Well This Is Awkward.

Yesterday (29/5/15) Jordan's Prince Ali bin al-Hussein in effect forced a vote of no confidence in FIFA President Sepp Blatter. This failed rather dramatically with Prince Ali only scrapping 1/3rd of the vote and falling far short of the 2/3rds majority required.

Having created the nation of Jordan and therefore the Jordanian Royal Family back in 1922 the UK is utterly furious about this and is currently stomping it's feet, snarling and looking for any excuse to withdraw from World football in protest as what it sees as "corruption."

In the meantime though today sees the grand final of the English Football Association (FA) Cup. From next year this will be known as the "Emirates Cup" after the Dubai's Sovereign Wealth Fund "Investment Corporation of Dubai" paid GBP30m (USD4.5million) for the competition.

On a completely unrelated note Arsenal who play at the Emirates Stadium are considered the hot favourites to win the competition.

Mind you their opponents Aston Villa aren't exactly over-blessed with credibility themselves having staged a mini-riot at their Birmingham ground during the quarter-finals in an effort to embarrass US President Obama during the Selma anniversary march. Then of course there's Bradford whose 'magical' cup run really helped draw attention to George Galloway's re-election battle in the Bradford West seat.

Actually, thinking about it, I'm pretty sure Emirates only made their offer in an effort to underline that this is just a participation trophy we hand out every year to convince the lesbians that they're still a big club.

11:20 on 30/5/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 19:35 on 30/5/15 (UK date) to add;

When I write about FIFA World Cup matches I find myself writing about football. When I write about English football I find myself writing about the political message that has been prepared for the consumption of the masses. With the FIFA election yesterday and today's English and Spanish cup finals it was almost as if the script had been written for a perfect trifector of this messaging.

The UK obviously supported Jordan's Prince Ali because they thought they could control him. This is what brought him votes from the UK Commonwealth nations such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Qatar and their allies obviously supported Prince Ali for exactly the same reason.

Unfortunately Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund "Qatar Investment Authority" do not have a presence in English football but are the title sponsors of the Spanish side Barcelona who are playing in the Spanish cup final. As a result Dubai's Sovereign Wealth Fund had to stand in for Qatar with their sponsorship of Arsenal.

Arsenal are an absolutely massive club to Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6. Across west Africa Arsenal's nickname "The Gunners" is seen as really butch and macho attracting many people to their supporters association which provides an effective way to run West African agents. The joke is that due to their highly successful women's team in more economically advanced nations Arsenal are used to represent lesbians - some of whom like to think of themselves as really butch and macho but will never be real men.

The problem for MI6 is that in top-flight football Arsenal are at best also-rans. So every year they're handed either the FA Cup or the League Cup to allow their fans to feel like their achieving something. This has got so blatant the Investment Corporation of Dubai are now sponsoring both Arsenal and the competition so there can be no denying that it is Arsenal's competition. Arsenal's designated victims this year were Aston Villa who are owned by an American "Randy Learner" and whose most famous fan is FA patron Prince William.

Therefore if Prince Ali had been elected FIFA President I would have expected Aston Villa to hold off Arsenal all the way through normal time and extra-time before defeating them on penalties. That way when Qatar were spraying themselves with champagne after winning in Spain the UK would still be able to make it clear to the world that they were controlling Prince Ali and would be imposing penalties on Qatar over the 2022 World Cup in the hope of quelling calls for them to be stripped of the competition. After all of the Gulf Monarchies Jordan and the UAE are certainly the least crazy. In fact the UK frequently holds up Jordan as an example of how it is civilising the savages.

Despite Prince Ali being defeated both sides stuck to this script for almost the entire first half with Arsenal's strikers working very hard to hit everything except the back of the net. Then Theo Walcott had a bit of a rush of blood to the head in the 40th minute and scored. Although a good player Walcott is prone to injury so a lot of people have been questioning whether it's worth paying him tens of thousands of pounds a week to sit in the stands and watch his teammates play football. He clearly thought that scoring a stunning goal in the FA cup final would help him with his contract negotiations.

Walcott got this calculation very badly wrong because Aston Villa have not scored against Arsenal this season losing, I think, 3-0, 5-0 and 3-0 on the three occasions they met. As a result Walcott's goal meant it would take a piece of epic and blatant match fixing to get the game back on script. I think the situation was summed up by the reactions of Walcott's teammates. Walcott went to embrace, I think, Cazorla who rather then embracing Walcott back put his hand over his mouth and whispered something in Walcott's ear. It was at this moment the bottom appeared to drop out of Walcott's world.

After a very tense start to the second half Sanchez appeared to go; "F*ck it, we're in trouble anyway - we may as well do it in style" and scored in the 50th minute. Arsenal went on to win 4-0. So if the Qatar Investment Authority go on to win in Spain - as seems likely - it should be extremely clear to everyone who is running the English FA.

With Prince Ali falling at the first I would have been tempted to rely on Aston Villa's nickname "The Villains" to change the script and hand them the win to make it a message about Blatter's villain's defeating the heroic Prince Ali. But then I think too much had already been staked on Prince William's status as an Aston Villa fan.

20:15 on 30/5/15 (UK date).

Operation Hillary: Month 4, Week 2, Day 5.

As I may have mentioned before the Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar saw the wave of popular uprisings that swept across the middle-east at the end of 2010 as an opportunity to hollow out their neighbours and turn them into vassals for their Monarch's will.

Although they slipped up slightly on Libya Russia has been the main resistance to this global crime wave supporting Syria against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This in turn prompted the US to start a civil war in Ukraine to provide a pre-text for sanctioning and isolating Russia as punishment.

Despite US President Obama howling like a whipped dog this approach does not enjoy popular support. In fact over just this past week there was a strong movement at the Eurovision Song Contest to have the 2016 contest held in Russia in defiance of the sanctions. Then of course there is the 2018 World Cup which was awarded to Russia just 15 days before Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze in Tunisia marking the start of the so-called 'Arab Spring.' Obviously it is unacceptable to Qatar that Russia could be allowed to host an event that would make them the centre of attention for roughly half the entire population of the World.

On the same day that Russia was awarded the 2018 World Cup Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup. Although it is widely acknowledged that Russia were awarded the 2018 competition because they simply had the best bid it is equally widely accepted that Qatar only achieved their success by massively bribing all members of the voting committee - particularly the European nations that make up UEFA - and their representative Mohammed bin Hamman has since been banned for life. Since then Qatar have admitted that they are unable to deliver on their 2022 bid and instead demanded that the competition be moved to the winter in what is widely seen as a Salafi Islamist attempt to punish the western infidel by ruining their pagan "Christmas" festival.

To make matters worse Qatar's efforts to build World Cup stadiums has seen it rely on the "Kafala system" which effectively sees workers tithed to employers which elsewhere in the World would be referred to as "Slavery." Obviously Qatar's slave labourers do not have rights to things like safe working conditions and are dying in large numbers. Unless the situation improves dramatically the current estimate is that for every 90 minutes of football played at the 2022 World Cup 63 people will have lost their lives. Even in the dark days of 1980's football hooliganism a rate of 1 death every 84 seconds would be considered unacceptable.

Whilst this has been going on Qatar along with Turkey have been backing the Muslim Brotherhood in their attempts to violently overthrow the Libyan and Egyptian governments. It was this policy that caused the 2014 war between Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot Hamas in Gaza that nearly spoilt the 2014 World Cup. Since then it has been suggested that Israel might be tempted to support the existing, legitimate campaign to have Qatar stripped of the 2022 World Cup with a view to - at the very least - disrupt the tournament to the extent that the US disrupted the Sochi Winter Olympics.

This has very much put Qatar on the defensive and in the first instance they have put up Jordan's Prince Ali bin al-Hussein as a candidate of FIFA President. The hope being that if elected Prince Ali will be more likely to protect Qatar from the top then the incumbent Sepp Blatter. Qatar are also behind a Palestinian attempt to have Israel expelled from World football. Blatter is opposed to this move and only last week visited both Israel and Palestine in an effort to resolve the issue. Both of these matters are to be decided by a vote during a FIFA meeting in Switzerland tomorrow (29/5/15).

It should come as no surprise then that yesterday (27/5/15) the US moved to effectively kidnap members of FIFA's executive committee who were expected to vote for Blatter and against Israel's expulsion. This type of petty thuggery is truly the hallmark of a banana republic and is why many democracies have a system of Parliamentary Privilege and international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) operate a system of diplomatically immunity to prevent votes being disrupted in this way. It is though how Qatar's militias in Libya do business.

As such there can be no suggestion that the US can participate in any FIFA affiliated events such as the upcoming Women's World Cup until they resolve the corruption issue. After all the main allegation at hand is that large US corporations such as Nike attempted to corrupt the world of football by paying large bribes to US officials such as Chuck Blazer in order to win sponsorship deals at various US hosted competitions and the sponsorship of the Brazilian national football team.

Clearly buoyed by the US' unwavering support for their cause on Tuesday (26/5/15) evening Qatar's militia's in Libya attempted to assassinate the Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni in Tobruk. As something of a sick little signature to mark their handiwork the failed attempt mimicked the US Special Forces raid to arrest Anas al-Liby. At the time I said that this wasn't worth the risk. I was proved right in January 2015 when al-Liby died of natural causes before he could stand trial in the US.

15:15 on 28/5/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 18:15 on 29/5/15 (UK date) to add;

To the surprise of absolutely no-one who understands the sport Prince Ali's coup attempt has failed and Sepp Blatter has been re-elected as FIFA President.

If you have the misfortune of living in a country whose rulers have looked at Saudi Arabia and said; "That looks like a good idea" you will now be subjected to several years of pet news channels ranting about corruption allegations, demands for boycotts and general frothing at the mouth.

The truth is though that since being elected FIFA President in 1998 Blatter has grown the sport from being essentially being the pass-time of a few lunatic hooligans into a multi-trillion dollar business that is followed by roughly 1 in every 2 people on the planets and one that is closely supported by roughly 1 in every 7. It's influcence continues to grow.

In that time Blatter has been forced to deal with corrupting influences such as the US sports giant Nike who demanded that Brazil's Ronaldo played in the 1998 final despite suffering an epileptic fit during the warm-up. Apparently as with the children that make the replica shirts Ronaldo's health was considered less important to Nike then selling more replica shirts.

