Well I think our result, of a mighty twelve points IN TOTAL is hardly something to be worried about when compared to the combined 8+10+12 voting power of the Balkan bloc which equals 210 points in total!
The connection is that better (non-bloc) entries end up being left behind, because the big points all go to neighbours. Only a few non-bloc nations a year get the chance to succeed, surely you also noticed Matt that on the scoreboard last night, the majority of nations on the left were Eastern nations (which tend to be in blocs) and the majority on the right were Westerners (which tend to not be part of a bloc).
You acknowledge that corrupt voting exists (which surely beats some of those on this thread!), but then why dont you support action being taken against it? Surely it'd be good to for once have a Eurovision where you cant read off with almost certainty who'll vote for who, surely it'd be good to have a Eurovision where there isnt this agro and people wanting to withdraw, etc - it generates bad feeling.
I thought the hosting of this year's contest was beyond awful, as I expected it would be 12 months ago. The voting process of the final just condensed everything bad about this year's contest.
Your statements are rather vague and taken out of context. Sweden, Germany Italy & Spain are all in the Top 10 so the left side of the scoreboard doesn't look that bad. Plus all the favorites in the polls and odds ended up on top. Plus I never said the votes are corrupt. And that's even beside the point. The point was is that how does the voting affected the UK's result? Every country including the West disliked the british entry this year and that goes for the televoters and the juries. I'll be more than happy to discuss diaspora and voting issues in a separate topic but using it in the context of the UK results, how does that make a difference? The UK was universally disliked this year, that's not really up for interpretation. Unless you're saying Ireland is now anti UK as well as Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Malta and all the other countries that vote for the UK when the song is good.