Stand down from Warp Factor Four, Mr Baker

Well, it seems my guess as to the identity of the mystery visitor from Tucson was bang on the money - Kevin Baker has left a long comment on the previous thread. As ever, let's go through it point by point (weary sigh)...

"I see you're still outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point."

Really? Well, let's recap then. We have a situation where a man driven by a paranoid, hate-filled ideology murders dozens of innocent people with legally-obtained firearms. According to you, the main issue we have to address is that those innocent people shouldn't have run away - and then you accuse others of being outstandingly skilled at avoiding the point? Brazen, Kevin, I'll give you that.

"When rampage shootings occur (almost always in disarmed victim zones) they continue until one of two things happens: the shooter decides he's finished, or a good guy with a gun shows up and stops him. The only other way such shootings stop is when the shooter is overwhelmed by his potential victims."

Kevin, focusing on how shootings stop is a counsel of despair, which if I may say so rather misses the point. What is rather more salient is how they start, or if you like, how they were enabled. This one, like so many others, was enabled by legal access to firearms. It's no coincidence, therefore, that violent gun deaths are disproportionately high not in "disarmed victim zones" as you put it, but in heavily-armed territories such as the one you live in.

"So, "the strictest gun laws in the world" didn't prevent Cumbria's massacre, and Norway's gun laws didn't prevent this massacre."

What a peculiar way of putting it. First of all, to the best of my knowledge the UK's gun laws are not "the strictest in the world" - I believe that honour (and it's a great one) may well belong to Japan. And the UK's laws didn't prevent Derrick Bird carrying out a massacre for a very simple reason - they permitted him to own the guns he used to kill. From which there are only two possible rational conclusions to choose between...

1) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, and therefore should be tightened further.

2) The laws weren't strict enough to prevent the massacre, but should be left as they are because the risk of avoidable deaths is somehow outweighed by the right of a minority to enjoy their weapons.

There is no third option that allows you to claim that Bird's murderous actions were brought about by the law denying him access to other weapons - that's logic-bending nonsense, and you know it.

"We bear the primary responsibility for our own safety. The State can help, but the State cannot wrap us in swaddling our entire lives."

In a democracy, we are the masters of the state - it is not a foreign entity. In the UK, we exercise the responsibility for our own safety largely by collective means, rather than the individualistic cowboy tactics you prefer to put your faith in. Which strategy is more successful, and therefore more responsible? The respective violent death rates in our two countries will assist you with that one.

"If you accept that you have a duty to your society, to your fellow-man, then defending them against attack is morally right."

Regardless of which side of the gun debate we fall on, surely the true moral imperative we should be focusing on here is the responsibility of the individual not to kill others. The fact that you seem more interested in the victims' "immoral" actions in doing what they could to save themselves in a state of almost unimaginable stress does, I'm afraid, tell us rather a lot about your philosophy.

"Breivik is at fault here, no doubt about it..."

Well, that's big of you.

"...but the death toll is as high as it is because we no longer teach people - average people - that it's important for all potential victims to be as dangerous as they can. No, we teach them to wait for the State to save them.

And you can see how well that works."

Oh, I can indeed. Homicides in 2009 :

Scotland 79
Arizona 324

Gun deaths in 2009 :

Scotland 2
Arizona 198

Next question?

The man has absolutely no shame

A day or two ago, I noticed on my stats that this blog had received a couple of visits from Tucson in Arizona, which just happens to be the home of our beloved friend Mr Kevin Baker.  I didn't think anything much of it until I recalled that part of Baker's initial reaction to the Cumbrian massacre last year was "I wonder what James Kelly will have to say about all this", apparently thinking that such an incident ought somehow to have made me question my belief that easy legal access to guns is a bad thing, as opposed to...well, confirming that belief.  Was he really delusional enough to think the same thing as a result of dozens of murders in Norway carried out with legally-obtained firearms?  I have my suspicions.  After all, we learn on his blog that the problem in Norway was not Breivik's guns, or even his extreme right-wing ideology - no, it was simply that the victims "ran away". Baker quotes another blogger who said this -

"When (the shooter) began shooting, everyone ran.

That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead. A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once."

