Iz 🌟

Gate 01 - Kylienips - Marva Von Theo - The woman I left behind Gate 02 - POPHub - YEJI - Air Gate 03 - Lookylion - Beks - Melodrama Gate 04 - Zanmatony - Solarstone - Seven Cities (Solar Stone's Atlantis Mix) Gate 05 - Taahino - Sophie Powers - move with me Gate 06 - Sandénia - Daniel Seavey - Sleeping With The Lights On Gate 07 - Persephonia - Kikagaku Moyo - Cardboard Pile Gate 08 - Why So Sirius - M¥SS KETA - SINNER Gate 09 - Hushkanukia - Sorana - DON'T SEND ME FLOWERS Gate 10 - Ojnoj - Kylie Cantrall - Denim Gate 11 - Kluminican Republic - HoneyLuv - Dancehall Gate 12 - Summericia - Openside - I Feel Nothing Gate 13 - Trifoski - Kumo 99 - Dopamine Chaser Gate 14 - Hendinia - CATTY - Joyride Gate 15 - A-Konohagakure - Nora En Pure - Memories Gate 16 - Scotland 2 - caroline - Total euphoria Gate 17 - FSR Rontvia - She Past Away - İnziva Gate 18 - Greenfroze - Yōko Oginome - Dancing Hero (Eat You Up) (Dear Pop Singer Version) Gate 19 - Macromia - Nao Toyama - Tomoshibi No Manimani Gate 20 - Bronzil - Cult Of Venus - Algorithm Gate 21 - The Spodic Empire - Zeigeist - Tar Heart Gate 22 - Pestolia - The Limiñanas - Calentita (feat. Nuria) Gate 23 - Skall - Avalon Emerson - Don't Be Seen With Me Gate 24 - Séyetana - Hot Milk - Insubordinate Ingerland Gate 25 - Kathaldazia - TDJ & Clara Kimera - On And On (You Lie) Gate 26 - Dobago - Âme & Curses - Shadow Of Love borderline: Dobago, Scotland 2, Zanmatony, Greenfroze, Séyetana possibly?

Yes, they make sense to me because I've read the data tables in detail and you haven't. All the answers to your questions about that 'best PM' poll are in here: https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Copy_of_Internal_BestPM_250519_002.pdf But anyway, these are 2024 Conservative voters, not those who are currently listing them as voting intention, so you're not comparing like with like. 60% of current Conservative voters, plus some from left-leaning parties, are what is contributing to Badenoch winning that H2H with Farage, it's not a poll of solely the right. It's relevant because in any FPTP election, votes can get squeezed and it's useful to see where those squeezes might go, if they're DKs, they might be undecided or just can't be squeezed away from their chosen party, which is fine, that's also useful info. Farage doesn't pick up much outside the Reform believers though, and incidentally his matchup with Starmer has the lowest percentage of DKs among all the matchups, people have largely made up their mind on that one. At the moment of course, things could all still change. And then if you're going to combine Conservative and Reform on that latest poll, you might as well combine Labour, Lib Dem and Greens which adds up to 47%. I wouldn't, but you can easily see how a centrist leader comes out ahead in a 2-way race even when well behind a far-right leader when all parties are included. See the recent Romanian election for an example of how those sorts of numbers worked. Which, a Macron-esque strategy, grab votes from the far-left to the centre-right, even if both those immediate groups hate him, they hate him less than Reform, might be how Starmer wins another term. also no, YouGov does not poll the same people all the time, come on. Read their methodology, they have millions of participants and each poll is a different nationally representative sample.

Seems like a minor miracle that no one has died and all the injured appear to be stable. The policing response to this has been great too, quickly shutting down misinformation and clearly being aware of the possibility of shit-stirrers and misinformation spreaders ready to go with their "theories" about who caused it, though incredibly alarming of course that without immediate information about all incidents of public interest some parts of our society are ready and willing to lynch brown people/black people/Muslim/asylum seekers (delete as appropriate) because of false perceptions of reality.

i voted, there are some very cool songs in this semi ^_^

Not necessarily, but there's a good chance voters like those exist in what will be Labour-Reform battlegrounds at the next general election, a type of election where we know voters, particularly less engaged voters who vote in generals but not locals, consider this question quite strongly. Obviously the other matchups won't matter in as many places but they are also useful baselines for seats that are a different kind of 2-way marginal. All dependent on individual party strength per seat of course but this is where elections are won and lost. This is a valid part of the polling picture, it matters on balance as much as other single pieces, in its own context. Maybe it doesn't matter and people won't vote against Reform strongly enough to keep them from having a majority, but anti-votes and choosing vote effectiveness are so often a key part of elections especially FPTP ones; I find it silly to be so dismissive of what this tells us that favourability polls and voting intention do not, what voters might do when making more tactical choices relevant to the system they find themselves in.

