"Consoiracy" seems to be pitching it far too strong,it's a very emotive word. Surely all we have is one group of people who are wedded to a kind of Rusby/Carthy/Lakeman etc view of folk music in Britain, and they are involved with one part of the scene. Others have different views, and operate in their own various ways. Just the way the world wgas, not a conspiracy thing.
    Though I admit to finding one thing curious. Apparently, or so we are told, there is a group of independent people in the "jury"(150 it is said) who have a perfectly free hand to choose whatever they like in whatever category. And the membership of this jury is secret, so lobbying is not possible. In which case, it seems sstaistically odd to me that a very anomalous decision could get taken, like the inclusion of one specific non-traditional song in the traditional category. That seems to me a remarkable statistic freak if we really have an large jury voting independently. I mean, Seth lakeman has written dozens of songs. Odd. eh?