The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: Grand Final Pt.9

This must be read as a direct continuation of Part 8; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest-grand_29.html

With Finland throwing the floor open for the United Kingdom to share its experience of immigration and integration the UK's entry was particularly disappointing this year.

United Kingdom: Their song "You're Not Alone" was a barely disguised assurance that the full apparatus of state have been ranged to ensure that the UK's June 23rd (23/6/16) referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union (EU) will result in a vote to remain.

I say barely disguised because the UK was represented by Joe & Jake.

The guitar player Jake is in fact male. However he is so young and fresh faced a Song Contest crowd may mistake him for a lesbian who was trying to make herself appear as masculine of "butch" as possible. This in turn could lead into a discussion about what is being termed; "Non-binary Gender." That is a topic that is currently all the rage in British universities having been needlessly imported from the US.

US President Obama seems to view men's right to pee in the ladies room as the next battle in the crusade for civil rights which is up there with the abolition of slavery. The Eurovision community is of course much more relaxed about the issue because way back in 1999 the Song Contest was won by post-transition transgendered woman Dana International.

As such the Eurovision community is so knowledgeable about transgenderism and transgender rights there is absolutely no way it is going to fall for nonsense terms like "Non-binary Gender."

Therefore I don't think anyone was seriously expected to believe that the UK was declaring itself the champion of Non-binary Gender rights across the Eurovision. Instead I think they were intended to giggle down their sleeves at Obama and his latest round of childish nonsense.

Joe the singer very closely resembled Cillian Murphy in his role of "Thomas Shelby" in the UK TV show "Peaky Blinders." This was the UK attempting to refer all questions to that TV show. With everybody else being limited to one 3 minute song the UK trying to enter a 15 hour TV show seemed to be taking something of a liberty.

Although production has finished the second episode of the third series of Peaky Blinders only premiered in the UK during the second semi-final on May 12th (12/5/16). As such I think they were really referencing the second series that premiered in 2013.

Despite the fact it has been shown in other countries this series was debuted on Netflix the week after the Song Contest. That obviously feeds the technical EBU discussions surrounding the contest because there is a proposal by the EU that online viewing platforms such as Netflix are set a quota to show programs made in the EU.

As far as I can remember there are two main storylines in the second series of Peaky Blinders.

The first revolves around the Birmingham based Shelby crime family trying to expand their operations into London by joining forces with Jewish gangster "Alfie Solomons" played by Tom Hardy. This touches on the migration issue because the very Jewish area of east London where Solomons is based in the 1920's is in fact now a very Muslim area. It also touches on elements of Jewish culture. For example the Solomons character wears the Tallit prayer shawl at all times.

The second revolves around what is termed "The Irish Business." Essentially in return for their criminal activity being tolerated the Shelby's are being pressured by the UK intelligence services to use their gypsy connections to gather information on the Irish civil war between the pro-treaty Fine Gael and the anti-treaty Fianna Fail. Obviously British intelligence wanted the Fine Gael side to win.

What stuck in my memory about series two of Peaky Blinders is that about a week after it ended I had to appear in Court wearing a dark suit and a dark flat cap of the sort that is synonymous with Thomas Shelby. I then had to try and convince everyone that I was completely innocent and all those rumours about me being linked to Irish organised crime were just that. Rumours.

As for the third and current series you may remember that a big theme of the 2014 Winter Olympic ceremonies was Russian history. I think at the time I described it as; "Russia: There for a thousand years before Communism. Still here now."

Inspired by that in January 2016 the UK's participating broadcaster - the BBC - broadcast a very lavish adaptation of "War & Peace." This obviously deals with a very large chunk of Russian history building up to the 1917 Communist revolution and the end of the Russian Empire. Series three of Peaky Blinders seems to continue that theme with a plot to smuggle weapons to Tsarists - known as "White Russians" - so they can launch a counter revolution against the Communists - known as "Red Russians."

The particular group of Tsarists they're working with were exiled from Georgia. In 2008 Georgia launched an attack on its ethnic Russian population thinking that NATO would leap to their aid. NATO didn't and as a result Georgia have been out in the diplomatic cold ever since.

They have a particular notoriety in Song Contest circles because in 2009 their song; "We Don't Wanna Put In" was deemed to be overtly political and therefore ineligible for competition. With Georgia declining to submit an eligible song they did not participate in the contest that year.

Although there might be some surprises in the remaining two episodes Peaky Blinders doesn't seem to be doing very much with the Georgian link. In fact it only seems to be referenced to remind people how large the Russian Empire was and much like the Song Contest itself force most viewers to go look on a map to find out where Georgia is. Between the Russian Caucus' and Armenia/Azerbaijan btw.

