Do you think that the Uk and Ireland should withdraw from the Eurovision Song Contest?

Who wins has nothing to do with politics.

Who wins also has nothing to do with the quality of the song and/or the act.

People don't vote for quality - they vote for what they like best. So, this is a popularity contest and it stands to reason that people living in closer proximity will like similar types of music.

The problem is how votes are then converted to points, which means that the smaller adjacent nations have greater influence over the eventual winner, simply because there are a greater number of countries awarding similar points to similar entries. It wasn't such an issue in the day when only those entered were allowed to give points, but the points system is now outdated and no longer results in a fair contest, in my opinion.

There's much talk about how Eurovision unites Europe but, in actual fact the entire contest promotes division by actively telling us how each country has voted. There's no easy solution but surely it's time to count up all the *votes* in Europe and announce who is the winner that way? Then it would be seen as "Europe's" decision and nobody would have anything to grumble about.

I don't think that the UK should withdraw because it really looks like sour grapes if they do. As for us submitting better songs, that's too subjective to call. But it's a vicious circle - only expect our best songwriters/acts to go forward for Eurovision when they start believeing it's a fair contest. Right now, I really don't believe it is.

Withdraw? Don't be silly!! It's only a stupid song contest for fun. Remember the show has always been political.

Maybe Germany, Spain, France and UK should stop giving large amounts of money and just compete normally like the rest of the countries. That way they won't so annoyed when they don't do well. At any rate it will continue in the future to be countries such as Poland, Latvia and Turkey that win because they have large portions of their populations working and living in other countries in Western Europe and the Eastern bloc countries all vote for their neighbours.

The Western countries don't stand a chance. Maybe the sms and telephone voting should stop and we should go back to voting by judging-panel. However that still wouldn't get rid of the political issue but it would stop immigrants in the West voting for the home countries back in the East. Though the TV companies wouldn't get money from people voting in.

So at the end of the day maybe the UK should stop giving so much money but it definitely should not withdrawn. Instead let's all just sit back and laugh at the show. After all it is all just about entertainment and the TV broadcasters laughing all the way to the bank.

Personally I thought the show was full of excitement and fun and glam. Quite a gay theme this year!

Tóg é go bóg é agus bain sult as!

(From Ireland)

No, I think they should just send better entries. Both Ireland and the UK are capable of making much better music than their contributions in the past few years.

I think that in the UK they lack ambition to send a decent entry (or maybe they are having a hard time getting good singers to participate because of the bad reputation the Eurovision has in the UK for being crappy).

Ireland... I wonder if they got tired of hosting it or something. They had so many great songs in the past, but lately their entries have been disappointing.

I'm from neither, I'm from Iceland.

It's supposed to be a joke. The votes have always been politically motivated, and people don't vote for anything that takes itself too seriously, i.e. things with any production quality! Take it with a pinch of salt and enjoy it for what it is! It's like a comedy bloodless war, where the figures from the voting results take the place of daily news reports of numbers of casualties. I don't know if my troll spray is working properly. Getting "eurovision" and "asylum" into one question is to be commended.

it's been like that for years now, all the countries vote for the ones they want to be political allies with regardless of wether the songs are any good. it isn't a contest it's a stitch up. mind you, it doesn't help that the british entry was pathetic drivel, at least a couple of other countries have tried to do something a bit different and not the euro drivel that we have tried to churn out for it.

Absolutely not. We should stay in unless we lose our sense of humour about it or start taking it too seriously and become genuinely disgruntled. It is not the contest, it is the complete randomness of the acts and the glorious predictablility and tradition of the results.

From the UK.

CALM DOWN, CALM DOWN

It’s only a game.

Why do people think that If the UK doesn’t win, it’s all down to politics. What evidence do you have for this?

Has it not occurred to you that people in different parts of Europe have different musical tastes – so a Lithuanian is more likely to like something from Estonia than from Spain? Also, how often have you heard the UK entry? Probably, if you’re into Eurovision, you’ve heard it a lot. Now what songs do you think the people in Bosnia have heard on their radios? The Serbian one? The Croatian one? Very likely. So they vote for songs that are familiar. After all, if it was political the Serbs would do very badly in the former Yugoslavia.

Anyway, the UK song was terrible. How many more times are the UK going to enter Bucks Fizz clones?

Nope! But they should pick better songs to represent them, then we would once again have a chance of winning! Crap songs get NUL points, like that Scooch rubbish!

Not only should we withdraw from the contest but we should withdraw from European union. Do we really need to be part of all this ?

By the way, isn't it funny how none of these countries vote for us but they all want to come and live over here???

No. It is only foreigners who take it seriously, people in the uk only watch it to hear Terry Wogan laugh at the rest of them. Anyway, Ireland sometimes even win it.