So what was the top news story on Friday? Of course it was the Olympic opening ceremony. Doh! Silly me!

But what else was in the news that day? An output editor on the 6 O’Clock News BBC News at Six, Katy Searle, had a tough job picking a story.

So what else? The housing market and the strains of the credit crunch continue to claim a good slot on the Six. Today’s repossession figures are startling and on another day, could easily be our lead story.

For those of you who look beyond our shores, strong pictures of fierce fighting in the disputed region of South Ossetia will be explained and analysed. Not a natural story for the Six? With Russia threatening a robust response, it’s right to be in the show.

So apparently a war in Europe “not a natural story for the Six”. And on top of that Katy Searle feels the need to justify the possibility that the story will even be in the programme! That is despite the fact that this important story was listed behind the “credit crunch”, a “news” story that is now a year old. Jesus. Does the BBC really believe people are this stupid?

Do people tune in to the news to watch the news, or do they tune in to the news to watch highlights of a ponced-up dance routine which they can also catch earlier in the day, later in the day and on a relentless cycle on BBCi? Let me sit down and think about this!

It kind of sums up why the 6 O’Clock News has not been a bulletin to take seriously for several years now in my view. Of late is has been shaped to become the “news” for people who don’t actually want to know the news.

How Terry Wogan sees Europe

So, yet another Eurovision Song Contest, and get another round of chest-beating and sour grapes from people who think that the reason the UK came last was because of a Europe-wide conspiracy against us and in favour of any of those commies to the east. Every year the protests seem to get louder, and every year they annoy me even more.

Apparently it was inevitable that Russia were always going to benefit from “political” voting. So inevitable that I didn’t see anyone predicting it. Terry Wogan himself didn’t, except until Russia started racking up the points at which point it had become an obvious conspiracy.

The thing is, this is nonsense. As Chris Applegate has pointed out, this is the first time Russia has ever won the Eurovision Song Contest. So much for the inevitability of Russia’s success.

While so many wise-guys are quick to say after the event how predictable the result of the ESC was, I’ve yet to see so many people successfully predict who will win beforehand. Derek Gatherer predicts who will win, but only after the semi-finals have taken place. This is a bit like buying a lottery ticket once you know what the first five balls are. Even then, his prediction — Ukraine — was wrong (although close).

There were three specific countries that Terry Wogan said twice during the broadcast would benefit from political voting across Europe. He said this for each of the three countries during their turn, and he said it again during the recap while the phone numbers are displayed on the screen. (Check it on BBC iPlayer.)

The three countries that, according to Terry Wogan, were inevitably going to benefit from political voting? Romania, Albania and Poland. These countries finished 20th, 17th and 24th respectively — out of 25 countries in the final. If there was a conspiracy, whoever was behind it cocked it up big time.

Of course, Terry Wogan could have seen that his theory was bogus if he simply looked at the results of the semi-final (he did do that, didn’t he?). He would have seen that Poland only got through because it was chosen by the jury and did not finish among the top seven chosen by the televote. Albania also just scraped in, having come 7th in the televote.

The fact that Poland came joint-last in the final along with the UK shows just how hollow the ‘bloc votes’ theory is. It is certainly not as simple as “countries in the east are bound to benefit”. Poland’s paltry score of 14 was made up of points from just two countries — Ireland and the UK. The last time I checked, neither of these countries were in eastern Europe.

Furthermore, the past fourteen Eurovision Song Contests have been won by fourteen different countries. This is completely unprecedented in the history of the ESC (the previous longest run being eight). Incidentally, only 7 of those countries can be credibly described as “eastern European”.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the countries that make up the British Isles have been the most successful in the ESC’s history, Ireland and the UK having won twelve contests between them, including an incredible run of five wins in six years in the mid-1990s. The UK has also finished second 15 times, more than any other country.

Far from becoming predictable, the Eurovision Song Contest is more open than it has ever been. You can put this almost entirely down to the introduction of televoting in 1998. As Chris Applegate says, it is far easier to rig Eurovision when it is just a few jury members rather than the entire population of the EBU countries that have to be manipulated.