A prime example of Blatter's skill and dexterity in this challenging role was provided at this meeting by Palestine - who are considered by FIFA to be a nation state. In preperation for Prince Ali's coup attempt the Palestinians tabled a motion demanding that Israel be banned from international football. Their first complaint was that Israel denies free movement to members of the Palestinian football team between Gaza and the West Bank. It would have been extremely problematic for FIFA to take action on this complaint because they would then be forced to ban all the Arab states who deny the Israeli football team access to their countries.

The Palestinians second main complaint was that Israel allows Jewish teams from the occupied West Bank to play in it's domestic team. Although there are strong legal grounds to prevent that it presents FIFA with some problems. For example England and Wales are considered separate footballing nations but Welsh teams such as Swansea are allowed to play in the English league.

Two weeks ago Blatter travelled to Israel and Palestine and suggested that a FIFA committee be set up to look at the Palestinians complaints and see whether it is possible to find a solution without say kicking all Arab states out of football or kicking all Welsh sides out of English football.

Unfortunately the Palestinians were unable to agree to this compromise because apparently their plight is considered an effective way to rally Muslims behind any cause. Alongside two of their supporters having to be ejected from today's meeting, other supporters attempting to storm the building and them telephoning in a bomb threat a lot of FIFA delegates got the impression that Palestine - and their backers - didn't want the problem solved. Instead they wanted an excuse to rant against Israel. As a result the Palestinian proposal was likely to be utterly humiliated receiving only a handful of the 209 votes on offer.

Fortunately at the last minute Blatter stepped in and talked the Palestinians into accepting the compromise deal which was passed with 90% of the vote.  Not only did Blatter save Palestinians blushes their representative Jibril Rajoub was even allowed to give a passionate 15 minute speech railing against Israel to a global audience.

I will leave my American readers to draw their own conclusions as to what the real world has made of Loretta Lynch's rantings and ravings.

18:50 on 29/5/15 (UK date).


 

The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: The Stand Outs.

In what I really hope will be my final post on the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest I'm going to look at some of the stand-out acts. These are the acts that while they may not have succeeded in addressing the main political themes of the contest either expressed a valid political point of their own or produced such an impressive performance they were impossible to ignore.

Greece: In political terms Greece are actually the hottest ticket in Europe at the moment. Obviously there are the knife-edge negotiations over their economy which sees them threatening to quit the European Union (EU) on an almost daily basis. To many of the smaller, eastern-European Eurovision nations who are all clambering over one another in order to join the EU in the hope of improving their economic fortunes this sounds like utter madness.

Although they have stumbled significantly since the election of the SYRIZA coalition Greece's economic problems are still nowhere near as bad as Ukraine's. Despite the fact that the US is refusing to allow the EU to put pressure on Ukraine's Nazis in order to solve Ukraine's problems and is forcing the EU to trash its own economy by imposing sanctions on Russia it still expects the EU to foot the bill for Kiev's insane war against reality. Greece is one of the EU nations that has of course resisted calls for tougher sanctions on Russia much to the anger of the US.

Going back to the EU ascension issue Greece has actually long blocked it's neighbour Macedonia's attempts to join the EU over objections to its name. The Greek province that borders Macedonia is also called Macedonia. As such Greece are concerned that Macedonia the country may try and lay claim to Macedonia the province. In short Greece is worried that Macedonia might try and do to them what Albania appears to be trying to do to Macedonia.

Then of course there is the EU's migrant crisis. Although the spring season has shifted much of the focus of this horrific issue on to the Mediterranean and Italy and Malta, Greece is also facing an up-stoppable tide of what are legitimate refugees from the myriad of conflicts that are going on in the Levant - just across the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas. To this day even amongst close EU allies the "Blue Sky M" incident remains something that is only discussed in whispered tones by shadowy men and women.

As such pretty much everybody at Eurovision included some little reference to Greece that would allow them to join in the conversation. Some included elements of Greek architecture such as Greek Columns but most went for tribal/Celtic tattoos and tattoo-style designs.

Although the modern Irish and Welsh probably have the best claim to this heritage there never was a Celtic tribe to descend from. Instead there was a Celtic language which was spoken across parts of ancient Europe all the way from Ireland in the west to the Balkans in the east. People often forget that Greece is the largest of the Balkan nations. People who spoke the Celtic language very freely shared ideas and cultural traditions with the other tribes who they came into contact. So what may be considered "Celtic" in Ireland would be considered "Hellenic" meaning "Greek" in a places like Macedonia  It must be said though that prehistoric tribal art is not the most sophisticated of genres.

Despite their international significance within Greece there is only one topic of conversation and it has been the same topic of conversation since 2008 - the economy. Although it references the way that the Greek people feel they have been mistreated by the EU their song "One Last Breath" is essentially Greece begging to remain part of the EU no matter what their current idiot finance minister may say. It even includes the lyric; "I’m begging you take me out of this firing hell."

The song was performed by "Maria Elena Kyriakou" who was born in Cyprus which on the centenary of the Armenian genocide seemed intended to send a strong message to Turkey over their invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus. Kyriakou is also a mother of three which touches both on the way every day Greek families have been impacted by the economic crisis and the Dutch theme of female sexuality as women age.

Most impressively though she is a professor of Hellenic culture and humanities (history & geography) which makes her an extremely useful person to have on hand given all the references to Hellenic culture. It also though touches on Greece's extremely lavish higher education subsidies. While I don't think an accident of birth should ever be a barrier to a talented person receiving an higher education if you're a country where everybody has a PHD but you can't pay your bills there might be some scope for reform.

Aside from a song and a video each act is required to record a short film known as a "Postcard" that is shown just before they take to the stage and is supposed to illustrate something about the artist, the nation they represent, the nation they're performing in or whatever. Greece's postcard showed Kyriakou helping disadvantaged children as part of an after school program which is something she does in real life. The task she was helping these particular children perform was building a model boat. This referenced the-EU's migrant crisis but also south-east Asia/Australia's far nastier migrant crisis where children are often trafficked to work as child labourers/slaves.

Australia: Due to it being the Song Contest's 60th birthday Australia were given special permission to perform as reward for their outstanding commitment to the contest. Seriously, despite it being shown at dawn and them not usually being allowed to participate Australia has some of the most committed Eurovision fans in the World. However I think it's fair to assume that the nation that gave us "Baz Luhrmann" is more interested in the high camp and glittery silliness of the contest rather then the hardcore politics.

Australia's entry "Tonight Again" fully acknowledged this with lyrics such as; "Oh Everyone’s got their problems [...] Oh but tonight we aint gotta solve them" while making it clear that Australia still wants to do the whole thing again next year. Although we can debate his artistic pedigree - and at Eurovision someone always will - "Guy Sebastian" is undoubtedly the biggest gun that Australia have got at the moment being the most successful male artist in Australian chart history. So no-one can accuse Australia of not taking the competition seriously.

If Australia does truly want to come back next year they will have to formally join the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Part of that membership involves them signing up to the Euro News pool. A familiar term to TV journalists this means that if there is a big story in a member nation such as a natural disaster or an election the designated news outlet - ironically in the UK that's "ITN" who produce the terrible "ITV News" - have to make at least part of their coverage available to all broadcasters in the EBU. That coverage is often also broadcast on the "EuroNews" channel which although it has toned it down in recent years is often just as delightfully bonkers as the song contest itself. This news pool of course plays a vital role in making sure that all the Eurovision nations at least have a vague idea about each other's political issues.

I must say though that despite not being members of the news pool Australia didn't actually do too badly on the political front. As with most Australians Sebastian is 100% immigrant coming from a background that includes English, Scottish, Portuguese and Sri Lankan heritage. He was also born in Malaysia which references Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 - the search for which has cost Australia a lot of time and money. It also references the shooting down of MH17 over Ukraine which killed 27 Australia nationals and led to Australian Prime Minister Abbott seeming to threaten to punch Russian President Putin which struck me as unwise for a whole host of reasons.  

The tone of Sebastian's skin could also lead to him being confused with one of Australia's native Aborigines  such as "Jessica Mauboy" who was granted observer status at last year's competition. This of course brings up the fact that Australia is a nation of immigrants (and convicts) and in turn its own migration crisis. For a long time I've avoided comparing Australia and the EU's migrant issues because I see them as more defined by their differences then by their similarities. There is though certainly a benefit to having the discussion if only to identify the differences.

Israel: It can't have escaped anyone's memory that on January 9th 2015 (9/1/15) an Islamic terrorist walked into a Kosher supermarket in Paris, France and murdered 4 people simply for being Jewish. This year Israel were represented by "Nadav Guedj" who was born in France but moved to Israel as a young child when his parents decided to emigrate.

As part of his campaign be re-elected as Prime Minister of all of "God's Chosen People" Israeli Prime Minister "Benjamin Netanyahu" immediately travelled to France to repatriate the remains of the victims to Israel. At the memorial service Netanyahu recommended that all of France's golden boys and girls immediately return with him to Israel so he could show them Tel Aviv and protect them. This type of journey is referred to as "Aliyah" or "Ascent" and amongst Zionist Jews is considered a religious duty similar to Muslim's duty to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Although shocking the Paris attacks didn't come as much of a surprise because anti-semitism has been on the rise across the Eurovision area for a good number of years now and the song contest has provided something of a barometer of this. In the old days when voting was the exclusive domain of secret juries which had foreign ministries and intelligence agencies on speed dial Israel's fortunes in Eurovision were a very subtle, complex and precise affair.

For example if Israel did something aggressive like invading a neighbour even a very strong entry would do very badly but if Israel did something nice like agreeing to peace negotiations a very poor entry could do very well. With the inclusion of public voting - particularly from nations like Ukraine and Hungary - all this subtly and precision has disappeared to be replaced with a roar of "Kill the Jews!" In fact Israel have indicated that as a result of this blatant anti-semitisim 2015 could be their last year in the song contest.

About halfway through the song "Golden Boy" breaks into very Turkish-style music. In the centenary year of the Armenian genocide Turkey are not the most popular nation in Eurovision. However under "Recep Tayyip Erdogan" the relationship between Turkey and Israel has become extremely bad. Essentially Erdogan has been backing the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and backing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who have been running weapons to Hamas in Gaza causing the 2014 Gaza war.

During that war "Jews, Jews to the Gas!" became a very popular chant in Turkey and members of Erdogan's own AK party made a point of being photographed drinking "Fanta" to show their support for Hitler and Nazi Germany. During the song contest Turkey shipped rings bearing ISIL's logo to Gaza and the West Bank in a clear signal that they hope ISIL sprout roots there too.

So in this sequence the "Golden Boy" of the title could well have been interpreted as a big dig at Erdogan and his huge - and judging by Turkey's absence this year - extremely delicate ego.

