The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest: The Pre-Game.

On Sunday (8/5/16) the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest opened in Stockholm, Sweden.

The first semi-final will take place tonight (10/5/16) at 19:00 (GMT). The second semi-final will take place on Thursday (12/5/16) also at 19:00 (GMT). The Grand Final will take place on Saturday (14/5/16). It is scheduled to begin at 19:00 (GMT) but as always it seems likely to overrun its allotted 3 hour time slot.

The 2015 contest was of course dominated by the civil war taking place in the geographic area formally known as the nation state of Ukraine. It was eventually won by the Swedish entry "Heroes of Our Time" by Mans Zelmerlow.

Since then the war in what used to be known as Ukraine has not gone away. If anything the situation has got much worse.

In August 2015 a terrorist attacked a Thalys train travelling between the Netherlands and France via Belgium. Thanks to little more than luck this attack was thwarted.

In October 2015 a civilian passenger jet was bombed out of the skies over Egypt killing 224 Russian citizens. Although they opt not to participate in the Song Contest Egypt is part of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) of which the Song Contest is merely the tip of the iceberg.

In November 130 people were massacred in a terror attack in Paris, France.

In March a terror attack tore through the Belgian capital Brussels killing 32.

Israel which is also an EBU member seems to be averaging a terrorist attack a day at the moment. Tunisia - another of the EBU's silent partners - saw 38 civilians massacred on a beach in Sousse in June 2015.

Throughout this bloody summer Turkey has been weaponising the flow of refugees from Syria (also in the EBU) by flooding continental Europe with irregular migrants. In response the European Union (EU) has suspended its cherished Schengen passport free zone and the far right are gaining popularity across the continent.

As such I think this is going to be a rough week. There will certainly be no prizes for guessing what the main topics of political discussion will be.

The controversy surrounding this year's contest actually began all the way back in February when what used to be known as "Ukraine" but is now more properly known as the "Shamali (Northern) Province of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)" selected their entry "1944" by Jamala.

This presented huge problems for the organisers not least that no longer being a nation state Shamali Province is ineligible for the competition. Also Jamala is from Crimea which is now part of another nation state - Russia.

The big problem though is that if there is a golden rule of Eurovision it is that songs cannot be overtly political.

So for example if you wanted to complain about a neighbouring country you could do a break-up song about how much your ex-lover used to mistreat you and how glad you are they are gone. You would though still have to be careful that it took the form of a personal story rather than being more generally about the wider political issue of domestic violence.

With the Song Contest owing far more to politics than to music this rule might seem odd. However it performs a number of vital functions.

For starters it stops every song turning into a Grindcore (Very Heavy Metal) tirade against ones neighbours.

Also in the world of global politics and diplomacy almost everything is done through metaphor and code with no-one ever saying exactly what they mean. For example there is currently tension between the US and Turkey over ISIL's supply lines. However in order to follow this discussion in detail you have to be super interested in the design and maintenance of Washington D.C's underground rail (Metro) system.

By forcing everyone to use code and metaphor the Song Contest allows some of the smaller nations - say Malta or San Marino - to sharpen their skills so they at least have a vague idea of what is going on in the wider world.

Shamali Province's entry is all about the Soviets forcible deportation of Turkmen (known locally as "Tatars") from Crimea to China where they became known as "Uighur" in 1944. Although they're attempting to use this as a metaphor for Crimea's decision to rejoin Russia it is clearly an overt reference to a political event.

As such it should not have been allowed into the competition.

Last year Armenia pushed this rule to its limits with "Face the Shadow" although they didn't go so far as to specifically reference the 1915 Genocide. Despite the goodwill of it being the 100th anniversary they were still forced to change the title and some of the lyrics to make it eligible for competition.

More out of a sense of obligation than a genuine desire to succeed Russia lodged a complaint against Shamali Province's entry. The fact this entirely valid objection was dismissed gives very anti-Russian overtones to the entire contest.

In response the organisers seem to have swung back in the opposite direction by promising to strictly enforce the rule that says only flags formally recognised by the United Nations (UN) will be allowed in the arena during the contest.

Following the Brussels attacks a memorial to the dead sprung up in the city. Above that memorial were hung a number of flags including the Turkish flag and one of the flags of the Syrian insurgents. I felt this was done in mockery of the dead. A group of football hooligans clearly agreed and marched on the memorial to tear down the flags prompting a stand off with the riot police. There were also a number of nasty incidents where the Israeli flag was either removed, defaced or replaced by the Palestinian flag.