All of this is not to say that there is not political (or cultural, or whatever) voting going on. Incidentally, the cultural-similarity argument is quite strong, though not watertight. Even correcting for linguistic and cultural similarities, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania still engage in bloc voting.

Even so, this is a very small number of countries. As Ewan Spence points out most “blocs” consist of 5 or 6 countries.

In fact, Derek Gatherer’s Venn diagram shows that “blocs” are actually as small as two countries, or four at a push. Of course, the UK and Ireland have formed their own little bloc, which is what makes little Britishers’ protests all the more pathetically hypocritical.

As such, the fact that Russia won cannot credibly be blamed on bloc voting. In order to win the ESC, any country has to appeal beyond their bloc and gain votes from across Europe. For this reason, the idea of entering different songs for England, Scotland, etc. (or even full-on independence — any excuse to bring that up, eh? ) so that the UK could engage in its own bloc voting would fail.

The ESC Today website has analysed the votes of “western” and “eastern” European countries separately. What they show is that even in the western-only table, Russia came fifth. That’s not a win, but it is only 13 points behind the western winner, Greece. Also of note in the western-only table is the fact that Germany finished bottom and the UK also did very badly. Meanwhile, in the eastern-only table, Poland finish joint bottom with nul points.

Clearly, blaming the iron curtain as Terry Wogan does (hopefully in jest) is wide of the mark. Even locking the eastern Europeans out of the voting, eastern Europeans would still pick up plenty of points.

The thing about the “bloc votes” theory is that it’s just the sort of thing that becomes true if you just say it often enough. Ignorance has a lot to do with it.

Recently I had the misfortune to catch an episode of The Paul O’Grady Show where Terry Wogan was a guest talking about the ESC. He mentioned in passing that Azerbaijan were participating for the first time — to hoots of laughter from the audience. “Azer-ban-jan?!”, yelped O’Grady. “I’ve never even heard of Azer-ban-jan! Is it even in Europe?” I hope O’Grady was joking (though there’s every chance he wasn’t), but I just know that some of the laughing audience members were thinking exactly that.

I think for a lot of people, the Eurovision Song Contest is perhaps the only time of the year they discover a Europe beyond, say, the EU-12 or the iron curtain or Mediterranean holiday resorts. In a contest of 41 countries, and with many well-known western European countries (Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg) declining to participate, the chances are high that the winning country will be one that many people couldn’t point to on a map. It might be as if “eastern Europe” is just one big country for these people.

If a country people can’t point to on a map (or those dirty commies in Russia) wins the ESC rather than a country a stone’s throw away from the UK, people jump to conclusions and start concocting the conspiracy theories. So if Russia wins, it’s political voting because eastern Europeans don’t want Russia to shut down the gas pipe. If Serbia wins, it’s the Balkan bloc voting that did it. If Finland wins, it’s the Scandinavian bloc vote. And so on.

Well here is a radical idea. Perhaps the countries that win the Eurovision Song Contest do so because they write songs that appeal to a wide variety of European countries and performed well on the night.

The real reason the UK tends to do so poorly in the ESC these days is that its entries are so mediocre. The UK seems to alternate between entering a song that is overtly camp and too knowing and / or stupid to be taken seriously (Scooch, Jemini, Daz Sampson) and insipid, bland, instantly forgettable dross (Javine, James Fox, Andy Abraham). It’s no accident that the last time the UK won the ESC back in 1997, it was with a song that was actually quite good (and incidentally holds the record for the largest winning margin in the ESC) and performed by a well known band and not some reality TV reject?

I mean, really, what can the UK expect if it enters someone like Andy Abraham? The man lost at The X Factor for crying out loud. What made anyone think he would win Eurovision?! As for the performance, it was nothing to write home about was it? Terry Wogan said he liked it, but I seem to remember he said the same about Jemini’s notoriously bad performance.

Blaming the UK’s loss on bloc voting when there are more sensible explanations just reflects badly on Wogan and all the others who bring up this red herring. It comes across as sour grapes.