The only other thing of note about the UK's entry was that amid the obligatory references to "the black music" Joe & Jake cited the British dance act Rudimental as one of their influence. Rudimental have a reputation for making fairly average female vocalists such as 2012 UK X-Factor contestant Ella Henderson look extremely good. Signing them up for 2017 would be a big indication that the UK is starting to take the Song Contest seriously.

Having declined to enter a particularly good song this year the UK instead focused all its efforts on staging a series of events outside of the Song Contest in the hope they would force their way though the Eurovision bubble. I covered many of them here; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-2016-eurovision-song-contest.html

One thing I didn't get around to covering though was the uproar leaking of the mandatory Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) for 10 and 11 year olds of May 10th (10/5/16).

As I've mentioned two key planks behind social/racial cohesion in the UK are housing and schooling. The problem is that the current Conservative government of the day seems to despise both of these areas.

On the issue of housing they have already introduced the Housing & Planning Act 2016. This significantly weakens the Section 106 provisions of the Town & County Planning Act 1990. For example it gives developers much more opportunity to challenge Section 106 provisions imposed upon them. It also provides the option for them to opt out of Section 106 provisions after five years. That means they can convert affordable, social housing into premium, private accommodation five years after completing their development.

The Conservatives have also done away with Housing Benefit replacing it with a Universal Credit payment that is capped. This prevents Universal Credit being used to top up the wages of the low paid to help them afford private sector rents in the way that Housing Benefit was. You may have heard about the widespread protests against what was dubbed; "The Bedroom Tax."

In the 2016 Budget the Conservatives announced plans that it was going to take all schools out of local authority control and turn them into autonomous Academy's. That would obviously render the Oldham example impossible.

Unlike changes to Housing Benefit and planning legislation the issue of education is one where middle-class voters who make up much of the Conservatives powerbase are heavily engaged in and there have been very polite, middle-class protests against the government's policies. The leaking of the SATs gave those protests a little bit of help to remind the Conservatives that in future for the good of the nation the Queen may exercise her right to decline to sign some of their proposals into law.

The scandal also touched on the election of Sadiq Kahn as Mayor of London on - technically - May 7th (7/5/16).

There were really two planks to Kahn's campaign platform. The fact that he is a Muslim and his promise to build more affordable homes in London. As the London Mayor has no authority to give permission to others to build homes affordable or otherwise let alone build them himself I think it is fair to say that Khan's only campaign platform is that he is a Muslim.

The infinitely more powerful UK Secretary of State for Business Sajid Javid is also the Muslim son of Pakistani immigrant parents. As such the fact that Sadiq Khan is a Muslim really shouldn't be an issue in Britain. Particularly in London. However the UK Labour Party have got absolutely nothing else going for them so decided to run a nasty racist, homophobic Mayoral campaign.

This began way back in March when unprompted the Khan campaign announced that it was sacking Shueb Salar. They announced to the world that they were doing this because Salar had made a series of very offensive comments in which he accused all immigrants from the Bengal area of India of being smelly, declared that gay people deserve to be beaten up in public and the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby had been faked by the Zionists to smear Islam.

The subtext of this announcement was that as a good Muslim Khan is a close friend of this man and wanted to continue employing him. However the vast Zionist conspiracy wouldn't allow him to become Mayor if he did.

With the Khan campaign being focused entirely on race the rival Goldsmith campaign started to reach out to London's Jewish, Sikh and Hindu communities. This was quickly labelled racist and hateful by the Khan campaign. What a lot of people failed to realise is that what the Khan supporters found so offensive and Islamaphobic was the suggestion that Jews, Sikhs and Hindus were allowed to vote at all.

Then of course there was the anti-Semitism scandal in the weeks leading up to the election. What Labour were trying to do there was send the message that while the Grand Zionist Conspiracy wouldn't allow Khan to come out and declare himself to be an anti-Semite he was certainly friends with a lot of anti-Semites.

The fact that the Labour Party were prepared to run this type of appalling campaign and the fact their supporters didn't pick up on it really highlights the UK lefts Islam problem.

Fortunately the British Establishment left a foot in on election day when thousands of Jewish voters in Barnet were denied the right to vote. This obviously gives the Courts opportunity to overturn the election result.

The hope being that in response to "the Jews" challenging Khan's election Labour supporters would start ranting and raving about the Zionist Conspiracy against Muslims. That would certainly have been a fun topic of conversation for Song Contest week.

However so far voters in Barnet have declined to challenge Khan's election. So the SATs scandal was also the UK lamenting what might of been. Khan though will do well to remember that the option of a challenge remains open.

