All a public vote ever proves is which artist has the best mechanism in place to motivate its fan base to vote. Didn't Robbie Williams or someone win best album of all time in a public vote on Radio 1? Mumford & Sons would win a public vote hands down in the folk awards and I don't think anybody would feel they are representative of the music. I think there are something like 130 people who cast their votes in the various categories, all representing different strands of the folk industry with access to a wider pool of music than is readily available to most people and are therefore better placed to introduce the broader public to different music, as we see from Ewan MacLennan's well-deserved Horizon award. Far from being the same old, same old, the likes of Heidi Talbot, Fiddlers Bid, Coope, Boyes & Simpson, Breabach, Fisherman's Friends, Laura Marling, Emily Portman, The Levellers, Fay Hield and Andy Irvine have never been nominated before. Apart from personal taste and prejudice, it would be hard to argue against the merits of Bellowhead as best band after the year they've had or that Hollow Point is the best song of the year or that Gift is the best album of the year.