I suppose the question is, does the UK really want to win Eurovision? The ESC is seen as trashy kitsch by most in the UK. This helps explain why most of the UK’s entrants these days are desperate reality television losers. Some countries may see the ESC as a joke, but others are clearly passionate to win the contest. Russia in particular tends to enter more famous artists. Their performer this year, Dima Bilan, is one of the country’s biggest pop stars who is on the verge of making a name for himself internationally.

It seems to me as though there are many countries who want to win the Eurovision Song Contest much more than the UK wants to. So why not let them win rather than throwing your hands up and shouting “conspiracy”?

As for Terry Wogan’s hints that he may quit Eurovision, I do hope he calls it a day. I can’t stand his commentary. The man is not a fraction as funny as he thinks he is. He mistakes rudeness for wit. He has been past it for as long as I can remember. If he quits, I hope Paddy O’Connell get the job. He has always done a fantastic job at commentating during the semi-final. He is witty but not cynical, and obviously still likes the ESC, unlike Wogan.

For what it’s worth, my favourite song was France’s — ‘Divine’ by Sébastien Tellier. I think France should just be given bonus points for entering a song containing non-French lyrics for a change!

Oh dear. SNP MSP Christopher Harvie has found himself in a spot of bother for comments he has made about Lockerbie and the Scottish yoof.

On getting to Lockerbie, I discovered that the place is a dump - it was Tescotown. It should really have a certain attraction of a rather sombre kind as a place where something terrible happened; there are, after all, places on the western front and that sort of thing that have such an attraction for families who have lost people there.

There are a few things about this paragraph that are a bit off for me. I might be completely right to say that Lockerbie is a dump. I have never been, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me. There are plenty of dumps around the place, and Lockerbie isn’t exactly known for its beautiful beaches or rolling hills.

Jeff is right when he says that if Lockerbie is a dump, Christopher Harvie should be able to say so. It should not be exempt from analysis because of the fact that it is the scene of the country’s worst terrorist atrocity.

But here is the thing. Christopher Harvie seems to be saying that Lockerbie should be positioning itself as a potential tourist attraction to help rake in the money from fans of disasters. As Mushkush implies, the idea leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

Following that he turns his guns on the much maligned youth of the country. They cannot get a second of peace from the establishment’s whining about the yoof.

They are a demographic that literally cannot win. If they spend too long indoors playing their Xboxes they are criticised for not getting enough exercise and causing an “OBESITY EPIDEMIC“.

If they do the opposite and dare to go outside to get some fresh air and happen to commit the heinous crime of wearing warm clothing they get called names like “hoodie” and “yob”. And everyone points at them and says, “Why are you standing on the street corner? It is so intimidating.” As though just standing around is intimidating.

If they are not on the corner but are standing in the vicinity of a shop some ridiculous person comes along and installs a discriminatory device that is deliberately designed to cause youths pain. And people wonder why today’s young people are disaffected.

Anyway, Mr Harvie has added himself to the long list of poshy snooty types criticising yoof fashions. You know, fair enough on that front. Some people do wear horrendous clothing. But why is he attacking Tom Hunter for it? I thought the SNP were meant to be aligning themselves as a pro-business party. But Christopher Harvie’s comments are about as anti-business as it gets.

It must also be said that the most immense fortune that has been made in Scotland in the past few years - that of Tom Hunter - has arisen from selling people what must be the ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent.

Tom Hunter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen. If Mr Harvie’s theory is true, then Mr Hunter has done the country’s people a great service–selling people clothes that they want. He spotted a gap in the market. It is what great businessmen do best. It should be celebrated. But Christopher Harvie just looks down his nose at it.

There are also echoes of this anti-business sentiment with his dismissal of Lockerbie as “Tescotown”. It is the most successful business in Britain, which makes it the butt of ill thought out jibes like this. What does it even mean to be a Tescotown anyway? My town has a Tesco as well–does that mean I should just go and top myself now?

Anyway, back to fashion. What clothing would Christopher Harvie prefer people to wear? Knickerbockers. Goodness me. Apparently his personal preference is for plus fours. And look at that awful check jacket. Holyrood Watcher rightly takes him to task.