And then he adds his own observation -

"Yes, had a group of young men charged the shooter, some of them would have been wounded or killed. But no one charged the shooter, and literally dozens are dead."

Jesus. Quite simply...Jesus.

Now, I'm not going to claim that the Kevin Baker Fan Club are ideologically fellow travellers of Breivik, because the Norwegian is a Christian fundamentalist and as I understand it Baker is an atheist. And of course one is a mass-murdering psychopath, and the other is a non-violent blogger. But, all the same, you wouldn't have to look far to spot the overlaps between the KBFC's own angry, paranoid rhetoric and Breivik's. Bearing that in mind, and also the fact that yet another legal gun owner has just done something that legal gun owners supposedly don't do, you might have thought that if we can't hear anything sensible from the direction of Tucson, Arizona, at the very least a period of dignified silence and reflection might have been in order.

Haba Haba, hujaza kibaba

I follow quite a few fellow Eurovision obsessives on Twitter, and I spotted a tweet from one of them the other day expressing shame that an entry in Anders Behring Breivik's diary reveals him - bizarrely - to be a fan of the contest...

"May 14th : It's the Eurovision finale today. I just love Eurovision … ! :-) It's a lot of crap music but I think it's a great show all in all. I've seen all the semi-finals and will take the time off to watch it later today, online. My country has a crap, politically-correct contribution as always. An asylum seeker from Kenya, performing a bongo song, very representative of Europe and my country … In any case; I hope Germany wins!"

In truth, I think we Eurovision fans can actually be quite proud of the fact that he took such exception to the Norwegian entry, and Norway can also be proud that they chose a song partly in Swahili, performed by a Norwegian-Kenyan (not an "asylum-seeker"), in this year of all years. I must admit it wasn't my cup of tea, although the chorus was strong.

Sorry, Norway : Iain Gray says you can't be Scandinavian anymore

As a public service, I thought I'd take my personal Tardis back to Oslo in 1905, and deliver an important - albeit probably unwelcome - message to the naive populace on behalf of Iain Gray MSP :

"Christian Michelsen's bizarre speech is just the latest attempt by his government to muddy the water over exactly what it means by independence...

The Norwegian government clearly knows how unpopular its separatist agenda is but attempting to water down the language isn't going to fool anybody.

Mr Michelsen's peculiar claims that the Scandinavian identity would somehow be enhanced by tearing Norway off from Sweden are utter nonsense. Either Norway is part of the Scandinavian political union or it is not."

So there you have it, people of Norway. Independence or a Scandinavian identity - it's entirely your choice, but stop deluding yourselves that you can have both. The idea that anyone in Oslo will still consider themselves Scandinavian after 106 years of independence is for the birds.

I can't hold back, I can't go back, I must be free

Some Eurovision semi-finals are extremely predictable, some produce thrills and spills, and tonight's was definitely in the latter category. I was wrong about three of the ten qualifiers I had pencilled in, but they weren't the three I thought I might be wrong about (if that makes sense). One of the biggest shocks was Norway's elimination. I'd always had mixed feelings about the song, though - I thought the chorus was very strong, but the rest of it was excruciatingly bad (especially the lyrics). Albania's failure has taken most people by surprise as well, although to be fair it was the performer who was considered impressive, rather than the song itself.

I'm pleased that my gut feeling that Switzerland might just sneak through was borne out, and I'm absolutely delighted to be proved wrong in leaving Hungary off my list. It was undoubtedly the class entry of the field, although I still don't hold out a lot of hope for it in the final. As for myself, I ended up voting for both Poland and Serbia - that was down to the language issue, but I must admit the Polish song has really grown on me, and I was a bit sad that it didn't make the cut.

Nothing I saw changed my view that this is the weakest Eurovision in terms of musical quality since Stockholm in 2000, but the staging can cover up a multitude of sins, and it was an enjoyable show. Roll on the delights of Thursday...which may or may not include Jedward. Here they come, here they come, dum da dum da dum da dum.

Eurovision reflections

I think at this time last year I managed a decent-length post on this topic, but I'm in one of those frames of mind where I think I'd struggle to string together a decent sentence, let alone seven proper paragraphs. Perhaps a numbered list of the main points will do to be getting on with!