Israel is indisputably the most gay friendly nation in the middle-east and Tel Aviv is it's gay capital. Whenever Israel is trying to boost it's reputation internationally or simply attract tourists it very much puts this fact front and centre. This has led to anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestement, Sanctions (BDS) protesters making accusations of so-called "Pink-washing" - essentially using Israel's support for gay-rights as a way to distract from or even justify their often extreme mis-treatment of the Palestinians.

In fact during the contest (18/5/15) the "Vancouver Queer Film Festival" changed their rules to ban national symbols after a Jewish group circulated flyers that showed the Star of David imposed on the Rainbow flag of gay pride to make it resemble the Israeli flag. With nations such as Latvia and Lithuania trying to use gay-rights as a way to whip up anti-Russian hatred this seemed an extremely valid topic for conversation this year.

Although it was difficult to convey on stage in the video Guedj is seen addressing a large crowd at what is presumably a music festival in what we are led to believe is Tel Aviv. However it could easily have been mistaken for one of those mass rallies that Netanyahu himself addressed in Tel Aviv just before Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by ultra-nationalists. As Israel's demographics have shifted towards more and more people being born in the country rather then migrating in from elsewhere the country has begun to develop - what would be described in the UK as - a distinctly "chavvy" working class. Although I doubt few of them are experts in the Torah many of these ultra-nationalists take great pride in their status as "Gods Chosen People" and these golden boys can often been seen marching through streets chanting "Death to Arabs!"

So I actually happen to think that Israel's entry was particularly strong this year. For example the golden, winged trainers that Guedj wore during his performance could well have been interpreted as a reference to the Greek god "Hermes" although he is often mistaken - by Americans - for the Greek goddess "Nike." I gather Nike has been banned by ISIL who find the sight of her "Swoosh" to be far too sexually suggestive. Also while it may have been a carefully considered public relations (PR) stunt Israel's entry was certainly not afraid of raising difficult questions about Israel itself.

I couldn't help but notice that in the voting Israel gave the maximum 12 points to Italy. With an entry paying homage to Italy's achievements in classical/operatic music, "New Wave" cinema, fashion and - let's be honest - serious and organised crime this struck me as an extremely viable alternative to the great Sweden V Russia p*ssing contest.

As a little aside I should point out that 17 years ago in 1998 Israel actually won with "Dana International" - a post-transition transgendered woman. Therefore I think "Bruce Jenner" and the entire "Kardashian" clan would be more then welcome at Eurovision. Just as long as they don't expect anyone to raise any eye-brows.

As another aside I should point out that during the 2014 Gaza war I obviously watched a lot of Israeli Defence Force (IDF) videos on YouTube. Every time a video would end it was recommended that I watch a video on ear health and hygiene. At the time this made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Eventually though I found out that to alleviate the boredom of sentry duty IDF conscripts have a habit of taking a bullet out of their rifles and using it to clear the wax out of their ears. This causes an epidemic of ear infections which the IDF have become expert in treating.

As people tend only remember the last couple of songs they've heard there is great pressure on the song contest hosts to immediately put on a big interval act before voting begins to clear everyone's ears out to stop acts at the end of the running order gaining an unfair advantage over those at the top. I think Austria were very successful in this task putting together a long and complex orchestral piece that seemed to include every note, melody and rhythm pattern imaginable. Of course that didn't stop me Tweeting over the top of it because I was so happy to finally have had that ear health thing explained to me.

I've got two more; Romania's quite short but Belgium really isn't. At around 17:30 on 26/5/16 (UK date) I'll try and do that when I get back from the pub but don't hold your breath.

Edited at around 19:40 on 26/5/15 (UK date) to tidy the above and to add;

Romania: This year they were represented by "Voltaj" who although they may now be considered something of a legacy act like "The Rolling Stones" or "U2" have certainly sold a lot of records, albums and concert tickets across Europe over their 20 year career.

In 2014 the band lent their support to the www.delecapat.ro (All Over Again) campaign which highlights the plight of Romanian children who have been left with grandparents or neighbours while their parents travel to find work across the EU. The campaign's main aim is actually to encourage Romanian emigres to return home. The song itself  "De La Capat (All Over Again)" and the video that supports it are unashamedly in support of that cause. Believe it or not although the version of the video on the Eurovision website has now changed the copy I saw originally ended with a stark onscreen message about how many Romanians had left the country and how many children have been left behind.

In itself this actually presented a bit of a problem because song contest rules expressly prohibit this type of overt political message. Although I fully support it due to the goodwill caused by the centenary of the Armenian genocide everyone does seem to have allowed Armenia to completely ignore this rule. This has obviously led to some tension with other competitors and having re-watched Albania and Georgia's entries they don't seem exactly over-whelmed with sympathy for Armenia.

However I think what Romania have done is simply take advantage of the situation to very clearly lay-out a very valid topic for discussion. You may remember that Romania joined the EU's open borders area on January 1st 2014 (2014). This happened amid lots of complaints amongst the richer EU nations that they were being forced to accept a whole new wave of immigrants. The UK in particular really started having a go at Romania and it what seen by many as an attempt to deter migrants senior government officials actually spent the day manning border checkpoints at airports to greet each Romanian migrant individually.

The point Romania was making through their Eurovision entry and the entire campaign of which this is just a small part is that this large-scale migration across the EU also has negative effects on the nations which people are emigrating from and Romania itself would prefer it if fewer of its citizens were leaving. Obviously though that is not to say that Romania doesn't want to be part of the EU because if that were the case they could simply leave. As such they were trying to highlight the fact that it is possible to be broadly supportive of an organisation as vast as the EU but still be able to make suggestions of how it can be improved.

I'm actually very supportive of the EU's open border policy because if you live in a country such as the UK and are offered the chance of a job - such as representing Germany at Eurovision - you can simply hop on a plane at take that job. However it is clear that where there is an imbalance between rich and poor member states the policy creates a problem by allowing people from the poor nations to flood into the rich states. A possible solution to this would be to extend the time between a new member state being making changes to their economies to make them compliant with EU rules, joining the free-trade zone allowing them to boost their economies and allowing them to join the open border area in an effort to close the economic gap to deter migrants from flooding out of poorer nations.

Another possible solution would be to massively slow down the rate at which the EU is expanding and accepting new members. Migration and the remittances it produces are of course an important part of helping poorer EU states to develop economically. However with the EU expanding so rapidly it has created a situation where rather then, say, the Poles coming over for a few years before returning to allow, say, the Romanians to take their place all of these migrants are coming over at the same time which can seem a little overwhelming.

Also there is the question of whether the EU is ever going to stop expanding. Although I think the issue there is much more to do with NATO rather then EU membership the prospect of the EU expanding right up to Russia's border with Ukraine is clearly creating a lot of tension. If Turkey joins then the EU will border with Iraq and Syria which are very clearly Arab states. Although I don't have a problem with them being Arab states there is clearly a lot of difference between European and Arab culture.


Belgium: Although I found their entry to be impressive I am slightly concerned that their entrant "Loic Nottet" may not be yet fully aware of why he was so awesome. At the tender age of just 17 Nottet already considers himself a master of all the performing arts such as music, acting, dance, choreography and stage direction. As such he was allowed to direct all the aspects of his song contest entry.

The problem is that none of these aspects were particularly Okay, let alone good. As such Nottet has exposed himself as being in possession of the type of extreme arrogance and self-delusion that is only displayed by a certain type of younger gay man or any succession of contestants on TV talent shows like "The Voice."

As a result Loic has perhaps unwittingly presented himself as an impressive talking point on the issue of gay identity and the Eurovision crowd's obsession with gay-rights above all else. In previous years such as with Azerbaijan in 2013 this has led to more then a few embarrassing moments at Eurovision and with nations like Latvia and Lithuania trying to use the issue of gay-rights to whip up anti-Russian sentiment this year it seems and extremely valid topic for discussion.

It also touches on that favourite topic of Eurovision - the age of sexual consent and this particularly instance the homosexual age of consent. As gets established every time Eurovision has this debate there are certain older straight men who enjoy having sex with very young - but legal - girls. The same is true of certain gay men but in more homophobic societies this unpleasant minority is used to label all homosexuals paedophiles and justify more homophobia.

In order to highlight what a fantastic artist he is Loic talks extensively about how his heartfelt rendition of "Diamonds" by "Rihanna" helped him win the chance to represent his nation at Eurovision. Looking at the state of Latvia's entry and with me always lurking in the background this seemed a very sensible conversational avenue to keep open.

Loic though makes much more of his adoration for Australian pop-star "Sia" and how she once re-Tweeted a video of him covering "Chandelier" to all her Twitter followers. However from the way he tells the story you would get the impression that Sia has now taken him fully under her wing and from now on will be mentoring his entire career rather then her, say, accidentally sitting on her phone.

Apart from being a way to welcome Australia Sia is also a very relevant talking point in terms of the paedophilia debate. Unusually for people in the entertainment industry Sia is incredibly shy and tries to keep out of the spotlight. As such rather then appearing in her own videos she gets a pre-pubescent girl "Maddie Ziegler" to play her role. I think the intention is to juxtapose Sia's naive desire for the unconditional love for a child with the more bruising and complex realities of adult love affairs. Obviously though having a pre-pubescent girl gyrating around with a much older man in a skimpy leotard Sia's videos are certainly open to misinterpretation.

In fact I recently read a tabloid expose about paedophile networks on the Internet's so-called "Dark Web." Apparently they are all massive fans of the video for Sia's "Elastic Heart" which also features "Shia LaBeouf." They view the wrestling match between LaBeouf and Ziegler to be a metaphor for paedophilic sex and the cage which surrounds the pair a metaphor for societies disapproval of paedophilia. As such they consider both Sia and LaBeouf to be pro-paedophile rights campaigners.

While I feel I should apologise for dredging it all up again "Pete Townshend" of legendary UK band "The Who" got himself in trouble back in 2003 while researching online paedophile networks on behalf of an anti-paedophile charity. While there was never any suggestion that he is a paedophile in the course of his research he did view child pornography and due to the way the law is worded had to admit to the criminal offence and sign the sex-offenders register. This obviously illustrates how it can be difficult to legislate on such issues.

The reference to Sia also brings up the issue of how artistic expression can be badly misinterpreted and that is something Eurovision's large gay audience have certainly been guilty of in the past. I actually produced an example of this myself by Tweeting a like to the video "Going Out In Style" by the US band "The Dropkick Murphys" as a way to show my coded support for Ireland's gay marriage referendum. Annoyingly it has since got stuck in my head. I do not have any idea about the band's feelings on gay marriage but with the video having been shot, released and forgotten about several years before the Irish gay marriage referendum was even suggested I'm pretty sure that wasn't their intention.

