I have been producing an EP for the band SDF, and now it is up online. This is my favourite track of the five – as soon as I heard the original take, I could hear there was a really beautiful track bursting to get out. Music production is insanely fiddly and wearisome, but realising that vision in sound is satisfying like nothing else on earth.

Possibly the last people I would hire to restore a damaged property. Damaging a restored property: now that might be a better business model for them.

I found this graffiti scrawled on a wall at waist height. Vandals are starting young these days.

Oh the japes and trickeries these fork-lift truck drivers get up to…

Ahh, the bullshit singers, the bullshit voting, the bullshit commentary on the bullshitness of the singers and voting. The joke is stale.

I love the name. It was obviously decided upon when television was all fresh and exciting, and using the suffix ‘vision’ made the contest seem fresh and exciting too. Now every eight year old has their own tv. The medium is about as exciting and ubiquitous as clothes. But you get the impression that the organizers still love the name for its connotations of optimism, its visionary idealism. And we think that is wretchingly cheesy, like the contest, so we are all happy.

But as a vision of Europe today, the competition  reveals some disturbing truths. Old habits die hard, and the old eastern-bloc lip-service to Russia seems to be getting stronger each year. Ten years ago, Russia was languishing. Now it is the petrochemical bully of Europe, and don’t we all know it. Russian oil millionaires are buying up high end real estate from Hampstead to Cairns. Putin’s aggressive economic expansionism seems to be increasing in momentum. He saw that Russia’s oil resources were the key to her resurgence as a European and world power, and it seems he was right. Now that is a vision for Europe

Anyway, tangent aside, I felt really sorry for the UK entry. If you know me, you know I loathe pop-dance music, but I was genuinely shocked at how good Andy Abraham was. He is literally the first ever act on the show I have ever seen that could sing professionally.

A good way to get rid of the slavish regional voting would be to have two rounds of voting. Divide Europe into regional blocks and have them vote for a regional representative act in the first round. Then in the second round would be the vote between the acts of eg. Western Europe, South Eastern Europe, Northern Europe etc.

It is all rather degrading isn’t it? Almost as degrading as writing so much about the fucking Eurovision song contest. I don’t care at all actually. Really.