Sending the riot squad into the arena to break up a football-style punch up is really the polar opposite of what Eurovision is about. As such organisers clearly don't want a repeat of events in Brussels.

There is also some concern that the unrecognised flag to the Nagorno-Karabakh Region (NKR) will make an appearance. Last year I said that the best supporters of Shamali Province can hope for is a repeat of this long frozen conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In the last couple of weeks that conflict has heated up again. There is currently a fragile ceasefire in place and Eurovision clearly don't want to be the people who bring it to an end with a controversial flag wave.

The ban also seems to specifically target the flag of Kosovo. Contrary to what you may be told in the US and British media Kosovo is most certainly not recognised as an independent state. A lot of the opposition to its recognition comes from nations such as Norway who don't normally side with Russia against the US. The Greater Albania movement which led the invasion of Serbia's southern Kosovo province was quite a large issue at last year's contest particularly amongst Albania's neighbours such as Macedonia and Greece.

When talking about Crimea's vote to return to Russia US President Barack Obama likes to say; "You cannot change the borders of Europe by force in the 21st century. The words "In the 21st Century" are included specifically because of the US invasion of Kosovo which changed the borders of Serbia in the final year of the 20th century.

As a result the flying of the Kosovo flag as if it were a national flag will cause a lot of deep offence to a lot of people in Europe.

The flag ban initially also applied to the Rainbow Flag used to signify gay rights. However that has since been relaxed so the flag can be used but not in a political manner.

For much of the first 20 years of the Song Contest homosexuality was illegal in most European nations including the UK. Even today its still not exactly encouraged many eastern European states. As a result in order to avoid getting murdered or going to jail gay people had to live their lives in secret through metaphor and code. There is even a secret gay language called "Polari."

As such there has long been extensive overlap between Eurovision culture and gay culture and I for one think that Eurovision is much better for it. However in recent years there has been a growing problem of the gay community being unable to see beyond the issue of gay rights.

A prime example was Azerbaijan's 2013 entry "Hold Me." This featured a man dancing on a see-through box. Inside the box there was a sort of "shadow man" dressed all in black mirroring his every movement. This was a protest against Azerbaijan's oppressive security state which shadows everyone everywhere they go. However the gay community assumed it was a metaphor for the man's hidden homosexuality and immediately went into an absolute frenzy.

Since then a succession of participants have been quietly patting Azerbaijan on the shoulder and whispering; "Don't worry. We knew what you meant."

This inability to see beyond the gay rights issue has meant that the issue of "Pinkwashing" has been a significant theme recently.

This is when a nation, corporation or politician plays up its support for gay rights in order to hide other nasty things it is up to. For example last year the Republic of Ireland scheduled its referendum of gay marriage for the day after the semi-final in a cynical attempt to make the final. It failed.

It is particularly unfortunate when gay rights activists boo Russia because the US-led opposition to Russia on gay rights is done in support of ISIL. Who throw gay people off tall buildings to execute them.

All the other unrecognised  flags such as the Palestinian Flag, the Kurdish Flag and the Basque Flag seem to have simply been caught in the crossfire.

There is also the issue of Australia's use of the phrase "Facetime." I'll leave that until the competition is properly underway but as far as I'm concerned it has artistic rather than commercial value so should be allowed.

The other big change is to voting.

For many years voting was handled exclusively by secretive national judging panels with their government's foreign intelligence service on speed dial. Then in the 1990's public telephone votes were included and mixed in with the panel's scores.

This has led to certain nations hiding a very dark political agenda behind a very populist song in order to give the impression that their political position enjoys more popular support than it actually does. Poland's "We Are Slavic" in 2014 being a prime example.

This year the judging panels will award their points. The public vote will then award their scores separately. I think this is a much needed change to bring back a level of political precision to proceedings. After all I'm guessing most people don't dedicate an entire week of their year to the Song Contest.

Romania will not be appearing this year because they've failed to pay their EBU membership fee. This debt of around USD16million has been building up since 2007 so patience was always going to run out eventually.

However you may remember that last year the US tried to muscle in on the contest with Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." This year the Song Contest will be broadcast in the US for the first time, admittedly on a fringe gay interest cable channel. This years half-time show in the Grand Final will be performed by US superstar Justin Timberlake.

As such it seems an appropriate time to issue a warning about people trying to freeload on the contest.

16:55 on 10/5/16 (UK date).