At around 16:35 on 30/5/16 (UK date) I'll be back to finish after dinner once I've cleared my head a bit.

Edited at around 18:50 on 30/5/16 (UK date) to add;

Also on May 10th (10/5/16) police in Manchester, UK released footage of an anti-terrorism training exercise they'd conducted the previous night. Sadly it is part of the world that we now live in that the police do need to conduct this sort of training exercise from time to time. Back in December 2015 a similar exercise was conducted in London.

Manchester of course is under the control of a completely different police force so they also had to conduct their own training.  I think this exercise was timed to take place before the England v Turkey football friendly that was held on May 22nd (22/5/16). That match was part of the warm-up to the Euro 2016 football tournament being held in France.

So while the timing was convenient rather than being something to do with the Song Contest directly this seemed to be part of an urgent conversation that needed to be had between British and French police ahead of Euro 2016. After all if things get really bad British police/troops can be deployed on the ground in northern France in about three hours.

I suspect that once the security nightmare that is Euro 2016 is over the men with guns would like a few strong words with the Eurovision organisers.

What happened next though seems to have come as a bit of a surprise to everyone.

In order to make these training exercises as realistic as possible they are often based on previous attacks that have taken place. This exercise was clearly based on the September 2013 Al Shabaab attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. As happened in the Westgate attack one of the police officers playing the role of the terrorists shouted; "Allahu Akbar!" as he detonated his 'suicide bomb' to indicate that the attack was being carried out in the name of Islam.

This provoked a massive backlash on social media from much of the British left. Greater Manchester police were forced to issue an apology for racistly and Islamaphobically suggesting that the Westgate Mall attack had been carried out by Islamic terrorists.

As such it became further evidence of the European left's Islam problem. When it comes to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) there is a very strong argument put forward by leading Islamic scholars that the group is in no way Islamic. This is borne out by the fact that many ISIL fighters seem to know absolutely b*gger all about Islam.

However there are other groups like Al-Shaabab, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al- Islamiyya (Ahrar al-Sham) and the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) who are most certainly Islamic terrorist groups. To attempt to try and claim otherwise is just utterly ridiculous.

It actually strikes me a snide little trick by Muslims who do support the views of these extreme terrorist groups to shield the terrorist from legitimate criticism. Sadly though it's one the European left seem to have fallen for hook, line and sinker.

With the UK more or less declining the opportunity to participate in discussions within the Song Contest bubble it fell to Israel to provide everyone with a spectacular example of how not to go about integrating large numbers of predominately Arab Muslims into society.

Israel: This year they were represented by Hovi Star.

If you want an idea of how famous Hovi Star is within Israel apart from being a chart-topping popstar since 2009 he has also provided the Hebrew voiceover for a host of blockbuster movies such as The Lego Movie, Cinderella, Inside Out and particularly Frozen. Israel made much of his role in Frozen with the style of the song very much in keeping with that movie and animated snowflakes and icicles being projected onto the stage throughout both of the live performances.

With Hovi Star providing the Hebrew voiceover for Frozen the Arabic translation was of course provided by subtitles at the bottom of the screen. This is the sort of thing that is extremely infuriating for Israeli Arab parents because they can't take very young children who don't speak Hebrew to see the movie because they can't yet read Arabic. They can though recognise the pretty pictures on the adverts that are specifically designed to get young children to pester their parents to take them to see the movie.

Although more liberal minded Israeli Jews and Arabs have got together to get more children's movies dubbed into Arabic there is a suspicion that the Jewish, Zionist right are doing this on purpose. It is just another one of the subtle little forms of discrimination they employ to make it extremely difficult for Arabs to live within Israel.

With lyrics such as; "You speak, I listen, I'm your friend" and "Come in close and take my hand" on the surface the song sounded like a plea for Israeli Jews and Arabs to live together in peace and harmony.

However the title of the song "Made of Stars" was a clear reference to the Star of David which is the universal symbol of Judaism. The lyrics also made discreet reference to a people escaping slavery due to a secret promise (with God). Therefore the tone was very clearly intended to remind Israeli Arabs that they will never be anything but second class citizens in a Jewish state.

To remind you of the problems this sort of attitude has brought to Israel in terms of terrorism and security much of the video in support of the song seemed to have been shot along the Tel Aviv seafront. This was a reference to the March 8th (8/3/16) terror attack in which US citizen Taylor Force was stabbed and killed close to where US Vice President Joe Biden was having dinner with his family.

If you need a further reminder of the price that Israel is paying for this attitude while I was writing this there was another stabbing attack on an Israeli soldier in Tel Aviv. They seem to be averaging about one per day since September 2015.

20:10 on 30/5/16 (UK date).