full details of that next week. NATO, what have you got to plug? you can find me at Mr. Nato Green on Instagram or Nato Green on Blue Sky and whatever but the darkest hour tour continues this Saturday, September 13th at the Siren Theater

in Portland, Oregon and Thursday, October 2nd at Mike Drop Comedy in San Diego. Buglers come out. Tickets going fast for Portland, so don't sleep on that. Alice. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser where I do my weekly

writers meetings over Zoom. So if you want to have all of the fun of being in the Swiss mountains with none of the Swiss mountains, you can come and join me on Zoom for my writers meetings, which I run twice a week. Also, I have a podcast called Realms Unknown, which is available in the bugle family of podcasts. And you can subscribe if you go to the buglepodcast.com and support all of the bugle podcast, podcasts. Podcasts. Podcast. Well, Buglerus, we'll be back next week. Do buy your tickets for the live stream. Sunday the 26th of October, the showbiz events of this and any other millennium.

Until next week, goodbye. Bye. Hi. quickly tell you about my new podcast Moldly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now. Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything. So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.