Sir Terry Wogan is threatening to quit the Eurovision Song Contest after another year of blatantly poltical voting left the halfway decent British entry in equal last place.
Personally I can't stand the music, but I usually watch the voting to see if I can predict which country will vote for which. The Nordic, Balkan and ex-Soviet voting blocks are now familiar features. As is the fact that Cyprus always awards Greece douze points. But there are some subtler points for geography and history buffs to pick up on. Why, for instance, would Moldova favour Romania? Well, because the ex-Soviet republic has an ethnic Romanian majority. And why the mutual backscratching between Turkey and another ex-Soviet republic, Azerbaijan? Both part of the Turkic lingusitic belt that stretches from Edirne to Urumqi, that's why!
With the exception of Ireland and Malta, which give us the odd point or two now and then, Britain has no cultural bosom-buddies in Europe, so there's not that much point us competing anymore. The same goes for the other nations of western Europe, apart from those fraternally-minded Scandinavians who stick together come what may (unless there's a war on).
I guess we should be thankful that Serbs, Croats and Bosnians are voting for each other instead of killing each other; but, still, it's sad that something that's all peace and friendship on the surface is revealed to be a rather seedy tangle of mutually convenient, ethnically-based alliances.
Now, can you think of any other European institutions that might be a bit like that?
