About time that reparation payment showed up

The Eurovision song contest. It makes American Idol look positively tasteful. We wrote about last year's version here. Voting on the songs is now done by mobile phone rather than national juries. The Republic of Ireland used to have a disturbing comparative advantage in this contest, but here's how bad things got this year:

[Irish Times] After 15 countries had snubbed us, the UK finally threw us seven points. Centuries of mass emigration to Britain, it seemed, had finally been good for something. Those points, however, effectively ended our interest in the competition. Nobody ever remembers who came second last and as the British discovered last year, there can be a sneaky enjoyment to be had from the achieving the perfect ignominy of "nul points." If he had managed it, [Irish entrant] Doran would have been remembered in pub quiz questions for years to come. They were our only points and it was a long wait before it was over.