For me, this whole issue highlights a problem with the electoral system currently in use for Scottish Parliament elections.

Christopher Harvie was the SNP’s candidate where I live in Kirkcaldy. During the campaign he began to get a bit of a reputation as a “mad professor” among some locals. From today’s comments it looks as though he earned that reputation.

Even Brian Taylor has used slightly colourful language on his blog to call Mr Harvie ‘The Nutty Professor‘. And according to Kezia Dugdale, “Rumour has it the SNP were waiting for an episode like this but were surprised it has taken so long.” In addition to Christine Grahame, it looks like the SNP has its second major loose cannon.

Prior to Mr Harvie’s campaign, I was considering voting for the SNP as an anti-Labour tactical vote (not that it would have done much good anyway). But I did not want to vote for Christopher Harvie. He lost in Kirkcaldy. Yet, today he is an MSP. He got in through the back door on the list vote.

No-one voted for him to win his seat. People only voted for the SNP as a party–or Alex Salmond For First Minister, as they were known on the ballot papers. What a shock those voters will have got, thinking they were voting for Alex Salmond and instead getting Christopher Harvie!

The problem with the list system is that it gives voters the minimum amount of power possible. Voters have no control over the candidates. Positions on the are determined internally within the parties. This makes the MSPs accountable not to the voters, but to internal party structures. This allows too many poor candidates become MSPs and fills the Parliament with lackeys. The Scottish Parliament needs a heavy dose of Single Transferable Vote to weed out these people.

One last thing. I really don’t get this quote from Jackie Baillie on Christopher Harvie’s comments.

“He represents a supposedly pro-European party but displays the worst kind of euro-phobia.”

He singled out Scotland’s youths for criticism, and said they were the worst in Europe! How this is supposed to be a display of Euro-phobia beats me.

Unfortunately, this does not tie in with my theory about the inadequate list MSPs. I have to conclude that Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s many Labour rotten boroughs.

Update: This post has been published over at Liberal Conspiracy here. To keep the discussion in one place, I will close the comments on this post. If you have any comments please post them here.

What do you think the word ‘liberal’ means?

Perhaps if you are American, you are thinking of what Europeans call social democrats. Maybe some Europeans think of it as some kind of wishy-washy centrism that can’t decide between left and right. In certain countries it may have something to do with a pro-business approach. If you’re Australian it probably means the same as conservative.

A pre condition of liberalism might be the existence of free markets. Or maybe liberalism is to do with equality of some kind or another. Animal rights? Environmentalism? [insert trendy cause here]? Smith, Mill or Kant? Etc, etc. It seems to me that the word ‘liberal’ is about as useful as words like ‘that’ and ‘thingy’.

As such, it wasn’t really a surprise that the name of Sunny Hundal’s new ’superblog’, Liberal Conspiracy, provoked some debate about the nature of liberalism when it was launched a month or so back. “My liberalism is more liberal than yours” and that type of thing.

I would agree that, looking at the list of contributors, ‘Socialist Conspiracy’ might have been a more apt title. For instance, Jonathan Calder noted the lack of Liberal Democrats involved.

It looks like a conspiracy against Liberals.

In fairness, apart from the title (which I actually find quite amusing — it makes a good point), the site is describing itself as liberal-left rather than just liberal. Fair enough I guess, although I always thought that people describing themselves as ‘liberal-left’ were really just socialists trying to duck jibes about the Judean People’s Front.

Even the design of the website looks rather more socialist than liberal. The dark maroon colour scheme, Impact font and spatter marks make it look like some kind of SWP-affiliated website.

Anyway, liberalism. The thing that vexes me about this is the fact that — you guessed it — I describe myself as a liberal. This is mostly because I don’t know of a better term. (If you don’t know about my political views, take a look at my position on the political compass.)

When I describe myself as a liberal that means I am talking about limited government. It can’t be no government. Liberalism can’t be the same as anarchism. The question becomes “how big can a government acceptably be?” And even the most hardcore libertarians (as in the free market kind, lest there be any confusion) see the need for a government in order to protect property rights and prevent force and fraud.