1) Still don't quite get Norway, but it was obvious even to me it was going to win. The 'most points ever' thing I do find slightly odd.

2) I'm surprised and thrilled that Iceland finished second - when I predicted fourth place for them last night I actually worried that might be a touch on the high side. It genuinely is one of my all-time favourite Eurovision songs, so I'm glad Europe went for it (unlike some of my other favourites down the years!).

3) On second thoughts, maybe I wasn't so foolish in voting for Out of Control in the Greek national final!

4) The notion that Graham Norton and Andrew Lloyd-Webber were putting about that 'this is a music contest again'...well, any UK Eurovision fan will always be grateful for some positive spin at last, but it might be a touch premature in this case. The result tonight was actually remarkably similar to 2006 - a worthy runaway winner from western Europe masking the huge amount of political voting that was still going on. Romania and Moldova swapped votes, Andorra voted for Spain, Cyprus voted for Greece, Finland voted for Estonia (their neighbours and linguistic cousins), and it was pretty close to business as usual in the Balkans. I'm sure there were plenty of other examples I can't think of off the top of my head.

5) I wanted Paddy O'Connell to succeed Terry Wogan - but I was wrong. Graham Norton was excellent tonight, with exactly the right blend of cynicism, absurdity and positivity where it was warranted. It was only on the latter element that Terry Wogan has been found wanting in recent years.

6) The one area in which Norton was inferior to Wogan was in his failure to anticipate the most predictable political voting. Wogan would have predicted the destination of Andorra and Cyprus' douze points several seconds in advance - whereas Norton was seriously wondering if Andorra might be Patricia Kaas fans!

7) Norton also tried to maintain the tension for the last half-hour of voting on the question of whether the UK would stay in the top five, even though that was never in doubt. What was very close was the race for fourth place between Turkey and the UK, but he seemed totally oblivious to that!

8) As a UK supporter, I thought we had a genuine chance for all of about twenty seconds. When the first set of votes gave us ten points and Norway twelve it looked possible - but as soon as we got zero from the second set of votes I knew it was going to be a patchy night.

9) Why, oh why, oh why didn't I take Keith Mills seriously to task this year rather than last year over his anti-UK agenda? His initial prediction for It's My Time yesterday was 16th-20th, which he very generously hardened up to 16th in his final call. And what do you know? He's brazenly glossing over the fact that he got it so spectacularly wrong. Now there's a surprise.

10) Talking of Mr Mills, he does have this tendency to utterly convince himself that something very improbable is true and then flog the point to death in spite of a mass of contradictory evidence. A good example this year was his assumption that Lloyd-Webber was on the stage solely to impress the juries - from which he concluded it was likely to 'backfire' because the voting public would dislike it. But where is the slightest evidence that was ever the UK's thinking? For my money Lloyd-Webber was on stage to impress both the juries and the public with his celebrity - whether it worked or not I don't know, but I've little doubt that was always the idea.

11) Alsou was a good choice as host (pity she didn't get a chance to sing in place of the unfunny interludes), and I actually quite liked the intervention from space. Wasn't that done when the contest was in Latvia as well?

12) I actually made two slightly different predictions last night (one on Politicalbetting.com and one here), and I should have stuck with the first one because it was more accurate! I got last-minute cold feet about the UK's potential for a top five placing.

13) I'm surprised how poorly both Portugal and Malta did.

14) In the end I simply couldn't decide - so I voted for both Portugal and Estonia! At least Estonia received the decent placing they richly deserved.

So here's to Oslo 2010. As I hinted above, I hope the EBU look at tweaking the voting system a little further. For one thing, what's the point of having ordinary members of the public (ie. potential political voters) on the national juries when the public can vote by televote anyway?

