And you dare me to face the attack

Yes folks, it's that time of the year already, when I pointlessly alienate 99% of regular readers by reminding you that this is (theoretically at least) a Eurovision blog as well as a Scottish politics blog - hence the 'Pop!' bit of the title.  My original plan was to call it 'Nat Goes Pop!', but I realised in the nick of time that people would probably think I was called Natalie.

In years and years of voting in the now-defunct UK national selection for Eurovision, my strike rate of picking winners was pretty atrocious, which I naturally take to be a sign of impeccable good taste on my part.  As far as I can remember, the only winners I voted for were Imaani in 1998, Jessica Garlick in 2002 and Javine in 2005.  (And stretching a point I might say Jade Ewen in 2009, although that wasn't a national selection in the traditional sense.)  But after only two attempts, my strike rate with Ireland now stands at a much healthier 50%, after I voted earlier this evening for Only Love Survives by Ryan Dolan, which emerged triumphant as the country's entry for Malmö following a tight finish. I think the song is decent enough, although unfortunately the live performance wasn't as good as the studio version.

By far the best song to be selected so far is Norway's I Feed You My Love by Margaret Berger, although I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven't seen this year's winner yet. We can, however, assume with a degree of safety that the winner will not be the UK entry, after the BBC decided to build on the 'success' of Engelbert Humperdinck last year by going for yet another 'big name' internal selection.

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After John Major devalued the pound, thus blowing out of the water the idea that only Labour were the party of devaluation, John Smith famously branded Major "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government".

Tonight the UK's much-vaunted AAA credit status was downgraded. I'd say that leaves David Cameron looking like the downgraded Prime Minister of a downgraded union state.

But it's not all grim for the No campaign. They can always pray in aid the fact that Britain is still the fourth fifth sixth seventh largest economy in the world.