A liberal (excuse the pun) interpretation of that could still leave quite a wide scope for government intervention. It might not be too controversial, for instance, for a government to step in when an activity causes a clear and unambiguous negative externality.

The classic example of a negative externality is pollution. A factory may dump pollution into a river that runs into land owned by another person. The government is duty bound to protect this property, so it would have to step in. Incidentally, I don’t think this approach is too far removed from Mill’s “harm principle”.

Liberalism “doctorvee style” goes a bit further than this. This is why you would tend not to find me using the word ‘libertarian’ to describe my political views. In my view, the government should also step in to prevent certain kinds of market failure. For instance, public goods will be under-supplied by the market.

I find it difficult to imagine how, for instance, street lights would be paid for in a strictly free market system. I can be a (critical) supporter of the BBC and still describe myself as a liberal without flinching because the BBC is a non-rival, non-excludable public good.

But for me, the bottom line is to be suspicious of any extension of government power, and to resist it unless there is overwhelming evidence of the need for it. If you take civil liberties and economic efficiency seriously, there can be no other way. History tells us to treat governments with contempt. When did you ever hear of a riot happening because the government was too small?

Given that most left-wing solutions to any problem usually involve a liberal (sorry) dose of extra government intervention, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Liberal Conspiracy found itself at the receiving end of some jibes about the term ‘liberal-left’ being an oxymoron. I think this is a tad unfair. It is possible to be left-wing / collectivist and anti-government at the same time (all I can say is, good luck solving the free rider problem).

However, it is not difficult to find instances of the Liberal Conspiracy being distinctly illiberal. One of the first posts on the blog was defending the government’s idea of forcibly keeping children in education until the age of 18. Not only that, but the writer, Mike Ion, said:

I struggle to understand why anyone on the Left of British politics could oppose Gordon Brown’s moves

It’s quite funny how I decided that my version of liberalism should keep the ‘liberal’ name. Has anybody got any better ideas?

For what it’s worth, I think the ‘liberal-left’ should just drop the pretence and call themselves socialists.

As for the (free market) libertarians? David Farrer grappled with this a few weeks back, and lamented the fact that both the ‘liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ tags have been stolen by leftists. I like his suggestion of using the unstealable “Real Fascist Bastard” tag.

But perhaps they could take inspiration from one of Hayek’s favoured terms. How about calling themselves catallactists? It would be a bit difficult for a socialist to use that one with a straight face!

Ofcom has said that it is thinking about letting television stations broadcast more adverts. Ofcom are considering allowing nine minutes of advertising per hour. Currently an average of seven minutes per hour is allowed, although a maximum of twelve minutes in any one clock hour is permitted.

Longrider is a libertarian but reacts with horror to the news. Meanwhile, Craig is worried about the impact on coverage of Formula 1.

I am no fan of television adverts, but I have to say that I feel sorry for broadcasters in this respect. The comments on the article from Times Online are mostly negative, perhaps encapsulated by this one by Harry Taylor.

Surely not! Is there not too much advertising already, mostly purile, repetitive and often misleading?…

With all its faults give me the BBC.

Of course, if Times Online were to write an article about a proposed increase in the License Fee, everybody would be saying the opposite. But, as they say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Commercial broadcasters are expected to pull excellent programmes out of thin air with the minimum of advertisements. And as we’ve seen this year, another major form of revenue for broadcasters — premium-rate phone-lines — has become a bit of a taboo. People must accept that adverts are a necessary evil — but a balance must be struck.

But for all of their (supposedly) good intentions, a lot of Ofcom’s advertising regulations work against the viewer. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than Formula 1. F1 has the dubious honour of being the only sport event to be broadcast in the UK where adverts are showing during the action. And football fans complain about adverts during half time! Think about how F1 fans must feel!

