Without wishing to denigrate any of the winners and nominees, is there any point to these awards?

I have never in my life bought a CD, book, DVD, or gone to a concert, film or theatre production because it, or anyone associated with it has won an award. I use my own judgement and form my own opinions. Surely we all do around here? We're not discussing the pop charts, "Britain's Got Talent" or "The X-Factor"; don't people who listen to folk music have rather more individuality about them than just to follow the herd and listen to what everyone else is listening to?

Amongst the winners and nominees there are some that I like, some that I don't care for, some to whom I'm indifferent and a few that I don't know. I haven't changed my mind about any of them just because they've won.

There are many good artists who have never, to my knowledge, won an award but deserve to. Does anyone else feel like that? The whole judgement business is so subjective that I don't see how it can reflect the tastes of most people who listen to folk music.

Apart from all this, isn't it very predictable who's going to win? We know that Eliza Carthy's album will win, regardless of whether it's good or bad. We know that Lau are going to win because they're flavour of the month at present (that's not an insult, I quite like them.)

It must feel gratifying to win an award, but the artists who have won are already fairly well advanced along their career paths- is a bit of extra limelight going to make any difference to them?