Well, I'll name names: I'm giving Anita Rani & Gleb Savchenko 50 or more votes. She's one the best dancers overall for me. She's danced 11 dances and never once has she ballsed up any of her routines so she's not about to balls up her semi final routines. Even if she does; I'll still give her 50 or more votes. Tess invites me to vote for the one whom I think should progress to the following week. I think Anita should go all the way to the final because she's one of the best dancers overall.

Why shouldn't I or can't I come down all high & mighty on Craig Revel Horwood? He was self indulgent. His comment was useless and accusatory in tone and smacked of arrogance and out and out bias on his part. Everybody knew that the public votes changed the leader board. It happens week in, week out.

I really don't understand this at all - he's a judge, his very role is to be partial and give his opinion, not to be impartial. He's not there to represent the public, he's there to give his own view - as we've heard many many times on this thread, the GBP is perfectly capable of making up its own mind regardless of the judges' scores...

So again I ask, as I haven't had a credible answer yet, on what basis should Craig not have been entitled to express his opinion?

When was it ever about that?

The public are not and so far as I am aware have never been asked to vote for the best dancer nor even the best dance on the night. They are asked to vote for whose dance they *liked* the most, for who they *want* to go through to next week. And a mechanism is even provided whereby they can decide how strongly they want to register that "want" on the scoresheet.

To berate people because they're they're doing exactly what the show asks them to do in exactly the way the show would like them to do it would seem to indicate yur problem is with the show and not with the people.

No!! Ok my ideal would be one vote per person, but my problem is that people can't see why Craig Revel Horwood said what he said on saturday night, when to me he was just so obviously right!!

That would be my ideal, yes, though I accept it's unlikely to happen which is why I was trying to offer a compromise!!
Really I am not sure why you & I are arguing about this, since it seems to me we are both making the same point, though from different angles, ie the best dancers are not winning Strictly, simply because the public are preferring to vote for who they like best as a person (as is their right)!!
Surely though that's exactly the point Craig was making on Saturday night & seems to be getting slated for it, wrongly in my opinion!!

In general terms I see a difference between the partiality required to do his job each Saturday, where he is expected to express his preference through his comments and scores for each dance based on his opinion of how well or otherwise it was executed, and an overall impartiality which means not making predictions about who he wants or expects to make the final. He may, and almost certainly does, have his private favourite(s) but when he is in a position to influence the outcome of who goes and who stays, it would be sensible not to make that public to avoid yet more accusations of bias, fix, rigged scoring etc.

Re Helen specifically, the simple fact is the judges collectively placed her in the bottom two. Craig said "it wasn't the judgeS who put you here". Err, yes it was. He had her joint B2 with Katie on his scoring. He may have meant "I didn't put you here because I thought you were better than Katie" in which case his score should have reflected that. He may have meant "we were relying on the public to pull you up despite our scores but they didn't, so it's their fault" but that doesn't change the fact that the judges had her in a B2 slot in the first place.

So yes, he's entitled to his opinion - up to a point - but when his later opinion is at odds with his earlier one, it just makes him look rather foolish.

/\ /\ /\ /\

Hail. Head. Hit.

Can't find the comment but someone made that point that it was irrelevant whether people have 1 or 50 votes.

Absolutely not true IMO

Strictly attracts a whole spectrum of fans and the love of dancing may be the only thing that we all have in common. I personally utterly despise trash reality TV (e.g. I'm a non-entity keep me in here, BB, CBB etc ) but I suspect there are many SCD fans who also like that stuff.

I think fans of progs where public votes are de rigeur are much more likely to vote at all and then find ways of submitting multiple votes for their favourites if the rules allow. Even if it costs!!!

I don't vote, won't vote and wouldn't dream of (aka CBA) registering or paying to submit 50 votes or whatever. However, as long as some people are willing to do so we will always get freak results where better dancers get eliminated.

Bottom line? 'We' get what 'we' deserve and Craig is right that the public are responsible.

I agree with pretty much all of this!!

Thank you

And I've just read your #175. I think we're definitely in the same camp

Same here, though I probably would if it were one vote per person, a level playing field.
As it is now, it is more than apparent that some fans will and do go to extreme lengths and vote multiple times, it's almost like a mission.
Unless everyone ups the ante and starts voting in the 100's ..frankly if it means that much to them then I hope they get the winner they have invested so much in....the downside is, for me anyway, the more interesting dancers have gone and though I really don't care who picks up the glitterball I do miss and feel a bit sad that I will never see the dances from those sent home too early because they haven't got the ardent multi-voters behind them.....having one vote each may not have made any difference,,but we will never know.
That's why I agree with Craig and also agree with his critique of that dance which was 100% nearer the mark than Len's 9.

With the relatively short voting window after the Sat show I think the multiple votes will have a disproportionate and negative effect on the overall result.

Who classes as the best dancer is subjective though. Anita isn't the best technically but the drama and passion she brings to the performance makes her dances stand out for me, which is why I vote for her.

I also don't think limiting people to one vote would change anything. The most popular couples would still go through. If Anita or Jay are stirring something within their fans to make them want to vote multiple times then that's a sure sign of their overall popularity, as well as the polls (where you can usually only vote once) which suggest both are firmly in the top 3.

