It's your future, it's your choice, and your weapon is your voice

First of all, apologies to the people who left comments on this blog over the last two or three days. Blogger has been having some kind of unspecified problem - it was on read-only mode for about twenty-four hours, and midway through that period whole posts and comments started disappearing into the ether. However, I realised to my relief a few minutes ago that they're still accessible via the feed, so if they don't reappear of their own accord I'll try to restore them manually at some point.

Anyway, what I was going to do before I was so rudely interrupted was shamelessly blow my own trumpet about correctly predicting nine of the ten qualifiers in the second Eurovision semi-final - although just for the moment I can't prove that, because it's one of the posts that has since vanished! The one qualifier I didn't have on my list was Ukraine, which is irritating because I had it on my original list before I realised I'd forgotten all about Moldova.

Which brings me neatly on to my highlight of the evening - Scott Mills earnestly writing off Moldova's chances on the grounds of sheer silliness. This is the Eurovision after all - rarely has a gasp of disbelief been so utterly predictable an hour-and-a-half in advance!

Snooker sickener

Of all the professional snooker players I might just have thought capable of corruption, John Higgins - seemingly the gentleman of the game - would have been the absolute last. The apparent revelation today is a real sickener for his legion of supporters just at the moment he was due to once again become the official world number one after a vintage couple of seasons. His impeccable reputation is one reason why I (perhaps naively) think his explanation that he was "spooked" by the way the conversation was going, and just went along with it to make sure he "got out of Russia" in one piece, might just about be theoretically plausible. I wouldn't say it was likely on the balance of probabilities. But there's the rub - is the burden of proof in a disciplinary matter like this the same as in the criminal law? If so, it's hard to see how his version of events can be entirely disproved, unless there's more to come out.

But the real loser here is, of course, the nation of Ukraine. Nineteen years on from independence, and John Higgins still thinks Kiev is in Russia. Tut, tut.

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. 3

Ani Lorak of Ukraine

"Since I've lived in your shade
Every step that I made
Brought me nothing but zero"

Nothing but zero? That's a helluva lot of zero. Fair dos, the girl's got my sympathy, but there's still no excuse for the display of petulance we see later on -

"Baby, don't call me baby"

Round our way, we'd call that rank hypocrisy, baby.