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I mean, look at it, it's a SHAMEFUL STATE OF AFFAIRS. The Top 40 is now measured on the amount of times a certain song has been purchased in all of its different available forms (unless it has free stickers with the CD, right Beck?), and just look at the utter chaos which has ensued. Not only have some records which were going down the chart gone back up, but SNOW PATROL HAVE COME BACK IN.

Look! It's shocking...'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol...at NUMBER NINE! Look what dark forces you've unleashed, you FOOLS!

I'm all for lobbying Parliament about this. If it were up to me, the rules of the chart would never have been altered to allow Snow Patrol songs greater exposure. I'd go the other way, if anything. Maybe changing things so that every sold copy of a song I really like counts for double, and then if it's a band I normally like doing an alright song, or a good song by a band I don't normally like, then that's a single sale, and if it's Snow Patrol, all the sales figures get credited to Jamelia (or Sophie Ellis Bextor, when her startling new song comes out), nine times over.

Better still, if it's a cheesy cash-in type song, like all the Christmas ones, all the sales get credited to some over-serious, snooty grown up rock muso, like Tom Waits, Will Oldham or Nick Cave, but the chart would have to still show the real song title.

So, this year's Christmas chart would have been livened up with Top 20 entries for Tom Waits doing '21st Century Christmas', or Thom Yorke doing 'Christmas My Arse'. That. Would. RULE.

And so what if this change spells the end of the single as a object you hold in your hand? Speaking as someone who has bought sodding thousands of the things in my time, I can say with some conviction that it's JUST FINE BY ME. I mean, honestly, they changed price on a week-by-week basis, depending on whether the record companies wanted them cheap to make the song chart well on its first week, or whether it was already massive hit and could be sold at full price, or whether it was slipping down the charts and the shop had a boxful to get shot of.

Despite being a lot less exciting as a purchasing opportunity, online sales are at least a hell of a lot more consistent. AND there's none of that record collector crap about 'limited editions' and stuff. If your song's any good, and people can buy it, that's surely all you need, right?

And it's not as if music itself is dwindling, is it? 2006 was an amazing year for brilliant songs and astonishing stars.

So, while it's sad that the big thrill of getting behind a song you love and going out to buy the new record by YOUR BAND/SINGER with its own sleeve and b-sides (which are not remixes) is going to diminish (and not just cos of the new chart rules, it was dwindling anyway), surely it's better that the Top 40 singles chart, which has been the Top 40 SONG chart for most of its existence in any case, is a more accurate representation of what songs people are actually buying?

Unless they're by Snow Patrol, of course. There ARE limits...