Eurovision Song Contest

Eurovision was great fun: the acts were generally good, the specific country I particularly liked won, and the new points system made the final scoring very tense.

The new points system was also rather interesting in what it revealed. Previously it had been the case that the voting jury for that country contributed half the points for that country, and the popular phone vote combined the other half, and the two were combined to give the points which that country was awarding to the contestants, which was then announced in the points section of the contest. This time round, they were announced separately, and first all the points from the voting juries were announced, then all the totalled points from the popular phone vote.

Some very interesting discrepancies emerged between what got good points from the jury votes, and what got good points from the popular phone vote. And on a more sympathetic note, it does mean that some countries (looking at the UK, for instance) can console themselves with thoughts that they didn't do too badly on the jury vote - even if they ended up with hardly any points from the popular phone vote.

For people's amusement, here are my personal favourites:

Ukraine (who I voted for) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-rnM-MwRHY
Russia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZkXb_IGS1g&list=PLmWYEDTNOGUJyonKRxHvu0aJ-rRclWE7S&index=9
Austria - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgzTQXYAb6s&list=PLmWYEDTNOGUJyonKRxHvu0aJ-rRclWE7S&index=12
Australia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA16qQA4ik0&index=11&list=PLmWYEDTNOGUIKuwInmzWYxzLZsG-Nt-B2
Bosnia & Herzegovina (even if they didn't get through to the final) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLrXmTB8OaY&index=17&list=PLmWYEDTNOGUJyonKRxHvu0aJ-rRclWE7S