Once again, it has to be accepted that adverts in F1 are a necessary evil. F1 is almost unique in that a Grand Prix can last anything from 90 minutes to two hours with no break in the action. (The only other sports I can think of that go on for so long with no breaks are long-distance running and cycling, which are usually not shown live by a commercial broadcaster.) Seemingly, this is just too long for ITV to go without showing an advert. This means that they can’t bunch them up at either side of the action as they do with football.

But does it have to be this way? Many F1 fans would be willing to see some form of compromise, but the solutions put forward are currently prohibited by Ofcom (PDF). The main culprit is pesky article 3.1:

Television advertising must be readily recognisable as such and kept quite separate from other parts of the programme service. Breaks containing advertising spots of any kind, including teleshopping spots, must be identified in vision and/or sound, for example station identifications going in and out of breaks.

This means that any way of ITV simultaneously showing both adverts and programming is prohibited. A split-screen solution is often proposed. One part of the screen contains the race action, perhaps as an inset in an advert. But it’s not allowed. Sky Sports News can do it because it is permitted as long as only text is displayed. But even a scrolling text service in this style would not be allowed on ITV, because the rules are stricter for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five.

Other reasonable compromises are also prohibited. For instance, ITV would not be allowed to broadcast audio advertisements while race pictures take up the screen. ITV could not even overlay text adverts on top of the race pictures.

All of this is not allowed by Ofcom, probably for noble reasons. But most F1 fans would love to have any one of these solutions over the current situation — where ITV interrupt the race completely and broadcast commercial breaks that last minutes.

Also working against F1 fans is the requirement that ITV must display an ident going in and out of commercial breaks. This prolongs the commerical break for yet more crucial seconds.

Indeed, if you are an F1 fan you might be tempted to suspect that Ofcom’s regulations were specifically designed to get in the way of F1 the most. Because, despite the constant references to how commercials should only appear at “natural breaks” of the programming, one paragraph — which was included specifically with ITV’s F1 coverage in mind — proves that this is all just for show.

In live coverage of long continuous events breaks may be taken at points where the focus of coverage shifts from one point to another of the event for example after a resume of the current placings in a race and before refocusing on a particular section of the race.

So even though there are no “natural breaks” in an F1 race, ITV may show adverts just by giving a run-down of the positions in the race before going to a break, and saying what lap the drivers are on when the adverts are finished.

I also reckon that the rules surrounding the amount and length of commercial breaks also works against F1 viewers. It also works against viewers of football, films, or any other long programme.

Now, my memory of what I am about to say is sketchy. It must have been almost a decade ago and I was still rather young. But I am sure that while I was on holiday in France I watched a commercial break that lasted several minutes. It felt like about fifteen, but it might have been ten minutes. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I would never have seen a commercial break last that long in the UK.

But these breaks were not included willy-nilly in the middle of programmes. The obscenely long commercial break was, in fact, placed out of harm’s way at the end of a football match (or a film, I can’t remember). It was there to make up for the lack of adverts during the programme.* So, while at first a commercial break lasting ten minutes may seem obscenely long, would not most of us prefer this kind of solution? One where the adverts were tucked away where we don’t have to see them?

As such, I would support a liberalisation — or at least a fundamental re-think — of advertising regulations. This is not only for the reasons I have outlined above, but for another reason which is the drive of my liberal view on most things.

Insiders at the regulator are keen to emphasise that they want to avoid coming close to US advert levels, which they believe would be unpalatable to British audiences.

If they were so unpalatable, broadcasters would of course not want to do this for fear of making viewers switch off. No regulations necessary — broadcasters will find the “correct” level of advertising naturally.

I suspect that a few years down the line we won’t have to worry about this at all. Due to the increasing prevalence of PVRs, soon enough we will all be able to record the programmes then fast-forward through the adverts. (I usually already do this when I watch Grands Prix because I am not in a position to watch the races live.)

Advertisers will have to find more and more creative ways to reach viewers. Product placement might be harder to regulate. And soon enough we probably won’t always even realise when we are watching adverts.

* I might actually be completely wrong about this, and the long commercial break may have been caused by some kind of technical mishap or something else. I did not know because I could not speak French, but the scenario I described seems most likely to me.