There are so many public holidays at this time of year... Easter, then two
more Bank Holiday Mondays -- the latest being today. At the moment Manchester
is having a 'flamboyant eleven day festival of entertainment and cultural
events with a European twist' (read more at the Manchester
City Council website). But, so far, I have managed to miss it. Unless you
count buying four potted red geraniums from the flower market in Albert Square
as I walked through on Friday.
I was tempted to go and watch the Eurovision Song Contest on the large outdoor
screen on Saturday (great idea!). But other things came up. It's probably the
first time in more than ten years that I haven't watched any of the Song Contest.
And this one was historic, as it was the first time in the 48 year history that
Great Britain got 'nil points' for its song.
Some people are saying that it may be due to Britain's involvement in Iraq
and it's true that the voting often seems to reflect historic ill-feeling between
various countries. It's all part of the fun seeing how Greeks will mark the song
from Cyprus, whether Ireland will give Great Britain a low mark, what Croatia
will think of Bosnia and how any predominantly Muslim countries will rate Israel.
Throw in assorted lesbian and transexual singers in recent years and you have
a national (and gay) institution.
Of course, fact is, the BBC doesn't really want a winning British song on its
hands, as that means hosting, and paying for, the Contest the following year.
This year the location was Latvia and the bill was £6m. When Ireland won
several years running, it almost bankrupted their TV company!
So the chosen songs and artistes are sometimes, ermmm, not too good. Also I
heard that the performers sang off-key this year, which probably didn't help with
the points.
Manchester has been named as Britain's most creative city! A US economic regeneration
expert Richard Florida created an index measuring the appeal of cities to the
'new creative class'. The three indicators are ethnic diversity, proportion of
gay residents and the number of patent applications per head! California was the
most highly-rated in the US. Read more at the BBC
News site.
'What happened to May?' asked one visitor to my site, just before I updated
the Journal & Gallery section earlier today. I've got into bad habits -- uploading
lots of entries at a time, just once or twice each month. Must try to update more
often...
Click here to visit the Badpuppy website
GETTING IN TOUCH
See the contact
page for full details of how you can reach me by e-mail or chat.
All content is
�copy; Copyright GarySevenUK.com 1999-2006.
Read more here
|
