Iz 🌟

I have very little motivation to follow along now. Except for any further news-worthy events that occur, it's still interesting to me on that level, but I have absolutely no desire to engage with the EBU's sham at 'peace and inclusion' while letting Israel completely off from their soft power exploitation and obfuscation. the more countries that withdraw the better

A vote was held today at the EBU to accept the proposed rule changes. Talk was that if these vote changes failed to pass, then a vote would have been held to remove KAN from Eurovision. They passed, so that did not occur. Netherlands have wasted no time and have officially withdrawn from Eurovision 2026.

In a sense, quite, as regardless of what's actually gone on with Siddiq and her connections to her ousted Bangladeshi political family, she was tried and convicted in absentia and quite rightly the Labour Party isn't going to recognise such sham conclusions of a foreign court that we have no extradition treaty with, sets a bad precedent. Definitely underscores why juries are such an important thing to have in a democracy. The language Lammy has used, 'putting victims first' is all well and good and probably plays well, but it hides a rather worrying approach to justice and kind of shows that he is not good at his brief. Pretty much the point of courts is that they are not pre-judged, and while most cases certainly do have victims, it's very important that guilt is not presumed just because of an accusation.

Trans girls banned from girlguiding are in the headlines. ...what? Who does this help? How is this not shamefully discriminatory?

Jury trials now scrapped for cases under 3 years. Fucking appalling decision; yes there is a huge case backlog, no, removing some of the fundamental rights of a democracy is not the way to get it back down, the case backlog is largely in cases where there is no jury trial recourse already and it's not even a temporary decision.

Does really just lurch from disaster to disaster doesn't it. I can't see how they do anything at any real electoral test.

Most of the recent songs in this thread I have very few strong feelings towards, so haven't commented (except to say that 'Smack That' is hilariously inept), but 'No Tomorrow' is definitely one I like and hopefully a signal that we're getting into the good side of the 2006 #1s. Love its energy even if I could go years without thinking about it.

Not to downplay it at all and it is relatively a low Q ratio compared to the last few contests but I remember a long period where 60 was a common lower-bound of contestants and in comparison to the occasional contest that had a few more (63-66ish), the 60 contestant contests felt quite comfy to qualify from. Though of course I didn't make it out of the semis of several of those, it's just that a while ago, only 9 DNQs felt quite low (in part because you'd expect 10 on 60 songs with 20 from each semi but the AQs sorta 'gave' the semis an extra one). Little hard to call where the votes may go in semi 1 of course, it looks on paper slightly more pop-leaning than the other semi but plenty of opportunity for votes there to go in many directions.

https://sync-tube.de/room/1ozdeAIp join me as I figure out how to do Sync-Tube playlists, kicking off soon after 8pm (with standard warm-ups)

I'll claim up listenthrough hosting duties, will post a thing at or near 8 x

very cool to see a bbno$ and ironmouse collab in tbh, I have considered the former on occasion here and there despite his inevitably increasing internet presence year-on-year and though I don't know much of the latter's music she's been a great internet presence for a while. Also every time I see the name Oneohtrix Point Never I add a note to listen to their albums some time so good that this contest will get me to do that x my track was, like many others, fated to the mentioned-on-no-one-by-Buzzjack-aside-from-uhstings-charts so I'm excited to change that

Aww I really like Punk Rocker, I get why it divides opinions but I think it progresses really well with the drums, she sings it well and I'm always up for a bit of nostalgia in music, even as rose-tinted as this one is.

I mean, of course they would, the news has been doom and gloom about it for weeks and the median voter is now primed against it, plus there's a few things in there which hit everyone and people always hate budgets which make their taxes rise, it's kinda natural even though taxes do need to rise sometimes. I think the best reaction to this is... 'eh'. The negative aspects like salary sacrifice (which to be clear, are a mistake) are going to financially hit an individual not that much in real terms, the tax rises are not that much in real terms. The S&S move would be far better with a carrot rather than a stick but is actually going to be a good thing financially for people who move what was going to be deposited into their cash ISA into a S&S ETF as long as they treat it sensibly and do the bare minimum of investing education. The more vulnerable do get a decent amount out of the budget but not much is being done for the average person to ease their finances nor improve their earning potential so the feeling of malaise will continue to dog Labour.

Some good things in the budget (mansion tax, encouraging savers into S&S, train fare freeze, two child benefit cap gone) but very 'eh' on the whole and emblematic of the tinkering around the edges that has come to define Starmer's Labour. The salary sacrifice into pensions is by some distance the worst one, in that it affects normal workers but is quite clearly messing with their plans to save for retirement (for which the argument for encouraging private pensions in the first place was to save money on the state pension), by literally taking from them in order to fund the struggling state pension itself. Very short-term and I can't imagine anyone's going to be happy with it for very long because it will mess directly with in-place business pension schemes, I'd also predict it's the big loser policy from this budget that will get complained about most long term, like the "jobs tax" was last year. In a very similar area too. Does feel like a reaction to not do anything that would scare off any markets or businesses while keeping the tax rises going as are required. I'm on board with some of the philosophy and it was a difficult budget to construct with so many competing opinions but it does very little to address the underlying problems with why the government bill keeps rising, nor does it help out normal people's finances to stimulate the economy very much.

Always hate FIFA meddling, I really hope one of those top 4 don't win their group so it scuppers their dollar sign dreams of them as semi-finals even before the knockout stage starts.