Absolutely, though the multi voters would see it as a positive ...but my motto is if you can't (or don't want to) join them, bow out, if it means that much and all that but yep I think it skewers the outcome and for me in a negative way. But hey-ho

There is no way of knowing whether the people voting in these polls are a true representative cross sample of SCD fans or disproportionately by the type of people who are more likely to submit multiple votes?

Let's face it, the voting system is flawed and as long as we have people multiple voting to (a) right a perceived wrong (b) support their favourite personality or (c) support the best dancer that ain't gonna change any time soon. No point in people getting their bloomers in fankle about it, that's just the way it is. Still daft though that someone would feel strongly enough to submit 50 votes or whatever for Anita simply because Craig was cruel on prime time TV about her feet not pointing straight ahead.

Are the polls on here?..had a quick look and I found one which was closed after 187 votes on who should have gone last Saturday....Anita was way out in front with 44% of the votes.....I don't agree that multi voters indicate overall popularity, it simply distorts the figures which is why they do it.

I'm not sure it makes that much difference to be honest - in the olden days, when the phone votes raised money for Sports Relief and CiN, the phone lines opened immediately after the couple were voted off and remained open all week until they closed on the Saturday for the next elimination and during that time we had Chris Parker in the final, Julian Clary top three, Darren Gough winning and Matt Dawson making the final over a Spice Girl.

Will he change his tone next week if Anita or Katie (or both) go through?

On the US version they've often had MUCH worse dancers get to the finals and the judges are kind to them, knowing that they're favorites of the public and that's that.

I've always believed that judges must not be partial or biased. They're supposed to be the objective ones and must make judgements according the criteria set for the 'competition.' But then it's matter of opinion.

Nobody is saying that Craig isn't entitled to his opinions. He is and does express his opinions. Every Saturday; in every interview; on his blog; privately as well, I imagine. Last Saturday, he made clear his opinions about Anita's dancing. Hence, the 6. Fair enough. That's not the point, though. The issue for me is his statement on Sunday night when he said in a very accusatory tone that the public put G&H in the dance off.

He wasn't making an opinion when said that. He was stating a fact. That was a pointless exercise in itself because everybody knew that public vote could and did change the leader board. Why even say it? Unless, of course, he really meant to tell the public off by way of an indirect apology to Georgia and Helen on behalf or at the expense of the public voters. For me, the sub text of his statement is this: "I'm sorry G&H; I am disappointed to see you in that position because it should be Anita and/or Katie or Kellie standing there instead of you; but you must realise that I didn't put you there; the public did. So blame them." My response to that is: " wait, wait, wait, Craig........."

Apologies; but my point is diagonally opposite yours. You are of the opinion that more than one vote masks the true popularity of a celebrity; hence, the best dancers are not winning and therefore, the public should't vote more than once.

I am of the opinion that while voting multiple times may not measure the popularity of a celebrity in terms of how many people are voting; it measures how much popular a celebrity is to a person. That is a valid measurement as well, for me. Either way, it comes up with the same result: the "best dancers" do not necessarily win. -- which is a separate discussion in itself.

Please without reading my previous posts, don't accuse me of things I have not said.
For the last time, the few problems I have with Craig is,
1) As a judge he should never have written a blog (credibility lost) and showed his bias,
saying that he would like to see Georgia ( I am guessing your fav), Jay , Kellie and Helen ( sadly out) in the final. So he probably was very unhappy that two of his favourites were in the dance off.
2) Craig lately will not mention any of Georgia's mistakes ( which she does make), for the other contestants he goes on and on and even being pedantic about Jay's some mistake which really bugged Len.

3) Only for Georgia most of the time Craig marks the same as other judges. I will go further and say I am sure Craig will give her at least one 10 this Saturday. Happy to be wrong.

As I have said before I know what Anita is capable of and I am happy what she has achieved in the past three months. In semifinal the judges marks still count for 50% and that is what I don't trust and I am happy for her to be in the final and lose out anyone just based on the public vote. So be it. I will have no problem.

Totally agree with you.

Well if he didn't think she was a whole mark better, then there isn't a lot he could have done - they can't give half marks. I still don't think his comment was at odds with his earlier ones at all - he may well have had Helen 3rd from bottom on his own scoring - he's hardly going to give every single person a separate mark to delineate exactly how he ranks them... and it's not his fault some of the marks from the other judges were wildly inconsistent.


I agree they're supposed to judge by the criteria set for the competition, but even that is not an objective assessment - how they interpret what they see and how they apply the rules to what they see is an inherently subjective process - opinions always are.

True, but they're the best we have to go on. And I disagree that the voting system is flawed - I have no problem with it at all and never have done.

As with the polls, there is also no way of knowing why each individual chose to vote for Anita. I voted for her last week as I loved her AT. Craig comments actually made no difference to my voting at all. Without seeing the exact percentages since the show started it's impossible to say whether Anita's vote spiked last week after Craig's comments or whether it just stayed at a very high level.

I agree.

Its more than obvious the judges have their favourites as its obvious the way the under mark and over mark couples which really annoys me, but it Is an entertainment show apparantly and not a dance competition I actually never pay attention to the leaderboard as i dont trust the judges scoring....... the fact is 2 potential finalists were in the bottom 2 and the public obviously voted for other dancers rather than these...... im past caring and certainly past voting for couples and wasting money on fixed tv shows so i enjoy it for what it is