? They're not completely at odds at all. This poll easily sits with the rest of the polling picture we currently have. Reform currently have the most numbers of voters in opinion polls, but most people prefer another party. This poll tells us that they would take Labour over Reform. Starmer is unfavourably viewed, but a decent enough proportion of those unfavourables do not think that any of the other options would be better. It reads more to me that you want to dismiss it (dismissing polls is generally a losing game, something I learned from the 2019 election) because it doesn't fit your narrative than that you genuinely can't see how it can fit or are genuinely entertaining the suggestion that people in a representative sample are en masse lying to pollsters. Regardless of what you, personally, think (I myself would put DK between Starmer and Davey but would vote for anyone over Farage, to give a pointless personal counter to your personal anecdote), Labour still have a vote share that is relatively substantial, and enough of the rest would choose their leader to be PM over the far more polarising Reform leader. Easy.

I mean actually, this poll is sorta showing there's a ceiling on how much of the 2024 Conservative vote, still a very right-wing subset, can go to Farage. Which is crucial for Reform's chances at a majority. Why would that make it not relevant? I already went over the virtues of the metric in great detail literally the last time it was run so I won't repeat myself, but given that yes, the (current) Conservative voter breakdown on this poll is 28-Starmer-39-Farage-32-DK, and the current LDem breakdown is 81-Starmer-6-Farage-13-DK, why would that scenario not play out in hundreds of Labour defenses in a general election? 2010-2015, Labour always led Conservatives in the polls, but Miliband never beat Cameron on this question. It's also a good way of showing another side to approval ratings, I'm sure you view approval ratings and or VI as important, but approval ratings don't show polarisation of a figure, the strength of feeling, where it's almost certain that opinions on Farage are more polarised than they are of Starmer. Also not that it's relevant to this poll's usefulness in any way but lol at decrying left wing people as biased when 87% of Reform 2024 voters still choose Farage.

Feels to me like Farage has a clear ceiling and that if there is a general election where he looks like having a serious chance of becoming PM, it's likely that people will vote for whoever looks most likely to beat him. If the Conservatives can still exist as a force to take votes off of him that'll help Labour too, but paradoxically, if Conservatives are the main opposition and not Farage, then they have a better chance of beating Labour at the next one too. Interesting dynamic.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52251-who-would-be-the-best-prime-minister-may-2025?utm_source=website_article&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=52251 This continues to be a really interesting metric. That's actually an eight-point improvement for Starmer vs Farage since the last time I posted that poll when it was last run in February. It is quite a curiosity that despite approval ratings still being awful, if given the choice between PM Starmer or PM Farage, Starmer clearly wins with the British public right now. that said there's also a metric here among 2024 Con voters of whom nearly a third would rather see Farage as PM than Badenoch oof,

honestly, this topic has a lot of promise, and I might even agree with you once or twice here imagine being such an embarassing country that we sent Englebert Humperdinck in the big 2012? I know, I can't either

Not withstanding my recent slight lean towards humorous songs in BJSC, it was one of my least favourites this year. Explain that. also no, 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai' is the most classic one, Lordi if you count that but the song itself is just power metal, and it's only the costumes that are humorous.

That letter from Martin Green does worry me in that they're not going to change anything. All focused on the legitimacy of the votes, no one is really saying that they weren't valid votes cast according to the current rules of the contest, it's how those votes were obtained that is wrong. Something as simple as banning voting advertisements and reducing the amount of times you can vote for any single song would go a long way towards solving the laughably easy way Israel (or any state actor with the motivation) has to manipulate it.

Biggest grower of the season for me, probably because it's the closest Eurovision gets to prog, I was deriding it when it won here oops It is purposeful, this article has a bit more about it: https://wiwibloggs.com/2025/02/03/ziferblat-bird-of-pray-lyrics-translation-meaning-ukraine/283220/ Gist is that the lyrics are about connections between others and hoping for their good health, I'd picked enough up that they were mixing metaphors but not the entire context as of course half the song is in Ukrainian.

