DerekF wrote:So how did Sweden win then?
Countries giving Sweden 12 points :
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom
Then while the others like Greece and Cyprus give each other 12 points every year, so long as they give the 10 or 8 to the likes of Sweden, it all helps and unless Greece and Cyprus are near the top of the leaderboard, their 'pointless' happy backslapping point giving doesn't affect the result.
You can win without the Eastern European block voting, if you can get some of them and some of the rest of Europe to give you max points -- unfortunately you need a half decent pop song that appeals to Europe.
And before we get too upset that Easter Europeans never give us anything, Latvia and Estonia accounted for 6 of our 12 points !
I think the current format disadvantages the likes of UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the host country -- the others get to perform their song twice, one in the semi final and once in the final. I hadn't heard Spain, France, Germany or Italy until Saturday night, all of them seemed OK, I bet they all would have sounded better on the second or third hearing -- Englebert, unfortunately, sounds terrible on first hearing, but is s a song which eventually 'grows on you', not the sort of song to win, for the UK anyway, a one shot chance of grabbing the votes.
I quite understand the reason that the UK and the other 'big' countries don't have to qualify in the semi, but they should get the chance to perform in one of the semi-finals -- they should just automatically be given one of the places in the final

Maybe our entry next year should be Morrissey and have the following line repeated over and over :
"If you don't give us 12 points, we will stop funding this Euro Song Thingy and you can all get stuffed -- you can shove it and your toy-town money and corrupt economies and your Eastern Racism where the sun don't shine"
Disclaimer-I have spell/grammar checked this post, it may still contain mistakes that might cause offence.