Belgium however produced their own example with the song "Rhythm Inside" seeming to be heavily influenced by "Team" by New Zealand pop-star "Lorde." Obviously alongside the reference to Sia this sends the message that yes Belgium does know that New Zealand and Australia are different countries. Also Lorde has some relevance to the age of consent debate because releasing her first single at just 15 she would have been considered too young to compete in Eurovision.

The reason why Team rather the "Royals" or any other Lorde song was referenced is because it's very "La Haine" style video is set on at a dockyard and due to someone wearing a jacket emblazoned with the word "France" you could get the impression it was set in France. This touches on the French port city of Marseilles which could be a reference to the Mediterranean migrant crisis, the Paris attacks which were proceeded by the 2012 attacks carried out by "Mohammed Merah" or the Mistral warships that France was going to sell to Russia before the Ukraine civil-war began. Belgium has always had a bit of a schizophrenic relationship with it's neighbour France with French speaking Belgians being very keen on them and Flemish speaking Belgians less so. This was very much on display this year although I think Belgium was quietly deferring to France and its role in the "Normandy Four."

The video for the Belgian entry touched on the "Twilight" vampire films which themselves are a metaphor for HIV/AIDS. This seems to have been a way to test the water surrounding nations such as Latvia's attempts to use the HIV/AIDS issue to highlight Russia's apparent homophobia. Also due to my complete inability to remember who she was one of the best rumours that's gone around about me is that I'm completely obsessed with Twilight star "Kristen Stewart." There was a little reference to this in the film "Still Alice" in a scene where the main character simply cannot remember who Stewart is.

The main theme of the stage setting though was firmly "enhanced humans/cyborgs." Quite away from the way cyborgs were referenced by Sweden this is actually a big global issue because through research into prosthetic limbs etc the technology is improving at a rapid rate. "Elon Musk" who founded "PayPal" and is behind the "Tesla" car and the "SpaceX" company apparently keeps an eye on this sort of thing and estimates that cyborgs could become a reality within the next 5-10 years. This is possibly why the issue is featured in the much referenced US TV Show "Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" although the "Deathlock/Mike Peterson" character played by "J,August Richards" could well be a comment on US President Obama's need to toughen up and develop a spine.

The TV show that Belgium used as it's reference point though is the UK Channel 4's upcoming show "Humans" which is a copy of the 2012 Swedish show "Real Humans."  Although yet to be broadcast Humans has already created a big buzz because rather then simply showing trailers to promote it Channel 4 instead broadcast apparently genuine commercials claiming that cyborgs would soon be on sale. By choosing this reference Belgium could have been slightly mocking the UK whilst showing it's support for Sweden. However there's also a chance that being in such a rush to tell us he knew a really cool secret Loic simply missed.


I have to say though that the main thing that impressed me about Belgium's entry is that it appeared in the first semi-final. Raising further questions about the running order although things did pick up slightly in the second semi and the grand final the first semi-final was really grim. Basically if a song wasn't about Ukraine then it was about Macedonia - two issues that I was not going to go into that early in the competition. So when I saw Belgium's entry I was overjoyed at finally having something to talk about. Annoyingly though it then went through to the final meaning I had to leave it until last.



Edited at around 14:20 on 26/5/15 (UK date) to bring the sections on Romania up to something close to the required standard.

And I am finally finished and free to talk about something else.

16:45 on 27/5/15 (UK date).

The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: The UK's Entry.

On May 7th 2015 (7/5/15) the UK held it's General Election. The UK's 2015 Eurovision Song Contest entry was entirely predicated on that election resulting in a hung Parliament and then a period of coalition negotiation before the announcement of a more pro-European Labour Party led government possibly during the contest.

As such the song "Still In Love With You" was intended to represent the UK's transition from a World War Two style austerity coalition government back to the modern era by uniting elements of 1930's and 1940's big band jazz and swing music with modern electronic dance/rave music.

Although I've not met him "Alex Larke" who makes up half of the "Electro Velvet" duo is certainly very good at playing the role of the sharp elbowed, shiny suited Yuppie that represents Britain's aspirational middle-class Conservative Party voters. To really drive home the point it's made quite clear that he is from Hertfordshire which is one of Britain's posher Home Counties. The intention seemed to be to remind the European Union (EU) that while the UK is keen its repair its relationship the EU still needs to respect the views of the people of cast votes for the Conservatives losers.

"Bianca Nicholas" who makes up the other half of the duo hails from Kent which isn't quite considered posh enough to count as one of the Home Counties. It is made quite clear that Electro Velvet have performed for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess of Cambridge who also hails from Kent is of course considered too much of a commoner to count as a real Princess no matter how many Royal babies she succeeds in popping out. Rather then making any point this was brought up simply to provoke a reaction from the other competitors.

Nicholas is actually a veritable collection of little conversational hooks. For example she apparently competed in "The Voice, UK." Many other entrants were either competitors in or winners of "The Voice" in nations where the franchise is considered the premier TV signing competition. However in the UK it's considered such a flop that I'm pretty sure not even previous winners can remember their own names.

Away from the tensions with the EU the UK also has a difficult relationship with Eurovision. The UK likes to think of itself as something of a world leader in the field of pop-music having produced bands like "The Beatles." However the UK refuses to send acts of that calibre to Eurovision sending the message that the UK thinks Eurovision is beneath them. Larke also performs in a "Rolling Stones" tribute band. Along with the Beatles the Rolling Stones are considered one of the UK's most successful bands so sending a member of a tribute act promotes discussion about how seriously the UK takes the competition.

The video in support of the song and the stage performance resemble the stage setting for hit BBC TV show "Strictly Come Dancing" which has been franchised across the World including to the US where it is known as "Dancing With The Stars." The UK's BBC broadcast team for the song contest featured "Mel Geidroyc" who is part of the presenting team on the BBC TV show "The Great British Bake Off" which like Strictly has become a global hit even being referenced in Latvia's 2014 Eurovision entry "Cake to Bake." As such the UK seemed to be going; "Look we know we couldn't get Paul McCartney, Kanye West and Rihanna but we are backing up our entry with some serious TV talent."

One of the UK's main areas of tension with both the EU and Eurovision is, well, me. For years the UK has justified its poor treatment of me by claiming my exploits cause them to expend a great deal of time, money and energy protecting me - as a citizen - from all the nations that I've upset and picked fights with over the years. Lyrics such as "You need to be cautious - Take good care when I’m not there" the song very much plays up to that. The problem is that I've often felt the same way about the UK and actually lifted my protection of the country back in around 2007/8. Also back in the spring of 2014 - after one too many attacks on me - certain members of the Eurovision community may have reminded the UK that it is in fact rather bad at protecting its passport holders.

In their effort to make me the issue the UK received assistance from Switzerland who I covered in detail after their exit at the second semi-final. However it seems I also enjoyed a fair bit of support;

Norway: The cross "Anna" who was referenced in the Swiss entry is ginger-haired and sometimes referred to as "The Ginger Witch." The Swiss dual national "Debrah Scarlett" who represented Norway is also ginger-haired. The song "A Monster Like Me" is basically a guy in a hugely dysfunctional relationship telling a girl that she'd better stop behaving like such an absolute psycho-b*tch nightmare or he'll have to dump her.

The theme of the video is of a dinner party. At the Brighton address that is also referenced in the Swiss entry I threw some legendary dinner parties that weren't exactly famed for being strictly civilised affairs. The video also seems to be influenced by those famous "Ferrero Rocher" TV commercials set at the Ambassador's reception. This seemed to be a play on my unofficial role as an ambassador for Eurovision. One of the dinner party guests was a heavily eye-browed little girl who seemed to be a joke at the expense of British model "Cara Delevingne."

So with the other half of the duo "Morland" having lived much of his adult life in the UK Norway seem to have succeeded in positioning themselves between Switzerland and the UK and proceeded to make fun of them both.

Finally from certain angles Scarlett could also resemble another musical redhead - "Jess Glynne" who is an up and coming UK star. Despite the fact Glynne's song "Hold My Hand" is apparently the only song that is allowed to be played on UK radio at the moment I've never seen her interviewed and I'm not sure I've even heard her speak. However from her videos such as "Right Here" it's clear she's a bit of a tomboy and the lyrics to her love songs are all strictly gender neutral. As a result "Jess Glynne: Gay or Straight?!" has become a bit of a party game on the UK pop scene with various DJ's who genuinely don't care dropping suggestive hints either way.

I know that I complained about this sort of thing at the Sochi Winter Olympics where it seemed to be the only thing but it certainly has its place at Eurovision. Particularly in a year where such silliness was in short supply.

Germany: They were represented by "Ann Sophie" who is a British citizen who emigrated to live in Germany thus highlighting to the UK that the EU's open borders policy doesn't just apply to Poles and Romanians flooding into the UK. Quite the traveller she also studied at the "Lee StrasbErg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City, US. This provides a nice play with the Austrian city of StrasbOUrg or the French city of Strasbourg. The song "Black Smoke" was actually partly written by "Ella Eyre (McMahon)" who is another up and coming UK pop-star thus making it another example of a UK reject being dumped on Eurovision.

My favourite bit about Sophie is that her gimmick is to carry a childhood doll/puppet named "Anna" with her wherever she goes. With the phrase "Blowing Smoke" being used to describe someone who is making exaggerated boasts often to boost someones ego the whole thing sounded like Germany telling the UK to put down such childish things because they've really got nothing to boast about.

Also I'm pretty a black, smoke outline is all you're left with should you make the mistake of asking US President Obama to actually do his job.

As such I suspect that Germany's objective was to get as few points as possible to demonstrate that Black Smoke is really nothing to be proud of.

At around 19:50 on 25/5/15 (UK date) I am now going to annoyingly leave this half-finished and come back tomorrow.

Edited at around 10:55 on 26/5/15 (UK date) to tidy the above and add;

Spain: They were represented by "Edurne" who is an accomplished Spanish singer, actress, TV presenter and impressionist/mimic. However she is most commonly referred to as; "The wife of Manchester United goalkeeper David de Gea" which obviously promotes discussion about gender equality.