My prediction for Eurovision final (Saturday)

I fared reasonably well with my top three prediction last year (I got the top two right, and my tip for third came sixth) so I'm going to be a bit more ambitious this time round and attempt the top five. Almost certainly a recipe for disaster, for as much as there's a red-hot favourite this year, the lower placings are very difficult to predict. For a long time I'd been feeling confident that, with both an extremely favourable draw and the Andrew Lloyd-Webber factor, the UK were set fair for a top five placing, but I'm now starting to get cold feet about that after the reports from today's rehearsals. Inexplicably, the juries vote after the final rehearsal, meaning that 50% of the vote is settled on the basis of something the audience don't actually get to see (can't be justified, surely?), so a less-than-perfect performance today may well have dented Jade's chances significantly. So, with that in mind, here's my wild stab in the dark...

Winners - Norway
2nd - Greece
3rd - Bosnia-Herzegovina
4th - Iceland
5th - Portugal

Possible dark horses - UK, Malta

I know I said last night that I thought we were heading back to Athens, and I'd stand by that if only Greece hadn't received such a significantly worse draw than Norway. I still personally don't fully understand the appeal of the Norwegian song, but there are times when a consensus of opinion is so strong you just can't ignore it.

I still can't make up my mind who I'll be voting for myself - with my personal rule of always voting for an entry entirely sung in a language other than English, it'll be either Portugal or Estonia, but on the basis of the semi-final performances they're quite evenly-matched for me. But my heart will be with the superb Icelandic entry all the way.

Of course, the fascination of tomorrow night will be to see how the new voting system works in practice. I suspect that although the political voting patterns will be somewhat diluted, they'll still be very noticeable. Let's not forget that Greece and Cyprus used to regularly swap 12 points even in the days when the voting was 100% jury.

Get rid of the old, take a hold and be free

My first reflection on tonight's Eurovision semi is that I think we're heading back to Athens next year. The staging of the Greek entry was quite breathtaking - it hardly seems to matter that it's an average sort of song, averagely sung. What does matter of course is that Sakis Rouvas is a major star across many parts of Europe, and all things considered I think he may just have the beating of Norway. On the other hand, I have to admit that I haven't entirely understood the widespread appeal of Norway from the moment I first heard it a couple of months ago! My other confession is that I actually voted against This is Our Night in the Greek national final (the first opportunity I'd ever had to vote in a non-UK selection) which may end up looking like a slightly silly decision in forty-eight hours' time. But then I voted for Yodel In The Canyon Of Love in 1997 as well...

As for my prediction, in spite of the momentary loss of nerve I mentioned on Twitter, I did fare slightly better this time and got nine out of ten right. My only blemish was that I thought Serbia would go through and Albania wouldn't. (Memo to Serbia - revert to one of those powerful ethnic ballads next year!) Funnily enough, when I was drawing up the list I pondered putting Albania in at the last minute - but if I had done it would have been Denmark I'd have left out. As ever, it'll be interesting to see which song was the jury pick.

I'm sure I'd already know the answer to this if I'd been following it closely enough over the last few months - but why were Greece and Cyprus paired together in the same semi-final? If the main purpose of the new (as in new last year) rules is to split up the various Eurovision old pals' act, none dates back further than the Greeks and the Cypriots.

Oh, and Estonia were indeed excellent. It'll be a close call between them and Portugal when I'm deciding how to vote on Saturday.

Solutions to the Eurovision political voting problem

I went out of my way to defend Terry Wogan on the All Kinds of Everything blog yesterday (I know, I've got an unhealthy fixation with that place), so it was a bit disappointing to hear him make such fatalistic remarks about the future of the Eurovision Song Contest in his commentary tonight. If he's ready to call it a day, that's his prerogative, but the idea that the entirety of western Europe is going to join him in doing so is a bit melodramatic. I wouldn't deny for a moment there's a serious problem with political voting, but the irony is that this is the year a significant first step was made towards addressing that issue. The new rules that applied at the semi-final stage successfully produced a fair balance between western and eastern qualifiers for the first time in years, so now all that's needed is a similar innovation to sort out the problem in the final. Off the top of my head, I can think of four possibilities that would provide at least a partial solution.

1) Allow each country to award points to fifteen different entries, instead of the current ten. This wouldn't have been feasible in the past, but now that only the top marks are read out, it would no longer slow proceedings down at all. Of course, under this system the top points would still be awarded on a neighbourly basis, but it's reasonable to assume the lower set of points would be distributed more on merit, leading to a fairer overall outcome. An example to illustrate - if a country happened to finish twelfth out of twenty-five in every single televote, under the current system it would finish last with no points at all. That simply can't be considered a fair reflection of the result people are actually voting for.

