It's Eurovision Time !

Back in the 1950's the idea of being able to beam the same live TV pictures across western Europe at the same time was nothing short of revolutionary. So the European winners of world war two pooled their resources to make that dream a reality which is why Israel is considered part of Europe in this instance. The Eurovision project as it became known poured huge amounts of money into Information Communication Technology (ICT) research and staged many Euro-wide galas to show off their new toys. The most successful and long running of these is the Eurovision Song Contest which holds it's 54th final in Germany tonight (14/5/11).

Throughout the cold war the songs and the voting became a way for highly political, secret voting panels in the European countries to send coded messages to each other. So much so that Portugal's 1974 entry was actually the command instruction for the Carnation Revolution which overthrew Portugal's fascist dictatorship. Portugal's 2011 entry is acutely aware of this fact but was sadly knocked out in the semi-final. At the end of the cold war the newly liberated eastern-European nations were allowed to join the contest forcing the creation of the qualifying system and introducing public (telephone) voting which created the terrifying prospect that ordinary members of the public might vote for songs they actually like listening too.

Britain desperately wants to host the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 as a way to start their Olympic summer. So in order to win in 2011 they've dusted down a boyband from the 1990's in the hope of winning votes from single women (and let's be honest, men) in their late twenties/early thirties. With their song - "I Can" the band "Blue" (the colour of the Conservative Party) also hope to energise the supporters of northern-European euro-sceptic parties in places like Finland, Denmark and Norway to help Britain smash apart the euro-zone. Incidentally Norway's entry was spectacularly racist but again was knocked out in the semi-final. Disguised as an attempt to stop women from sub-Saharan Africa being tricked into the sex trade it was really a complaint about black migration into the predominately white northern Europe. The fact that the singer was a lookalike of Makosi Musambasi, the Zimbabwean made famous by UK Big Brother means that it was also a little bit of a dig at Britain over the north sea oil tax.

Personally I think that Britain should have entered Jessie J. Apart from the obvious joke she's currently the best Britain's got at this sort of thing. Although Jessie J's main claim to fame is that she's written songs for big US pop stars like Alicia Keys and Miley Cyrus she also suffered a stroke at a time when strokes were very hot in UK/US bilaterals. Her first single - Do it Like a Dude - was an ode to all those young women who have been turning up at protest black blocs recently. The message was simply that if they dropped the attitude and tried wearing a dress once in a while they'd stand a much better chance of finding themselves a husband. Her second single - Price Tag - was both and attempt to convince the world that now Britain's broke it doesn't care about money and send the message to the Israelis that Britain doesn't have a problem with Jewish settlers "pricetagging" Palestinians. Her third single - Nobody's Perfect- was a general apology with the video making specific reference to both the Royal Family and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It's a shame then that the Americans have already released their response in the form of Aloe Blacc. Instead of playing Eurovision Jessie J will this weekend be playing BBC Radio 1's one big weekend in Cumbria.

Oh and I think Moldova have already won the annual Eurovision WTF! award which in a year when Ireland's Jedward are also appearing is quite the achievement.