Austria has withdrawn from the Eurovision Song Contest, claiming that the whole thing has become too dominated by Eastern European countries voting for their neighbours rather than the songs they liked best.
Wolfgang Lorenz of Austrian TV station ORF told reporters this weekend: "The song contest reflects negative signs of a complicated European unification. As long as the contest is not an international entertainment programme, but a political drill-camp, the ORF intends not to send talents from Austria in such a changeless race".
Seemingly 'political voting' has become the norm in Eurovision since the admission of Eastern European countries and the introduction of public phone voting, rather than the old system of each country putting forward a panel of music experts.
The development has seen the UK, who traditionally came quite high up in the final points list even though they didn't often win, normally relegated to the bottom of the heap - a trend which led to Liberal Democrat MP Richard Younger-Ross call on the BBC to also withdraw from the competition earlier this year.
The involvement of the UK, Spain, France and Germany is important, however, because they provide the bulk of the funding that enables the event - which is why those four countries are now guaranteed a place in the Eurovision final.
Talking of Eurovision, we'd like to encourage all CMU Daily readers to join the campaign to pressure UK Eurovision execs to forego the charade of letting the deluded British public choose who we send to the Song Contest, and instead send the mighty Kid Carpet. I'm not sure he'd win, but he'd certainly confuse our European friends, which would be fun. To sign up to the campaign join this here Facebook group...
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4723364404