Eurovision 2007

[ping pon]

How did the whole of britain know that turkeys belly dancers were brits???

It may have been my alcoholic haze but I heard Wogan announce it when they first appeared.

Ohhh yer i remember

[Soup Dragon]

More boring facts for you to all digest on the voting.
The 7 Western European Nations in the final...
(Sweden, Germany, Spain, France, UK, Ireland & Finland)
Don't know if Finland really counts??? anyway....
Between these 7 nations points received from Eastern Europe as follows:

Finland 12 points (includes 11 points from Baltics, Estonia & Lithuania)
Sweden 0 points
Germany 9 points
Spain 17 points
France 11 points
UK 0 points
Ireland 5 points
TOTAL 54 POINTS FROM EAST to WEST

Of these 27 points came from Albania, a country with very few immigrants and I would suspect not the best telephone network, in previous years they used back up juries because the phone system did not register enough votes.

That leaves a remaining 27 points awarded by 22 Eastern countries out of a possible maximum of 1144 points. Therefore the total points awarded to Western Europe was less than 2.5% of the maximum possible points available.

[Root]

it is more to do with immigrants voting for themselves i.e. Serbians living in the rest of former Yugoslavia, and not much to do with similar musical tastes.

Two points:

If I moved abroad, and I heard the UK enter a song by one of my favourite British bands, I would vote for them. If I heard the UK enter some piss-poor rubbish like Scooch, I wouldn't vote for them. Surely the same rationale applies to Eastern European ex-pats?

Furthermore, I don't think any of the suggested solutions would solve the problem of patriotic voting; if each country couldn't vote for the five nearest to it, we wouldn't be able to give points to... at a guess, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and possibly Norway? We have little connection with those countries, yet we wouldn't be able to vote for them even if we felt they had the five best entries. Unless the rules don't apply to Western Europe, which would be severely unfair.

Like I said, viewing and voting is not compulsory.

[gasman]

If I moved abroad, and I heard the UK enter a song by one of my favourite British bands, I would vote for them. If I heard the UK enter some piss-poor rubbish like Scooch, I wouldn't vote for them. Surely the same rationale applies to Eastern European ex-pats?

Probably... but the impression I get is that eastern European countries generally do in fact put their best bands into Eurovision. (Over the years I've been introduced to various eastern European bands by foreign friends and other friends with eclectic musical tastes, and more often than not they turn out to have featured in Eurovision at some point.) Presumably it isn't seen as being quite so unfashionable over there, and a Eurovision win is still considered a good way of 'breaking' into Europe.

[Soup Dragon]

it is more to do with immigrants voting for themselves i.e. Serbians living in the rest of former Yugoslavia, and not much to do with similar musical tastes.

Two points:

If I moved abroad, and I heard the UK enter a song by one of my favourite British bands, I would vote for them. If I heard the UK enter some piss-poor rubbish like Scooch, I wouldn't vote for them. Surely the same rationale applies to Eastern European ex-pats?

Furthermore, I don't think any of the suggested solutions would solve the problem of patriotic voting; if each country couldn't vote for the five nearest to it, we wouldn't be able to give points to... at a guess, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and possibly Norway? We have little connection with those countries, yet we wouldn't be able to vote for them even if we felt they had the five best entries. Unless the rules don't apply to Western Europe, which would be severely unfair.

Like I said, viewing and voting is not compulsory.

I think we will just have to agree to disagree Ollie
You can't compare the attitude of UK citizens to this contest to those in the East. Here in the UK we are rather blasé about the contest, however for many nations in the East it is serious stuff and often top artist from those nations represent their country, even when they don't there is still national pride at stake, and winning Eurovision is a big thing for them.

In the past ten years Turkey has entered plenty of piss-poor songs but that still didn't stop Germany giving 10 or 12 points every time, for obvious reasons.

I will continue to view and vote for what I believe to be the best song regardless of nationality, this year my personal vote went to Slovenia, and of course on behalf of Ping Pon we also voted for Sweden.
My overall prefernce though would be not to vote unless we went back to the old system and I was part of the UK jury of course

[tubeguru]

even when they don't there is still national pride at stake, and winning Eurovision is a big thing for them.

Yes, they're all small countries with long histories of civil war, being tied to the old Soviet Union, not having a voice in Europe, excluded from the EU.

The UK (or England or Britain or however you want to refer to us) on the other hand was a world force for centuries, we won wars against other European nations, we colonised large parts of America and Africa, and all of Australia. Our mindset is "we may be small but we expect to win so it's no big deal when we do".

For them, they had nothing and suddenly they are all joining the EU, getting themselves out of debt, the wars are stopping, they have their own national identities and so on. Huge numbers of ethnic people are now free from the rule of an overbearing union with a larger, richer group of people.

And for countries where music is a big thing (where it is in most cultures) joining in a continent-wide song "contest" is a chance for them to win something and get noticed for good things rather than all the crap they had to put up with for most of the 20th century.

THAT is why the Eastern European countries are now voting for each other and winning - the are rejecting the profligate West and promoting themselves through Eurovision.

Right, time for breakfast after that!