Your complaints don't go deeply enough! It is not the CONDUCT or the SYSTEM of the Folk Awards that is wrong, it is the whole CONCEPT of the folk scene acting like some minor league Oscar ceremony with its sad self-congratulatory behaviour.
When artists or agents contact me and say that they have won some award and therefore I ought to book them, I always point out how meaningless these trivial things are in the grand scheme of things. How I wish that the folk scene would stop aping the celebrity-led mainstream music industry with its false attitudes and values. If a person is good as a singer or musician then let them prove it without a panel of "experts" telling us what is good or bad.
VIC SMITH