Hot Milk - Insubordinate Ingerland ... score som fackin goals made-up quotes on how you might describe this entry "an English Eurovision entry from an alternate timeline where the UK has split and the BBC have discovered their testicles" "American Idiot, but the English version" "a true expression of English culture" bit of a banger innit LONG LIVE THE GREY ECLIPSE

Net migration fell by about 50% year on year - down to 450,000. Successful for the anti-immigration crowd, plenty for Labour to crow about with 'getting migration under control', Conservatives will look to claim that it was because of their dying gasps this has happened, only reason I find that desirable is that high immigration numbers are always used as a distraction. probably more to do with the tail of covid non-migration finally catching up tbh

without knowing at all what they sound like, the amount of clearly Japanese names in semi 2

damn I spied quite a few countries in Semi 1 who would like my entry. Enjoying the airline names and stats so far, and the integration of the country flag with the plane tail is quite good on most of these pictures

I am very jealous of Air Lander. 'sibling of Séyetana' oof

This final line in that article is very concerning, however - that's one of the biggest issues - the Israeli government intervened to pay for ads, and that should be against the rules, before we even get to the content of the ads. Yet if it's not against the EBU rules, it's open season.

To make it to BBC news is significant in itself. Shows that the moves that broadcasters across Europe are being noticed, whether anything comes of that or not. I submitted a complaint to the BBC, focusing on the fairness of the competition and how Israel's televote result was clearly not an organic and fair result given its context, not that I expected them to be joining the chorus of broadcasters calling for an investigation. They should, though. (of course there is a difference between the result being rigged and illegitimate, which I think any investigation will not find it was, and the result being unfair, which any investigation is going to find harder to rule against)

Starmer pretty much saying he will be reversing at least some of the cuts to winter fuel today. Mixed about this as ever. Mixed because out of all the 'sins' people keep attacking the government over, it's clearly the least important and most outsized in its importance by discourse, well, perhaps trumped by the irrelevant topic of farms, but far less important than PIP payments and employer NI tax rises, whatever you think of those. Also because it confirms that while you can cut benefits from younger people all you like, our media-enabled gerontocracy will not allow a single inconvenience against the grey vote to stand - I swear when it was initially announced, before the outcry set in, I just saw the conversation around it being a bunch of anecdotes about how it was clearly being used by a good few sets of grandparents for an extra holiday etc, and now of course it is going to cost them more than if they'd never done it. Yet it has become totemic of all the things a Labour government shouldn't be about, and cutting to save from the vulnerable should be one of the last things Labour do. This hopefully opens something up at least in PIP payments too - while one of the strengths of this government has been their sticking to their guns so far, such that this IS their first major U-turn, when a policy is wrong, and they change course after a period of reconsideration, they should get credit for doing so. Will they though? What does everyone else think on this?

My read of that post was that the competition should favour certain countries like Ireland and have them in the final automatically, perhaps because of their storied ESC history, unlike Luxembourg, which of course has an entirely irrelevant ESC history. Luxembourg is not particularly a country known for supportive neighbours though - yet they're managing to qualify just fine. At this point it's almost certain that the public seeing the 2013 split results would reveal cheating that throws the entire results of that year into question - perhaps also indicating that the EBU should have according to their own rules banned Azerbaijan which then calls into question the following years also. I wonder whether something akin to stripping medalists from sports athletes could ever happen. With a historical audit of long-past contests, and adjusting the official record to match. Clarity and attempts to protect the voting process from manipulation are absolutely needed though, and I'm pleased to see a handful of broadcasters taking first steps on this.

Clearly you're reading the BBC news feed Liam, so it's curious you're only cherrypicking negative reactions. That last one's even about fishing! Yes it's good when we can sell our produce to the EU and receive goods and services in return. Plenty of details to be worked out yet, but I think if you were having an honest conversation with us, you'd be giving some ideas about what the government could have done instead of the concessions we chose to get this deal through. Check your counterfactual. I certainly wouldn't have liked it if we'd been held hostage from a good trade deal because of a tiny 0.4% industry of fishermen.

Just gonna quote what J00p rightly said about the fish last week and also add that the deal is literally the current status quo. If the main concession for this objectively good deal was the status quo continues in an insignificant industry, I'll take it. 🐟 Never Fucking Happy.

We do need a good amount of 'fun for Saturday' entries, and there have been more of those since they took the juries out of the semis - before this there would so often be a section of the Grand Final that was filled with slow ballads and I'm sure it lost the contest some viewers. I'd just like to have the juries be more transparent and more open to actually following their guidelines (originality, composition, performance quality) rather than seemingly treating it like they're just a super-voter - while I'd want and expect juror rankings to be different to an extent for the purposes of 'academic' dispute over which music is good on a professional level, they're clearly captured by personal biases, often against 'ethnic' music far too often. The amount of jurors that had Albania in their bottom 5 is actually inexcusable, no matter what you think of the song it should be scoring relatively well on most jury metrics. The ideal juror shouldn't be biased towards any type of song. If that could happen it would be somewhat okay to have them back in the semis again.