Dan wrote

My suspicion is that most of the block voting that goes on is intended to get records into the 50 in the first place.

I disagree. The records we suspect were artificially boosted last year
would all have made it into the FF on their own accord. They were natural Peel
records that he had played and they would have got some votes
The objective was to boost the records from their natural #25 to #1 in order
to gain the groups publicity and to persuade Peel that they were more popular
than they actually were so he would play them more
Unfortunately last year's was so transparent that Peel was very aware of it and his
enthusiasm for the bands involved has noticeably cooled. Hopefully certain
mailing lists will have learned a lesson although I doubt it :-)
Not ranking the records would remove the incentive to do this - instead the
incentive would be to try and get as many tracks into the FF as possible rather
than concentrating on one track which would make it more interesting
It's a matter of opinion of course - that's just mine

martinw