The song "Amanecer" is all about a burning desire for a much loved man to return. Ever since the days of the armada I've always got on well with the Spanish. Although it features a seemingly obligatory and not at all subtle reference to "Lord of the Rings" I would say that the Sci-Fi/Fantasy style video was mainly influenced a Canadian TV show called "Olympus." Although I've not seen it I gather it's a re-imagining of the Greek classical myths such as "Jason and the Argonauts" in much the same way "Once Upon A Time" re-imagines classic fairy tales. During the carnage of the war against ISIL, the war against Yemen, the proposed forming of a pan-Arab army and the Libyan migrant sinking/beheadings I appear to have panicked and made an extremely high-brow reference to classical Greek literature. In fact some of us are still having a great deal of fun waiting for some of the more hawkish parties to work out the reference.

The title of the song roughly translates into English as either "Daybreak" or "Dawn." This was a reference to Australia's inclusion in the competition. While in Europe Eurovision tends to be watched at alcohol fuelled evening get-togethers for Australia's - and parts of Russia's - hardcore Eurovision fans it is strictly breakfast television. I don't think there is a nation in the western world that doesn't have a breakfast TV news show whose title doesn't play around with the term "Daybreak."  Alongside the very clunky reference to Lord of the Rings this seemed intended to welcome Australia to the competition by pointing out that Spain is aware that they are not New Zealand.

As with the neighbour Portugal for economic reasons I don't think Spain was seriously trying to win the competition.

Although it needs to be covered as a stand-out the "Golden Boy" in Israel's entry could be interpreted as a reference to me because the UK has long claimed that Israel is one of the nations I need protecting from. I think it's fair to say that over the years we've increased our understanding of each other.

In a massive effort to promote discussion about whether the UK holds Eurovision in contempt on the weekend of the grand final the BBC's flagship pop-music radio station "Radio 1" was hosting it's "One Big Weekend" music festival which was headlined by Taylor Swift. As a result throughout the final the BBC schedules were loudly whispering; "Don't watch that, watch this. It's where all the cool kids hangout." However I get the impression that when they confirmed the booking Ms Swift's people might have forgotten to mention to the BBC their intention to release "Bad Blood" as a single.

What really sunk the UK entry though was that it completely failed to predict the result of the UK's own election. So where they were hoping for a discussion about the new Labour government building bridges with the EU instead political discussion was all about how Labour did so badly and who their next leader would be.

So after decades of the British electorate being failed by the Eurovision team I think this was the first time the UK's Eurovision team has failed by the electorate.


11:40 on 26/5/15 (UK date).

The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: The Grand Final (Part 2).

http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-2015-eurovision-song-contest-grand.html

In my post that can be read via the link above I took an overview of the positions regarding the civil war in Ukraine that dominated this year's Eurovision Song Contest. However there were also two other large and important issues present year.

The first of these is the 100th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. Rising from the ashes of World War Two the primary purpose of the Eurovision project - of which the song contest is just the tip of the iceberg - is to promote peace by furthering tolerance and cultural understanding. As such you would expect it to take a strong stance against genocide. Rather then crowning Sweden as winners.

Armenia: This year they were represented by "Genealogy" who are almost a full choir made up of six members of the Armenian diaspora from as far-a-field as the US, Australia and some unspecified African nation. The reason why the Armenian diaspora is so large and widely spread out is because the Armenian people were forced to flee the genocide. The video featured sepia effect family photographs from around 1915 and the song "Face the Shadow" featured lyrics about ticking clocks and a chorus about the importance about not denying things. As a result I don't think you'll win any prizes for working out that Armenia's entry was all about getting Turkey to acknowledge the genocide.

Eurovision actually has a rule that entries can't be overtly political. For example in 2009 Georgia was actually expelled from the competition because their proposed entry "We Don't Wanna Put In" was viewed as a direct personal attack against Russian President Putin rather then a coded criticism of Russia's position generally. So although they were required to change the title from "Don't Deny" Armenia were very close to breaking that rule. As such, given the importance of the year, I think they should count everyone who didn't raise an objection as showing their support to Armenia equivalent to giving them at least one point each.

The true test of everyones feelings on the issue though would have been how Turkey's entry was received. Unfortunately Turkey got scared and ran away.

The fact that on the centenary of the Armenian genocide the contest was being held in Austria rather then Armenia was slightly awkward - not least for the hosts. By invoking Kim Kardashian Austria's 2014 winning entry was really an attempt to get everyone to vote for the 2015 competition to be held in Armenia to mark the anniversary. Unfortunately in the process Austria ended up producing possibly one of the greatest Eurovision entries in competition history.

Although I was keen to see this year's competition held in Armenia not even I could come up with a valid reason to explain why Conchita Wurst didn't deserve to win. Even the song "Rise Like a Phoenix" was intended as a constructive criticism of the way Eurovision's gay fans screwed up the opportunity of using the Sochi Winter Olympics as a way to further gay-rights in Russia.

Austria: Although "The Makemakes" take their name from a dwarf planet similar to Pluto Austria's entry this year "I Am Yours" was just a bland and inoffensive pop song. It was inspired by the band "Kings of Leon" and made frequent references to the fires of sexuality from which the Phoenix was supposed to rise. What I found really interesting though is that Austria's press team who are supposed to support their entry through the week of competition spent most of their time pointing out how bad the song was. The message they were trying to convey being that not only didn't they want to win this year they didn't even want to win last year.

Azerbaijan: While I'm not going to pick sides since 1994 Armenian troops have been present in Nagorno-Karabakh which is a region that Azerbaijan considers part of its sovereign territory. As with India and Pakistan's dispute over the Kashmir region the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh is what is termed a "frozen conflict" in the sense that nothing happens for years and years until suddenly there's a big outbreak of fighting and then almost as suddenly the cold stand-off returns. Unless Kiev fully implements the Minsk agreement this is really the best Ukraine can hope for in its civil war.

Obviously this put Azerbaijan in quite a difficult position. On the one hand they wanted to make it quite clear that they are opposed to genocide and think that Turkey should acknowledge their responsibilities. However at the same time it was also important for them to make clear that they are not suddenly Armenia's best friends because there are still issues to be resolved. I think their entry "Hour of the Wolf" by "Elnur Huseynov" more then succeeded in accommodating those to conflicting aims.

Also I should point out that Azerbaijan is located between the mayhem of ISIL in Turkey to the south and Georgia's desire to provoke a war with Russia to the north. That's the sort of location that would give me sleepless nights too.

The other tense issue at this year's contest was Albania and their seemingly insatiable appetite. You may remember that back in 1999 US President Bill Clinton was embroiled in a sex scandal. So as a distraction he sent NATO forces to help Albania steal Serbia's southern Kosovo province. It turns out this wasn't enough for the Albanians who now also want to expand into what they term "Greater Albania" including the Serbian provinces that surround Kosovo and the Kumanovo province of Macedonia.

In Macedonia in particular this has created a very volatile situation with someone leaking extremely damaging information about the government which has provoked mass protests similar to those seen in 1991 when the US provoked the Yugoslav civil war. Things have been even worse in Kumanovo where armed Muslim groups that claim allegiance to "Greater Albania" have been flexing their muscles. On May 9th (9/5/15) the Macedonian police conducted a raid against one such Muslim group which led to two days of gun battles in which 8 police officers and 14 terrorists were killed.

Albania: Their entry "I'm Alive" by Elhadia Dani seemed intended to fan the flames of the "Greater Albania" movement by expressing a yearning that things will come to them. However they attempted to disguise it as a discussion about people trafficking - particularly sex trafficking - which due to the Mediterranean migrant crisis should have been a bigger issue at this year's contest. Whenever sex trafficking is discussed the pop-culture reference that everybody makes is the film "Taken" which portrays Albanian sex-traffickers.

The video showed Albanian women doing normal jobs such as firefighter, nurse, police officer, chef etc in an effort to make the valid point that not all Albanians are either thieves, prostitutes or sex traffickers. This appears to have prompted the Mayor of the US city of Baltimore "Stephanie Rawlings-Blake" to spend the day of the first semi-final (19/5/15) visiting a Fire House to meet with Baltimore firefighters before signing a bill to protect those who speak up against sex trafficking.

Macedonia: I actually thought their entry "Autumn Leaves" by "Daniel Kajmakoski" was very clever because it was clearly a break-up song. However it could equally be interpreted as the protesters desire to break up with their unpopular government or the Kumanovo Muslims desire to break away from the country. I think what kept the song out of the final was that given the volatility of the situation there was a concern that one too many performances could provoke someone into doing something stupid and there was already a high level of concern over Ukraine.

Serbia: With Macedonia being allowed to take their rising sun inspired flag and melt into the background it fell to Serbia to provide a counter-balance to Albania in the final. They were represented by Bojana Starmenov who I think would be described in Internet pornography circles as a "Big Boned Woman (BBW)." On the face of it her song "Beauty Never Lies" was about how despite her not conforming to the classical stereotype of beauty she still burns with all the sexual passions and desire for love of any other woman. Along with the Dutch examination of female sexuality as women age this the type of entirely valid social discussion point on which Eurovision thrives.

However it also provides a trigger for some cheeky jokes along the lines of Starmenov being a woman with very big appetites or being the sort of woman who's not happy unless she's got something in her mouth *suggestive wink* From there it's not difficult to draw a comparison with Albania's seeming desire to gobble up all its neighbours. Also long before the Kosovo invasion and "Taken" on the diplomatic level Albanians have had a reputation for being liars and thieves.


Finally I should point out that I've decided that with me apparently emerging as a theme I will have to treat the UK and associated entries separately from the stand-out acts such as Romania that simply impressed me. As such this should be considered part 2 of 4 and I now hope to be finished by Tuesday (26/5/15) evening.

16:55 on 25/5/15 (UK date).

The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: The Grand Final.

Back in August 2014 a petty thug named Micheal Brown attacked a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, US and got himself killed. Up and down the land college aged white girls who were desperate to get back at their middle-class parents rushed to protest Brown's death. They did this, well, they did this because their drug dealer told them to. However they justified it to themselves by romanticising the extreme violence and misery that plagues America's black communities as necessary for the creative inspiration for whatever tatty art school project or shoddy mixtape they were working on.

This is of course a nonsense because crime, particularly violent crime actually has nothing but an extremely corrosive effect gradually wearing away and destroying everything that it touches. In fact numerous studies have shown that when black Americans are rescued from their ghettos in places like Baltimore and Los Angeles their health immediately improves not only in terms of lower rates of suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse but also in terms of physical conditions such as diabetes and hypertension that leads to heart disease.

To see the effect that violence and conflict has on creativity and artistic expression you need look no further then the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest which saw it's grand final last night.

