"there's no harm in trying."

Actually I think we have a DUTY to try.

John Leonard is to be congratulated for getting the awards commissioned in '99 (I know how damn hard that was to do, and what a major achievement).

For the first couple of years I was happy to applaud as loudly as everyone else.

But the world has moved on. Folk music is in already in a different place (partly thanks to the awards, in fairness), and it is going further down the road - and even picking up speed.

We are experiencing a surge in interest, which is excellent news, but if we're not to be criticised by future generations, we need to make sure we handle this surge responsibly.

Yes, we do need to take every opportunity to 'sell' traditional and traditionally-derived music to a wider market - partly for financial reasons and partly for cultural ones (specially English and Welsh) - but we need to do this in ways that we won't risk destroy the things which made the music what it is in the first place.

And in particular we need to repect the people who made and handed down the songs we now call tradtional - so that new-comers will begin to understand how the whole thing works.

Now. When the awards were set up the team faced a number of challenges. Their solutions to those challenges were compromises, and perhaps reasonable compromises at the time - but they were, and are, NOT reasonable compromises for the longer term.

But in spite of helpful and good suggestions from many sources over many years, there has been no change. At all.

Smooth Operations have rested on their laurels.

But those laurels are not really theirs to rest on. They belong to all of us who work with, play and love folk music.

Now if I could see ANY glimmer of hope that Leonard was at least listening I would be content.

But I don't. I see him thinking, we'll just sit tight. They'll soon get bored.

Every time someone comes on here of the BBC forum and says it we can't change anything and it doesn't matter anyway, he goes - 'yep'

And the chances of improvement dip again.