The weekend news
Had one of those Sunday mornings which started in slight amusement that people could get things so wrong, and ended with me having to switch the radio off, because they kept rabbitting on about block voting and political bias in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Which is nothing of the sort, of course. While it's true that, obviously, nobody was going to vote for the UK, the Eurovision voting isn't about people voting for each other (as poor old Terry Wogan seems so convinced it is), but people voting for themselves.
If Eurovision, and the wider issue of European Union enlargement, is about anything, then it's most clearly about social and economic mobility.
What's amazing to me is that while the British seem to be nationally obsessed with immigration and economic migrants and asylum seekers and the rest of it, they can't quite manage to put 2+2 together when it comes to something as simple and obvious as the Eurovision Song Contest. Why did Croatia award so many points to Serbia Montenegro? Not because they love the Serbs, that's for sure. But - hello? - does anybody remember that these Balkan countries all used to be one confederation? Lots of Serbs and Montenegrans still live in Bosnia, obviously. And FYR and the rest.
And the Swedes? Clearly, they pop across the bridge into Denmark to do their voting; or they just live there. It's as if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all had separate entries. Of course all the Scots in England would vote for the Scottish entry.
But, shame on the British, or the English, nobody from here seems to see Europe as a place in which to move freely around. Obsessed as we are with America, American toadies that we are, we should be able to see the opportunity: to drive from New York for a new life in LA is surely no different than to leave Gdansk for Paris or London.
So bollocks to all the whingers complaining about the politics. Get to fucking school, learn a language, and go seek a better life. Then when you're living in France or Spain or the Czech Republic you can understand how you can vote for the UK entry to your heart's content.
Anyway, rock on Ukraine. She was a winner the moment she stomped onto the stage.
Which is nothing of the sort, of course. While it's true that, obviously, nobody was going to vote for the UK, the Eurovision voting isn't about people voting for each other (as poor old Terry Wogan seems so convinced it is), but people voting for themselves.
If Eurovision, and the wider issue of European Union enlargement, is about anything, then it's most clearly about social and economic mobility.
What's amazing to me is that while the British seem to be nationally obsessed with immigration and economic migrants and asylum seekers and the rest of it, they can't quite manage to put 2+2 together when it comes to something as simple and obvious as the Eurovision Song Contest. Why did Croatia award so many points to Serbia Montenegro? Not because they love the Serbs, that's for sure. But - hello? - does anybody remember that these Balkan countries all used to be one confederation? Lots of Serbs and Montenegrans still live in Bosnia, obviously. And FYR and the rest.
And the Swedes? Clearly, they pop across the bridge into Denmark to do their voting; or they just live there. It's as if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all had separate entries. Of course all the Scots in England would vote for the Scottish entry.
But, shame on the British, or the English, nobody from here seems to see Europe as a place in which to move freely around. Obsessed as we are with America, American toadies that we are, we should be able to see the opportunity: to drive from New York for a new life in LA is surely no different than to leave Gdansk for Paris or London.
So bollocks to all the whingers complaining about the politics. Get to fucking school, learn a language, and go seek a better life. Then when you're living in France or Spain or the Czech Republic you can understand how you can vote for the UK entry to your heart's content.
Anyway, rock on Ukraine. She was a winner the moment she stomped onto the stage.
posted by Anonymous at
Monday, May 17, 2004
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