Lily Allen discovers music industry promotional event designed to promote music industry

Lily Allen can barely bring herself to look at her Brit Award, as someone seems to have told her that the winners aren't really decided by fairies making wishes:

"The Brit Awards is a TV show and a record company executive makes deals with ITV and the producers about who wins what award in exchange for performance time," she said. "I got one last week and it just meant absolutely nothing to me, to be honest. It just became a non-award."

ITV - who haven't been found guilty of ripping off their audiences for, ooh, a couple of years now - and the BPI were shocked at such claims that the prizes might be handed out to people for turning up:

A spokesman for the Brits explained that more than 1,000 people voted for the awards, with the results monitored by the Electoral Reform Services. "This process makes it 100 percent transparent and completely democratic," he said.

I'm not sure a election with such a small, selected electorate is in any way "completely democratic", nor an election which doesn't publish details of votes obtained can call itself "100 percent transparent".

Still, it's all overseen by the Electoral Reform Society. It's not like their spokespeople were turned into flapping-mouthed floundercakes when a recent proper election went to buggery in a ballot box, and then admitted that actually all they can really do is observe and tut.

Allen didn't offer any evidence to support her claims, although Lily Allen winning the best anything in a vote of experts would suggest there's something very wrong with the system.