EU and Financial discrimination

It sounds odd, especially when it is supposed to be entertainment, but there you have it. The EU and its Eurovision song contest in now a tool for filtering and discrimination. I get there via the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-63328046) who give us ‘Eurovision: Bulgaria is latest country to pull out of Liverpool song contest’, which leaves the audience short of North Macedonia, Montenegro, and now Bulgaria. Consider the fact that they cannot afford the fees. It is hard to state that an event like this cannot have fees (even if we would like to). And when we consider “BBC News has been told countries have been asked to pay more to make up for the money lost following Russia’s ban”, we could argue that there is something wrong, we can argue that a social fee system is failing, but the directional issue is that a system of inclusion could be a system that fails from the start. Because no one minds a social system when the economy is good, but when that stops we become discriminatory to say the least. 

And that is not all, we are also given “How much each participating broadcaster pays to enter is not made public, but the total cost between all entrants normally adds up to around £5m – with the host paying a further sum”, I honestly forgot if these events are loaded with advertising, I haven’t seen one for some time and the last 10 years I have watched zero TV. A system that allows for informal political meetings behind the screens is now absent of at least three nations. How can these people see themselves as ‘European’ when they face this? So even as we are given “Annual membership fees and subscriptions are calculated according to factors that take into account the member’s relative size and financial status” I personally believe that they failed. We can make all kinds of jokes on social discrimination and feigned factors of fair play, but when you cut three of the 40 players you have an issue, it is slightly too close to 10%. We can understand when one doesn’t make the cut, or 1-2 are unable to attend for all kinds of reasons (like being invaded by Russia), but when you touch on the 10% mark it is about something more and the finance nerds who made these factors of fairness are about something else. And it is my view (a very speculative one) that no participating nation will be allowed to add advertisements of ANY kind to this event. If three cannot play, they do not need to make any money off the event either. You see the advertisement revenue could have paid for the three nations participating but that is not the case, so the stakeholders should not be allowed to line their pockets either. Tit-for-tat (or was that tits-for-dad), I honestly cannot remember as I never entered fatherhood. 

No matter how you want to see this, I see this event as a failure, you see European culture includes the three nations now not part of this and that is one more failure of the bar-tab that Strasbourg is currently running.