2) Allow each country to award points to five eastern countries, and five western countries. This would have the advantage of still allowing viewers to decide the result, and still to vote for whichever country they like - indeed it would be a strong incentive to cast two votes - but it would also, at a stroke, neutralise the in-built advantage eastern countries currently enjoy.

3) The BBC could surrender its 'Big Four' status in exchange for something more worthwhile - separate representation in the contest for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It would be the right thing to do on its own merits, but it would also produce a new British Isles voting bloc that could balance out its counterparts in the Balkans, the Baltic, Scandinavia, and the ex-Soviet Union. And if anyone tells you Scotland would never award high marks to England, I can tell you for certain they're wrong. Apart from anything else, about 8% of the population is English-born.

4) Revert to a 50/50 weighting for the jury and televote. Probably the simplest solution, in that it's been done before, at least in some countries.

On the contest itself, I was a bit disappointed to see Russia run away with it - as I said before Serbia, Portugal and Albania were my favourites, but I would still have been much happier to see Greece, Ukraine or Armenia take the crown than Russia. Ah well, it's all a matter of personal taste at the end of the day. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing my prediction turn out to be close to the money, although it wasn't exactly a tough one to call this year! And at least the song that was 'clearly the worst in the whole contest' (© Keith Mills 2008) somehow managed to finish 5th out of 43 entries. Wonder how it managed that?

Prediction for Eurovision final (Saturday)

There's an episode of the 1980s sitcom Just Good Friends where Jan Francis' character repeatedly tells Paul Nicholas there's "something missing" in their relationship without specifying what, which eventually results in an exasperated Nicholas screaming "WHAT IS THIS THING?". I felt a bit like that today when trying to make sense of the reports of Jelena Tomašević's performance in the final round of rehearsals. The most frequent comment was that she was in good voice, but that there was "something" missing. WHAT IS THIS THING?

Even leaving aside this missing thing that everyone seems utterly incapable of articulating (maybe Andy Abraham's nightmare vision has already come to pass), I was always a bit sceptical that Serbia could quite pull it off. In my view, it's definitely the class song of the field, but then I thought the same about Serbia & Montenegro in 2004 (they came second) and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2006 (they came third). So my prediction for Serbia is top three, but without any embarrassing need for Zeljko Joksimovic to present the trophy to himself. ("Great song, Zelkjo." "Thanks, Zeljko, you did a great job presenting too. And I love what you've done with your hair.")

But if not Serbia, then who? The bookies seem to agree (although they've been spectacularly wrong before) that the only other countries in serious contention are Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Sweden, and possibly Armenia. Personally, I just can't see Sweden winning - Hero is slightly higher quality than their usual fare, but it's still sticking to the same basic formula that frequently delivers them fifth or sixth place but no higher. I think Greece and Armenia will similarly come up short, so that leaves a battle between Ukraine and Russia. If that's the case, I feel Russia might just sneak it, if only because it cunningly draws the ice skating and violin-loving demographic into the pool of potential televoters (I'm being flippant).

So my prediction is :

Winners - Russia
2nd - Ukraine
3rd - Serbia

Potential dark horses :

Portugal
Norway (aka 'clearly the worst song in the contest', © Keith Mills 2008)

Mr Mills' musings also lead me to have an even greater interest in the fate of the UK this year. He confidently stated at a ridiculously early stage (when many songs had yet to even be selected) that Andy Abraham was 'certain' to finish in the bottom five, and was highly likely to finish last. I responded that I felt he could achieve the UK's best result since Jessica Garlick, which would mean a top fifteen placing. Unfortunately, I made that prediction before the UK received its lousy place in the draw, so I'm less confident than I was, but to be honest I'd settle for top twenty - since that would be sufficient to show up Mr Mills' "certainty" for the closed-minded nonsense it always was. Here's hoping.