In the year since the last Song Contest the Eurovision area has more or less had it's heart ripped out by the civil war in Ukraine. As a result this year's contest was little more then a procession of dark, Gothic dirges. Gone was the camp, glittery and frankly quite silly discussions of a variety of political and social issues that affect the Eurovision community to be replaced by a stark sectarian headcount to show on which side of the conflict everybody stood.

As the titular guardians of the Minsk Agreement that's intended to end Ukraine's war it fell on Belarus to set the tone.  They were represented by "Uzari" who is unashamedly a pop-music producer and "Malmuna" who is a classically trained violinist. Back at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia and the subsequent Eurovision Song Contest that acted as something of a debrief the difference between low, pop-culture and high, classical culture was used as a way to distinguish between American and Russian influence.

Uzari and Malmuna claim that despite their vastly different musical backgrounds they were united by a shared love of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films and in the video Uzari wears Elven-style false ears in direct nod to the films. Peter Jackson is a New Zealander and these films were largely shot in New Zealand. For the first time this year Australia competed in the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite having a shared language, a shared Monarch and a European Union (EU) style borderless trade agreement Australia and New Zealand are in fact two, seperate nation states. However I think in Eurovision terms they count as "close enough."

Although people like Joss Whedon have really advanced the genre Sci-Fi/fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings are generally sneered at as a low form of art. Essentially they tend to make a few extremely basic observations about the human condition and then really hammer them home for the benefit of the - shall say - socially awkward. As such the genre can be used as an example of the low American culture which many of Russia's neighbours seem to have become obsessed with leading to a lot of conflict including Ukraine's civil war. In fact there's a rather famous story that during the 2009 US-led "Green Revolution" in Iran all Iranian TV stations broadcast all the Lord of the Rings films one after the other in an effort to bore the protesters into submission.

What people like Joss Whedon have managed to do is transcend the genre to use very fast dialogue to explore very complicated elements of philosophy and the human condition. For example in the show "Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" the two lab technicians are constantly referred to as; "Fitz Simmons." It takes you a while to work out if they are a guy called "Fitz" and a girl called "Simmons" or whether they're a married couple who've hyphenated their surname to form "Fitz-Simmons."

Once you've worked out that they're not a married couple this young, handsome black character called "Trip" appears and Simmons seems quite taken with him. This of course brings in all the issues of why middle-class white girls are so intrigued by black men sexually. However from the moment Trip arrives whenever Simmons starts to suggest some complicated scientific idea or plan Fitz automatically objects. This leads to lots of dialogue where you're not quite sure if Fitz is genuinely objecting to a bad idea that's far too complicated to understand or whether he's expressing his jealously at Simmons' apparent attraction to Tripp.

This type of highly coded artistic expression is something that Eurovision very much approves of and actively seeks to encourage. As a result there were quite a few S.H.I.E.L.D references this year. However it is the type of thing that censors in authoritarian states disapprove of. For example China bans any film that features time travel in case their censors miss any hidden metaphor. At the Cannes film festival which coincides with this year's Eurovision Iran have entered a films whose name escapes me but is described as a "Zombie Cowboy Sci-Fi fantasy.  

The Belorussian song "Time" intendeds to make the point that although a cease-fire has been reached in Ukraine there is still a lot of work to be done to fully implement the Minsk agreement and the more time that is wasted the more thunderous damage is done. As Ukraine's ethnically Russian population are undoubtedly being disproportionally impacted by the conflict most of the video shows Matuma - representing Russian culture - slowly being buried by the sand in a giant egg timer. However in the final sequence it flips with Uzari - representing American culture - becoming trapped in the egg timer. The message being that both sides in the conflict need to hurry up and fully implement the Minsk agreement because the current frozen conflict is killing them both.

Belarus were of course voted out in the first semi-final which could be viewed as anti-Russian sentiment. However my first instinct on seeing the Belorussian entry was to feel a bit sorry for them because they only provided the venue for the Minsk agreement. The actual negotiation was handled by Poroshenko on behalf of Kiev, France, Germany and Russia. This format is known as the "Normandy Four" having been established at the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Unlike in TV competitions such as "American Idol" or "X-Factor" failing to qualify in Eurovision doesn't mean that you are suddenly banished from the competition. Instead you're allowed to mingle quietly in the background away from the spotlight.


At around 12:20 on 24/5/15 (UK date) that seems a fair opening and I'll be back to add to what's looking like a minimum two day job.

Edited at around 14:30 on 24/5/15 (UK date) to tidy up the above and add; 

Although it certainly feels far longer I have spent most of the past week trying to disrupt the US' various attempts to muscle in on Eurovision. Their intention was to use the sectarian headcount over Ukraine to better marshal their forces in order to tear up the Minsk agreement and launch into a fresh onslaught against eastern Ukraine. Obviously then I am not going to assist them by listing how everyone lined up. However I think it is safe to have a look at who you could consider the usual suspects.

On Russia's side there was;

Russia: I know, shocking. The main message behind Russia's entry was them politely expressing their displeasure at the raw deal they tend to get - particularly at Eurovision where the gay-rights issues makes Russia getting roundly booed an annual event regardless of what else is going on.

Their singer "Polina Gagarina" is Russian through and through but lived in Greece as a child so speaks Greek fluently. Greece is a nation that more or less has a normal relationship with Russia with trade and people travelling back and forth. The US which has more of an insane hatred for rather then a normal relationship with Russia are not happy about this and have been putting extensive pressure on debt-ridden Greece to break of relations with Russia. During the contest this pressure manifested itself through the Savopoulos murder and arson case in Washington DC's "Ambassadors Row" neighbour which appears to have begun as a robbery/blackmail.

Polina's last name "Gagarina" is a variant of "Gagarin" as in "Yuri Gagarin" - the first man in space. Drawing this link obviously highlights Russia's scientific achievements such as winning the space race with the US. However if you are into astronomy and space issues you will be aware of a planetary body in Earth's solar system known as "Pluto." There is great debate as to whether Pluto can be considered a planet or not. One thing that counts against Pluto is that in terms of land-mass it is slightly smaller then Russia. Bringing up this fact helps to remind people that Russia is an absolutely massive country stretching from Finland and Ukraine in the west all the way to Japan and the US in the east. When you realise that Denmark actually shares a border with Newfoundland in Canada and much of the US' eastern seaboard suddenly the inclusion of Australia in the Eurovision area doesn't seem so unreasonable

Within Russia's vast land-mass there are approximately 143.3 million people of different races, religions genders, sexual orientations and political beliefs. I will agree though that "A Million Voices" scans better as a song lyric. Despite Russia's large and diverse population there is a tendency in the west - particularly in the US - to view Russia as simply one man - Vladimir Putin - a cartoon villain who decides everything that it said and done by any Russian anywhere in the world.

Just how ridiculous this belief is was highlighted recently by the Kredo dance school in Orenburg. During a performance that was supposed to be inspired by the children's story "Winnie the Pooh" a number of teenage dancers - some as young as 12 and 13 - took to the stage in skimpy costumes and started "Twerking" which is a highly sexualised form of dancing popularised by US pop-stars such as Rihanna. I have seen a great many things on the Internet but even I think that went too far. As you may have guessed from Ireland's Molly Sterling's apparent obsession with bee-keeping and honey, US President Barack Obama's announcement that he was going to protect the young bees as they're trafficked between Mexico and Canada, Norway's opening of a special corridor to assist migrating bees and Sweden's references to Butterflies which are pollinators similar to bees this produced quite a talking point at Eurovision.

The best bit was that it wasn't Russia's Eurovision entry nor was it even in the running to be Russia's entry. Instead it was just a local dance school trying to provoke a local discussion about the effect that sexualised US culture has on Russian children. In fact I get the impression we only got to hear about it because the Russian government was hoping we could explain it to them.

So yeah as with Israel despite all the boos Russia is one of those nations that really has to try and dumb it down for Eurovision.

My favourite moment of the Russia entry came right at the end of the video when everyone started throwing around paint powder as they do during the Hindu festival of "Holi." I took this as a reference to a long running argument with a US-based anti-Russian Twitter troll in January/February of this year. At one point I showed him a picture of Russian tanks being paraded through India's capital New Delhi and asked him if it was evidence that India needed to reinforce it's border with Russia to prevent a Russian invasion. We argued about this for the best part of a week but at no point did he pick up on the fact that India doesn't have a border with Russia. That really sums up the intellectual level of the arguments over Ukraine.

Moldova: As with its neighbour Ukraine Moldova has a large ethnically Russia population centred around Transnistria. In a effort to whip Europe up into an anti-Russian frenzy the US has frequently claimed that at any moment Russian troops could invade Ukraine in order to open up a land corridor to annex Transnistria. The only country that doesn't seem at all bothered by this is Moldova because they know that it's nonsense.

As a result their song "I Want Your Love" by Eduard Romonyuta was openly mocking the people like the Ukrainian nationalists who are so desperate for America's love they will believe any old nonsense. This was backed by a video that in a reference to American low culture featured a car chase that could have come straight out of a tacky Hollywood action movie.

The "Cops & Robbers" theme of the video was an attempt to mock the current waves of anti-police violence that the US is suffering from. Most of this violence stems from the Black Power/Pan-Africanist movement of the late-1960's/early 1970's that's encapsulated by "Malcolm X." With a little bit of help from Qaddafi in Libya this is something that the KGB just made up in order to unite Communist groups like the African National Congress (ANC) in order to de-stabilise US allied African nations and the US itself.

The fact that the Cold War has long ended but the US are still doing this to themselves because even President Obama actually believes it has got more then a few old Cold War dogs laughing their heads off in their armchairs.

Moldova was of course knocked out at the first semi-final and I covered them in more detail that the time. This clearly was a result of anti-Russian sentiment however with the US hammering on the police issue throughout the week including the Freddie Grey indictment Eurovision was certainly made to pay for its bigotry because as you may have guessed from all the references to bubbles there is a convention that at Eurovision you only talk about Eurovision.

Hungary: Their song "War's For Nothing" is so self-explanatory it seemed dangerously close to breaking Eurovision's "No overtly political messages" rule. The message was reinforced by the video that showed the singer "Boggie" walking into a city square which was meant to represent Kiev's Maidan Square to sing of peace. Over the past 18 months or so far too many people - particularly US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt - have used Maidan to sing a song of hate.

