Euro Ingratitude

I was going to concoct a satirical piece on how, if they aren't going to let us win it, the UK should pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest.  Much in the manner of Trump's rant about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, so why should he be concerned with peace any more?  But yesterday I came across a piece in the Express which said much the same thing, then went further.  Now, ordinarily, I'd assume that something like that was written ironically, but the Express doesn't do irony, (it's writers can't spell it, let alone understand what it means), so I have to take it at face value.  Anyway, the gist of the piece was that those Europeans are so bloody ungrateful for everything we've done for them - most notably funding Eurovision - that they only give us one bloody point.  The fact that this single point came from Ukraine drove the author to further apoplexy - apparently, after all that aid we've given them, not to mention the fact that we've let so many of them come to live here, without requiring the usual visa requirements, plus the fact that they can claim benefits more easily than British layabouts, you'd think that they'd be more bloody grateful and at least give us ten points.  So, in retaliation we should cut off support to them, not to mention all the other foreign aid we give to people who don't vote for us at Eurovision.  In fact, can't vote for us at Eurovision.  Because we could better spend that money at home helping good British people.

Apart from sounding like the Reform UK manifesto, there is just so much wrong with this it is hard to know where to start.   Bearing in mind that Ukraine is engaged in an existential conflict with Russia (and that those Ukrainians we've so 'generously' allowed to come here are war refugees), the idea that we should abandon them because they wouldn't give is more points at Eurovision is utterly perverse.  Then there's the hoary old chestnut of foreign aid - quite apart from the moral aspects of giving less well off countries assistance, in terms of national self-interest, it represents 'soft power', a way of influencing and winning around the sympathies of potential allies.  You'd think that the US's plummeting standing in the world and inability to get anyone to support them in their foreign adventures, would stand as a dire warning as to the perils of cutting off foreign aid - particularly when the likes of china are standing ready to fill the aid vacuum.  As Trump has shown, flexing your military muscles in trying to intimidate smaller nations is no substitute for the influence that the soft power of aid gives you, (at a far lower price, also).  As for the idea that any money saved might be used to help the 'deserving poor' of Britain, well, we all know that, in reality, it would simply finance tax breaks for the wealthy, or be paid out to private companies via dodgy 'outsourcing' contracts for public services.

Now, I could say that I think that the sort of people who write this drivel should be sent to re-education camps in an attempt to drill some kind of basic education into them, accompanied by being forced to work on community projects in deprived areas, (wearing day glo orange jackets with 'Moron' or 'Ignorant Bastard' printed on the back).  But if I were to do that I'd have all those right-wing bastards, (the very same people who think that working class 'young offenders' should be put in the army, that asylum seekers should be confined in concentration camps, or that people should be made to 'work' for their benefits by being put into slave-like indentures to filthy rich companies who could easily pay them proper wages), screaming about how I'm a typical lefty git who just wants to suppress free speech and who is showing their true colours as a supporter of Soviet-style brainwashing and gulags for dissidents etc. So, instead, I'll just confine myself to observing that maybe, just maybe, the reason why nobody votes for us at Eurovision is because we keep entering unrelentingly shit acts.  Just a thought.