Cowell & his pet-puppet, Sheryl Cole, reek of double standards. They've spent the whole series harping on about the public being in charge of keeping terrible acts like Jedward in the X Factor competition. Yet when the public decide to buy a different song to 'Our Wayne's' cover version of a god-awful all-American pap song (co-written by Billy Ray-Cyrus apparantly), they claim bullying & selfishness as a motive.

My motive not to buy 'The Climb' is that it smells like it just got deposited out of a dogs bottom.

Sack it, despite being cynical about it's chances of actually being number one and regarding it as a waste of money as obviously I already own the album, I've just bitten the bullet and bought Killing In The Name from iTunes. You gotta be in it to win it and all that. I don't even know what the X Factor song is as I'm completely out the loop on popular music but I hate all that reality TV karaoke rubbish and there are few bands in this world I have more respect for than Rage Against The Machine who I've loved for years so it'd be brilliant if they win this.

the bad news is ratm are also on cowells label

How's that, then? By downloading a 17 year old song??? Jesus.

And as is pointed out above, Cowell will still benefit financially from this rather immature campaign. So if the point was to get at him, it's rather backfired IMO. Pathetic and pointless.

Rugbychick said Cowell willnt benifit from this.

Why is this campaign immature?

To be honest I don't think the billionaire (probably) that is Simon Cowell will exactly struggle to make more money here as simply by creating a race for number one will inspire loads of X Factor fans who were "maybe" gonna buy that single to definitely do so as they want it to beat Rage, meaning the X Factor single will sell more copies than it would have normally whether it gets to number one or not.

We have got the first race for Christmas number one in this country for years now though and doesn't it feel just a little bit like old times, with a healthy dose of punk rock rebellious spirit thrown in for good measure. I've bought the Rage track because I want it to win. Simon Cowell is irrelevant.

This is the first time in a decade I've been interested in the race for Christmas number one and I'm enjoying it so whether it ultimately proves successful or not this campaign has achieved something and got people talking.

I used to enjoy the race for christmas number one but xfactor and other of a similar ilk have killed it off.

If this inspires others to produce good quality christmas songs in the future that will compete then I am all for it. With the exposure of Xfactor it is going to be very difficult for anyone to compete and for that reason I am pleased about the uprising against xfactor.

I dont care about Cowell or really whether Joe or ratm wins it would just me nice to have the competition back again.

When was it that the last good quality crimbo song was released?

Far from immature. I cannot recall a unity for a common cause, despite it being superficial for a long time.

The public are fed up of being force fed crap, and have decided to give themselves a choice.

If this situation hadn't arose, this year would have been the same as the previous God knows how many years and would have continued to do so for the foreseeable future.

Wasn't it the same last year when everyone was encouraged to download Hallelujah, only to find Leonard Cohen on Cowell's label?

I suppose this whole 'buy RATM and get them to number one' is meant to be [irebellion[/i against the 'do as I'm told to' consumption patterns?

Dunno, that 'bring back the old facebook layout' group has got big numbers!

What a pile of crap. How many millions watched X Factor? They weren't force fed it or made to watch it - they chose to.

The whole thing's a load of irrelevant tripe - Cowell couldn't buy this publicity and will, once again, be laughing all the way to the bank.

Remember, the public gets what the public wants.

Didn't know Simon Cowell owned Sony?

They are both on totally separate labels, that are subsidiaries of Sony Music but Cowell wont receive a penny.

It's clearly stated in the OP.