Czech Republic: This one surprised me because the Czechs are far from a traditional Russian ally. Although they were never formally part of the Soviet Union Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet Bloc and in 1968 the Soviets sent in tanks to brutally crush a popular uprising that was known as "The Prague Spring." This actually led to a famous moment in Eurovision history when this year's hosts Austria had their entry fronted by Czech singer Karel Gott in order to send the message that Eurovision stood with the people of Czechoslovakia.

"Marta Jandova" who represented the Czech Republic alongside "Vaclav Noid Barta" has very strong links with Germany having presented TV shows there and performed the 2011 Women's Football World Cup anthem. This seemed to be the Czechs signalling their confidence in Germany and its role in the Minsk agreement. The song "Hope Never Dies" seemed to be expressing the Czechs frustration at Ukraine and it's former Soviet Bloc supporters. The message being; "We know exactly what you're going through with your desire for revenge because we've been through it ourselves. However we grew up and let it go. We think you should too."

Although I obviously need to provide some order to my ramblings I wouldn't actually have classed either the Hungarian nor Czech entries as pro-Russian so much as generally expressing regret at Ukraine and the mess they've got themselves into. However such is the frenzied and paranoid state that the Ukrainian nationalists and their allies have been whipped up into any questioning of anything they're doing - no matter how reasonable - is almost automatically dismissed as 'Russian Propaganda.'

At around 16:15 on 24/5/15 (UK date) I'll try and be back later to cover the main pro-US faction or "The Baltics + Georgia" as they're more commonly known.

Edited at around 18:00 on 24/5/15 (UK date) to tidy up the above and add;

On the American side there was;

Georgia: As I mentioned during the semi-finals there was really nothing to this. Georgia was simply re-stating its desire to start a war between NATO and Russia in order to punish Russia for the brutal days of the Soviet Union. As you may have guessed from Georgia's most famous son Josef Stalin Georgians can be a little nuts. The song stole it's title "Warrior" from Malta's 2015 entry and it's sword wielding warrior queen motif from Israel's 2014 entry and didn't benefit from either comparison.

Latvia: They were represented by "Aminata Savadogo" whose African heritage leaves her resembling the US pop-star Rihanna. In an effort to more closely resemble her idol Savadogo has even had a massive tattoo done across her sternum between her breasts similar to Rihanna's "Isis" tattoo. I know some pretty hardcore Rihanna fans but I think even they would consider that going a bit too far. Through the selection of Savadogo Latvia was trying to make clear their utter devotion to the US and it's Rihanna obsession.

The song "Love Injected" along with Savadogo's sub-Saharan African heritage was a reference to Russia's growing HIV/AIDS problem which according to the Russians own figures could see 2 million new infections over the next five years. Russia's problem stems from very high levels of the use of intravenous drugs such as heroin amongst people who share their needles. Another part of the problem is that where in most of the world medical blood tests are administered by drawing blood with a hypodermic needle which is used once in Russia the traditional way is to cut the skin with a scalpel - which is often reused - and allow the blood to flow out under it's own pressure.

However amongst a section of Russia's 143.3 million citizens there is a desire to consider HIV/AIDS as a "gay plague" and blame it all on homosexuals. This of course won't solve the problem because it doesn't correctly identify the problem. This was the point the Russia government was making when it announced the details of its HIV/AIDS problem just before competition began.

Latvia though isn't interested in that. Instead all they're interested in is that Eurovision has a very large gay following. Therefore Latvia calculated that it could claim homophobia in an effort to whip the Eurovision crowd up into a massive anti-Russian frenzy.

Latvia also very carefully co-ordinated their entry with the US who supplemented it with the release of "Bad Blood" by "Taylor Swift." Lyrics like; "You made a really deep cut - And, baby, now we got bad blood" being incredibly specific to Russian blood testing procedures.

Obviously this very close co-ordination with a non-competitor nation is not really in the spirit of Eurovision and poses the question of whether Latvia is any longer a nation state or simply a vassal for the US.

Estonia: Their entry "Goodbye to Yesterday" by "Elina Borg and Stig Rasta" also made use of the Taylor Swift "Bad Blood" motif in the video that supported it. However it was primarily a break up song about a mis-matched musical odd couple. This seemed to express a desire by Estonia to follow Ukraine's example and purge the nation of it's ethnically Russian population. Obviously though they intend to blame the ethnic minority for bringing the break up on themselves.

Lithuania: Their entry "This Time" by "Monika Linkyle and Vaidas Baumila" was a clear attempt to mock the Belorussian suggestion that Kiev hurry up and fully implement the Minsk agreement. With lyrics such as "Round and round and round and round we go" they were also mocking the back and forth of the relationship with Russia because after all it's impossible that Lithuania could be responsible for any of the problems.

They chose to show their undying commitment to the US by using this Time Magazine article comparing the "First Kiss" commercial for US clothing company "WREN" to an awkward first date; http://time.com/21332/why-that-first-kiss-video-now-feels-like-a-bad-first-date/ Also the video featured a very pointed shot of someone drinking from a bottle of Coca Cola. Along with McDonalds and Levi jeans Coca Cola was one the big brands that people in the Soviet Union aspired to.

So although I disagreed with the point of view expressed by what I term the Baltic trio I think Lithuania's execution was the best. Unfortunately they spoilt it all with a gay-rights pink background to their stage show which featured a tedious gay kiss during the semi-final. Although they were trying to win over the gay vote by showing how much more gay friendly they are then the Russians what I heard was; "Gays aren't equal, they're clearly inferior and we can make them do whatever we like."

Sweden: Also a Baltic nation Sweden presented us with what was undoubtedly the most vile of all this year's Eurovision entries and possible one of the most morally repugnant entries in competition history.

Although it has been rather overshadowed by ISIL's atrocities what has been going on in Ukraine has been a full-blown civil war. One area where the fighting has been particularly brutal has been at Donetsk airport. Following an ill-advised assault at the behest of the US back in May 2014 a group of pro-Kiev troops became trapped at Donetsk airport eventually being rescued when the Minsk agreement was finally implemented in February 2015. During this time the trapped fighters there became known as "The Cyborgs" and celebrated as a proud symbol of Slavic resistance to Russia aggression.

This celebration of the Cyborgs permeated all aspects of life in the Kiev controlled areas of Ukraine with even school children being encouraged to draw pictures and posters of their exploits. Sweden's entry "Heroes" by Mans Zelmerlow which was accompanied on stage by childlike drawings was a clear celebration of the Cyborgs role in the conflict - particularly their propaganda role.

To my mind the Cyborgs highlight everything that it currently wrong in Ukraine because you have an entire population - particularly children - being taught that their countries problems aren't being caused by say epic corruption, inefficient subsidies on coal mining or even tax policy. Instead they're being taught that all the problems are being caused by an ethnic minority and once that ethnic group has been exterminated all the countries problems will be solved. Personally I'm not seeing a huge difference with ISIL and their infamous Cubs of the Caliphate.

Obviously Sweden will attempt to argue that rather then celebrating it they were simply raising the issue for discussion. Few will believe them though because along with the US Sweden has been, by far, one of the worst instigators of violence in Ukraine. For example in January 2015 a woman came forward to claim that thousands of Russian soldiers had been killed fighting in Ukraine. This was widely reported in the western media who chose to ignore the fact she was a well established agent of Sweden's intelligence service and the story was a complete fabrication.

Similarly in October 2014 Sweden claimed that a Russian submarine had violated its territorial waters and launched a massive search. Sweden's neighbours such as Norway and Finland joined in the search but soon started to point out that there was absolutely no indication of a submarine. So Sweden claimed that the submarine had sailed away and the search was called off. In April of this year Sweden declared that they had made a mistake and the submarine had in fact been a Norwegian civilian fishing boat. We are still waiting for them to formally admit that they made the entire thing up to justify more aggression against Russia.

With a lot of the political nuance of the discussion no doubt being lost on the wider audience by celebrating the Cyborgs I would go so far as to say that Sweden was trying to trigger a Kiev attack in violation of the ceasefire in order to cause the ceasefire to collapse. Sure enough on the day of the 1st semi-final (19/5/15) pro-Kiev forces on the Donetsk line got a little over-excited and violated the cease-fire with a massive artillery barrage.

Therefore it is a bit of a mystery to me how Sweden received any points let alone won this year. Obviously there are certain nations in the Eurovision community such as Poland who allied themselves with Nazi Germany and very much support Sweden's position on ethnic cleansing. Then there are nations such as the UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands who want to see the EU destroy itself. They see a futile confrontation with Russia as a way to achieve this end so will also support Sweden regardless of the death toll.

I think what really carried Sweden over the line though was the public vote. They actually released this song across Europe a couple of months ago where it carried no political significance and simply resembled a budget version of globally popular Swedish DJ "Aviici." It clearly carried that support into the competition with voters not understanding the implications of what they were supporting.

19:30 on 24/5/15 (UK date).

Seriously Ireland.

I know it's been a long and sparkly day but in the great sectarian headcount of 2015 did you really have to give maximum points to Latvia. Their entry "Love Injected" was just them going; "Russia's got a growing HIV/AIDS problem caused by intravenous drug use and some pretty antique hospital sterilisation procedures. However they're ALL blaming it on the gays! So HATE THEM, HATE THEM NOW!!!!!"

The worst bit is that they've clearly got a direct line to Taylor Swift via the US State Department. Seriously they weren't even the best of the Baltic trio.

As for the UK I think we should be extremely grateful for our two points. After all on the political front with a song about moving from the wartime austerity coalition to the modern age we didn't even predict the outcome of our own election. Plus beyond booking Taylor Swift to headline BBC Radio's rival "One #BigWeekend" is it really possible for us to show more contempt for the Eurovision Song Contest?

Anyway it appears that Sweden have won with "Heroes" - their charming little ditty about teaching Ukrainian kids to hate and kill. I know that it's not really in the spirit of Eurovision to suppress unpopular political opinions but with the use of child soldiers and ethnic cleansing both being considered crimes against humanity are we seriously going to be going to Sweden next year?

Anyway it's probably best I leave things here until I've had at least a deep breath and a good night's sleep but to all the gays and cripples who voted to support the 1st Galician;

"Well done, you've f*cking covered yourselves in glory there."

23:15 on 23/5/15 (UK date).

The 2015 Eurovision Song Contest: 2nd Semi-Final.

Back in 1974 the people of Portugal were forced to live under the fascist jackboot of the dictator Marcello Caetano. However almost the entire country still found the time to be glued to the Eurovision Song Contest. The rumour was that if dancers dressed as soldiers appeared on stage as part of Portugal's entry it would be the signal for a popular uprising to begin. By the time Swedish entry ABBA returned to the stage to perform their winning song "Waterloo" the matter had been more or less resolved and democracy has reigned in Portugal ever since.

