Eurovision

Hooray! Eurovision is here! The uber-camp celebration of european integration which we all love to watch, much of the time to laugh at the comedy entries, and agree with Terry Wogan about how terrible it is but we still love it anyway, even when it's tainted with "Bloc Voting".

Well Terry Wogan has retired from the post due to that last point (many cite the former russian colonies, though Greece, Cyprus and Turkey have been doing the same thing, even Germany gives the 12 points reguarly the latter country due to the high percentage of turks in Germany), and now we have the appropriately camp Graham Norton hosting the festivities.

This year I've only managed to watch the 1st semi-final (i write this on the day of the final) and the ones I liked didn't get through. Looking at the finalists, I'm not sure i'll get on with any of them, but I'm sure I'll still watch it anyway. Unfortunetly the competition has already been marred, though many may not know it.

A Gay Rights protest taking place outside the venue hall was broken up by Russian police, as they were worried it would "get out of hand". Funny then, that earlier on there was a protest by a group of Anti-gay protesters which was allowed to go ahead without police interruption. Clearly Russia is still miles behind other developed countries, who regularly have Gay parades (even America, often considered the most homophobic of countries, has a major share of gay people) and are starting to respect the rights of homosexuals (no country can really claim to respect them fully when still can't get married). And what a time to show this, before Eurovision! A competition with a huge gay following. This has irked me somewhat, and made me want to bycott the competition. But it's not the competition I'm against, it's the Russian police.

So, what I hope will happen is that at least one of the participants will try to make a point about this, on stage or in an interview, that will "send shockwaves around the world"... Or not, but someone should say something about this catastrophy of human rights abuse.

On a different note, though relevant to a previous post, I have now recieved a leaflet from Lib Dems. Mostly fairly good, but I'm still not convinced by Nick Clegg. Vince Cable would be a better leader, though we know how the party feels about older people...