Pot kettle black

The Groniad, sorry, The Guardian has just published an article about how the British are "frightenly ignorant" and "woeful" at geography. On its online version it has a quiz, asking us how good our geography is. Among a set of esoteric questions e.g. which of these is the most northerly city in the UK - Inverness, Lerwick, Aberdeen and Dundee (it's Inverness, because Lerwick is the most northerly settlement but not a city); or which of these is not a real county in the Rep. of Ireland - Sligo, Galway, Leinster, Laois (it's Leinster, which is a province, not a county) - it presents a question of the longest river in Europe - the Danube, the Rhine, the Severn and the Po. Now of those four, the Danube is the longest river, but it is not the longest river in Europe - that belongs to the Volga because continental Europe is demarcated by the Ural Mountains. This is why the Volga is always listed as Europe's longest river in any respectable journal you may consult, unless of course you work for the Guardian.
Regarding the John Sergeant affair on Strictly Come Dancing (which is nothing to with the title of this blog), he probably quit because the rest of the celebrities were cooling towards him as better dancers were leaving before he was. Actress Cherie Lunghi, who was one of my favourites, said the show was becoming like a soap opera. Sergeant may have rehearsed his line ad nauseam about how the public have half the vote, but the show isn't called "Come Dancing" (which was an earlier creation), but "Strictly Come Dancing" and John's efforts were certainly not that. Still, I would have liked him to give the public a chance to get rid of him, maybe stay in there one or two more weeks, before falling on his sword. Still, he gone now, but it doesn't bring Cherie back. Anyway, in all this hoo-ha, are people forgetting the first series - won by Natasha Kaplinski, but her fellow finalist was a terrible dancer who relied on his charm to get the television audience vote. Like then, I'm sure the voters would have to their senses when it got to the final. If they want to amend the voting system, then the judges' scores should be more accurately reflected in the standings. One week John got 12 points and Heather Small got 27, but only two ranking points separated them, making it easy for John to leapfrog her. He also leapfrogged Rachel Stevens who despite having 35 points had only five more ranking points than him. They have already tightened up the rules so the judges have the final say over who of the bottom two goes, but there must be a way to calibrate the audience vote in a system that can give the judge's marks their full value.