Despite Ukraine's civil war and despite Eurovision being a much longer event these days I still think that in comparison this year's contest is relatively chilled out. However I'm still not in any mood to take risks as I make a ham-fisted attempt to discuss some of the 7 acts that were eliminated at last night's semi-final;

San Marino: Anita Simoncini and Michele Perniota who represented San Marino are no strangers to Eurovision having graduated from the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. As the name suggests this is exactly the same as the Eurovision Song Contest only with child performers. Born in the 1950's the idea comes from the entirely innocent tradition of children being forced to sing and dance to entertain the grown-ups at big family gatherings. However once you thrust it into the very adult world of international diplomacy and start filming it can take on some slightly more sinister overtones. As a result discussions about paedophilia and what the age of sexual consent should be are never far away at Junior Eurovision.

The reason why the topics of paedophilia and the age of sexual consent are always such big topics at things like Eurovision and the Olympics is because it's such a complex issue it's near impossible to come up with a definitive answer. For example it is possible to look at a specific case such as Jimmy Savile and say that it is definitely wrong. However human sexuality is so complex and such a powerful part of the human condition it involves many shades of grey. This is a nightmare for politicians, lawyers and Judges who have to write and apply the same law to everybody equally.

An example of this would be to imagine if I had a girlfriend who reached the UK age of sexual consent on her 16th birthday on Saturday (23/5/15). If I was to have sex with her tonight (22/5/15) that would be considered a criminal offence and completely socially unacceptable. However if I were to have sex with her on Sunday (24/5/15) that would be considered entirely legal if not completely socially acceptable. Therefore the question is at which point on Saturday does this imaginary girlfriend suddenly become mature enough to consent to sex?

Another more common example for the UK would be a 16 year old boy having sex with his 15 year old girlfriend which although illegal is I think generally considered socially acceptable. Aged 17 and 16 respectively Perniota and Simoncini perfectly encapsulate that example with a little bit of artistic license for the sake of subtly and to acknowledge the differences in the ages of sexual consent across the Eurovision area.

In the day before the Internet and cellphone cameras this type of childhood sexual experimentation was intensely private. For example for someone of my generation getting a girl to show you her exposed breast behind the bike-sheds at school was the most exciting thing that could happen in a teenage boy's life although perhaps not the teenage boys who make up the majority of the Eurovision audience.

In those days a boy might of rushed off to tell his friends exactly what the boob looked like but these days he can snap a photograph on his cellphone or save a copy a webcam chat. These images then tend to get shared around between teenagers in a phenomenon known as "sexting" which has triggered a whole new form of teenage bullying. In the video for "Chain of Lights" there are lots of shots of light being emitted from cellphones in the hands of teenagers and the back-drop of the stage performance resembled one of those heatmaps that are used to show where Twitter or other social-media topics are being sent and received.

This sexting has also created something of a new legal foible. As I think is reasonably common across the Eurovision area here in UK the sexual age of consent is 16 but the age at which a person can consent to participate in pornography is 18. This creates something of a contradiction where a pair of 16 year olds can have sex with each other quite legally but if they film themselves doing it they are committing a criminal offence and will be labelled by the law as paedophiles and bound in chains.

So I really liked San Marino's entry this year. Although it avoids the Ukraine issue entirely this tiny principality in the north of Italy raised an valid and relevant topic for discussion. The way they executed the idea was also I think excellent. For example in the video there are some very silly visual metaphors such as an image of a padlocked gate cutting to a tasteful image of teenage girls crotch in skimpy ballet leotard and frequent images of teenage male hand stroking and appearing to masturbate a candle. Along with the very upbeat and happy tone of the song it is clear that the director was playing it for laughs.

Portugal: Although they've now exited the European Union (EU) bailout the Portuguese economy is still not in a strong position. As a result it is hard for them to justify spending huge amounts of public money on their Eurovision entry and they certainly couldn't afford to host the contest should they win. As a result their song "Ha Um Mar Que Nos Separa (The Sea That Separates)" is pretty much just a pleasant pop-song. Due to the language barrier it's unlikely to be a huge hit across the Eurovision area but should do quite well in the Portuguese speaking world.

However it does touch on some wider political issues. For example they're keen to be let it be known that their singer "Leonor Andrade" was born in 1994 making her both 21 years old and exactly 21 years younger then Trijntje Oosterhuis who represented The Netherlands this year with a song that was ostensibly about female ageing. She also seems to have an air of Chole Bennet who stars in the worldwide smash-hit sci-fi show "Marvels Agents of SHIELD." With more then a few references to "The Lord of the Rings" films the sci-fi/fantasy genre appears to be emerging as something of a mini-theme this year. With her very her very dark and brooding look and a song about an intense yearning for a lost lover Andrade does seem to have the air of a nightmare girlfriend about her which is the sort of thing that people can have some fun with.

The yearning across seas of the song can obviously be used as a metaphor either for Portugal's yearning to remain part of the EU or the Mediterranean migrants yearning to reach the EU. Arguably they are one and the same thing.

Malta: Malta is the type of tiny island where normally the idea of a big news story is one neighbour parking in front of another neighbours driveway. However in the past year they have been plunged straight into the front-line of the Mediterranean migrant crisis and don't even have Italy's limited resources to respond. Therefore their song "Warrior" is very much about the big battle they face. To further emphasise this it is made clear that "Amber" who represents them has done charity work in Africa where many of the migrants are coming from and in Italy where - apart from Malta - a lot of the migrants end up.

The fact that their song title "Warrior" has been stolen by Georgia raises further questions about how Georgia made it through to the final where there will be lots of people talking about Ukraine's civil war but almost no-one reference the migrant crisis. I like the way that seemingly in response the Maltese played up the fact Amber is a green-belt in Judo. Russian President Vladimir Putin is of course a black-belt.

Switzerland: "Melanie Rene" who represents Switzerland is of Mauritian descent which immediately brings up the issue of immigration particularly African migration to the EU. Switzerland has a reputation for being extremely anti-immigrant and in fact has opted to stay outside of the EU in order to prevent it from having to take in migrants. Listening to the anti-immigrant rhetoric coming out of the UK recently it is clear that some would like to form a Swiss-style free trade arrangement with the EU rather then full membership. This of course makes Switzerland a natural ally of the UK at the moment.

Rene has apparently traced her ancestry back to a marriage between and Indian Princess and a French sea captain. Although Mauritius is located in the Indian Ocean this is intended to invoke the story of Pocahontas who was a Native American Indian Princess who married a British settler by the name of John Rolfe who is often wrongly assumed to be either a sea captain or an army officer. This obviously sets the scene for all those Cowboys and Indians storylines you got in the Spaghetti Western movies of the 1960's and 1970's.

Despite being of Mauritian descent and born in Switzerland Rene has also spent a lot of time in the UK particularly studying music at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music (BIMM). Brighton is one of those places where everything is quite close to everything else. However BIMM's main campus is particularly close to a Brighton house I used to live in. In fact I would often find myself cutting through BIMM's car-park several times a day.

In what is possibly one of the highest tributes imaginable my time in Brighton seems to have inspired the 2002 "American IV: The Man Comes Around" album by country and western legend Johnny Cash. Apart from the anthemic cover version of "Hurt" this album also includes the song "Sam Hall" which seems to be a reference to my lesbian wife's then girlfriend who may or may not have gone by the name "Sam." Eventually little Samuel was replaced by the UK Establishment with a medical researcher by the name of Anna who really didn't like me. The idea being that I would be quickly killed off, Anna would cure cancer and all known diseases, together they would have lesbian babies and Britain would rule their world with its brilliance.

With lyrics about standing up and holding your ground the song "Time to Shine" seems to be Switzerland urging the UK to stand up and be proud of what has proved to be a highly controversial program. However with me still very much on the scene, cancer not being cured and no babies appearing and even Ebola seeming to think that Anna should be Cross at her failure telling the UK to stand up and show the world what it has achieved could also be interpreted as Switzerland telling the UK to sit down, shut up and do as it is told.

Ireland: The Republic of Ireland has a long and proud history of success at Eurovision. This stems largely from Ireland's famous neutrality which allows everyone to give it some points without it being a big political statement. However in 2014 Ireland got into politics in a big way with the song "Heartbeat" which with lyrics about breaking the border was intended to give the impression that resurgent after emerging from an EU bailout Ireland's Catholics would soon attempt to push the British Protestants out of Northern Ireland finally fulfilling the dream of a united Ireland.

However people who do Eurovision every year were well aware that as part of it's colonisation of Ireland Britain killed a lot of Catholics and imported a lot of British Protestants in order to change the demographic make-up of the population. As a result Ireland's entry bombed and they failed to make it to the final for the first time in their history.

This year's entry "Playing With Numbers" was clearly a Protestant attempt to revisit the reasons why Ireland did so badly last year. The artist "Molly Sterling" shares her first name with "Molly Smitten-Downes" who represented the UK in 2014. Her last name "Sterling" is a reference to the UK currency Pounds Sterling.

With the song itself being little more then a poor rip-off of the 1997 Sarah McLachlan song "Arms of an Angel" Ireland's entry was forced to rely heavily on support from outside the contest. For example there was UK Prince Charles controversial meeting with Gerry Adams on a State visit to Ireland and today's Irish referendum on gay marriage which is traditionally a way to win friends at Eurovision. There was also the "Asher's Gay Cake" ruling in Northern Ireland.

Although I support gay-rights this troubled me because legally it doesn't seem that Ashers had refused to serve a person because they were gay or refused to provide a product that might be used at, say, a gay wedding. Instead they refused to provide a cake bearing the logo of gay-rights political campaign group and the political slogan "Support Gay Marriage." So to my mind the Court appears to have ruled that people are not allowed to abstain from political campaigns. This is troubling because I think it inhibits the freedom of political expression which is a particular issue in Northern Ireland where during the Troubles it was almost impossible to find a political neutral.

That tangent aside though I think Ireland's main problem was that their entry wasn't particularly good and all the outside interruptions went against the spirit of the contest and made it feel too much like hard work.

Finally I should point out that Israel are through to the final so for sporting reasons I can't go into much detail about their entry at this time. However "Nadav Guedj" who represents them was born in France before his family emigrated to Israel. You don't need to be a Eurovision expert to draw comparisons between this and the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attacks or perhaps more relevantly the associated attack on a Jewish supermarket.

16:30 on 22/5/15 (UK date).