My issues with this year's Eurovision contestants - no. 7

Maria Haukaas Storeng of Norway

"Love can be hard sometimes
Yes, it can catch you off guard like bad crimes"

Hmmm, this is problematical on just all sorts of levels. First of all, Maria seems to be drawing a curious distinction here between 'bad' crimes on the one hand and, well, 'good' crimes on the other. What are all these good crimes? Perhaps I shouldn't dismiss this out of hand, after all I'm instantly conjuring up an image of Tony Benn with pipe in mouth, arms flailing about like only Rory Bremner can, saying "oooh, think of the suffragettes, they had to break the law". So, in the interests of fairness, I've taken this issue very seriously and done some painstaking research, ie. I googled it. And, indeed, it seems there are some things that are against the law which are, if not exactly 'good', then certainly relatively harmless. For instance, in Miami, it is strictly illegal to impersonate a bison, while in Missouri you could find yourself hauled before a court for shaving without a licence. So presumably these are the sorts of things Maria has in mind for her 'good' crimes, while the bad ones are obviously things like murder, rape, arson, and grievous bodily harm. But while being randomly murdered or having your house burnt down could certainly be said to "catch you off guard", does that entirely capture the gravity of the situation? I think not. On the other hand, it might just capture the lesser gravity of being the victim of an unprovoked bison impersonation, so in my view Maria should really be singing "love can catch you off guard like those not-so-bad crimes they have in Miami".

(Phew, I thought I'd never get to the end of that paragraph).

To be fair to Maria, though, she offers a far more robust and convincing argument later on in the song -

"If it ain't right, it is wrong"

Let's face it, the girl's got a point. Which is more than anyone's ever said about John Barrowman.

I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but...

Since Keith Mills is, with his customary humility, busily awarding himself a royal pat on the back for correctly predicting all ten qualifiers tonight, I may as well point out that I achieved the same feat. Actually, I think my own accuracy should count for more, if only because at no point in the last two months have I ever made the (now demonstrably bizarre) claim that Norway is "clearly the worst song in the contest"! Keith really can't be let off the hook about that, because while Maria's performance has undoubtedly become more polished over the course of the rehearsals, at the end of the day it's still exactly the same 'appalling' song she started out with. As Keith has noted himself in previous years "you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear", so I think that stands as pretty conclusive proof that Norway never had a sow's ear to begin with. Face it, Keith, your radar was way off, however much you've tried to row back in recent days - and I've noticed a few signs of you trying to do the same with Andy Abraham. Now there's a "slight chance" that he won't finish last, apparently. Such generosity. Doubtless if he finishes in the top ten, Keith will somehow trumpet that as yet another "correct prediction".

OK, rant over. For now.

Prediction for first Eurovision semi-final (Tuesday)

In no particular order, here are the ten countries I think will qualify for the final tomorrow night -

Greece
Romania
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Israel
Norway
Finland
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Russia
Poland

I've based this partly on the songs, partly on what I've seen and heard of the rehearsals, and partly on the familiar political voting patterns that I still expect to have a huge impact in spite of the new format. Probably the biggest call I've made is that I don't think Ireland's temptingly edible representative will quite make the cut, but that may prove to be more wishful thinking than anything else.

And the question I don't hear you all asking - who would I vote for? (This is hypothetical, because living in the UK I don't get a vote until Thursday). You might assume Norway, given the way I've been championing Maria over the last few days, but unfortunately I have my own personal rule that I only vote for countries that sing entirely in a language other than English. I suspect that would lead me to vote for San Marino - more in hope than expectation, as you can see from the list above!

There's always someone out there who will care for you...

The rehearsals for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest are now well under way in Belgrade, and judging by the accounts that have come out from the hall, it seems that Norway was the clear winner from the batch that had their turn on day one (Sunday). We can tell this not only from the people who actually said the Norwegian singer Maria's performance was good, but more particularly from the report of a certain Mr. Keith Mills, who had previously said that it was "clearly the worst song in the contest" and that Maria is a "charmless and robotic performer". Intriguingly, he conceded yesterday that it's not quite "as bad" as before, and then hurriedly changed the subject onto what a large bottom Maria has. Hmmm. I think I've seen this pattern before with Keith when it suddenly dawns on him that he's called it wrong. Norway could be onto something here...