Jon Boden looks increasingly mad doesn't he. In a good way.

I think you will find it's actually called New York GIRLS

(Multiply this by about ten, and I think it gives a good sense of what Bellowhead are like on the stage. )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/bbc_radio_two

Folk Singer of the Year

I think Jon Boden will get this, on the grounds that he's Jon Boden, and on the grounds that you can't do something like Folk Song a Day and not get the prize. You know my views: Spiers and Boden are awesome; Bellowhead are pretty damn fine and somewhere along the line, Folk Song a Day has turned into a game of Sound As Much Like Peter Bellamy As Possible. Not that there is anything wrong with that, exactly...

I would vote for Chris Wood.

Best Duo

No question whatsoever that Norma and Eliza will get it, on the grounds that Norma has been terribly ill and is getting better.  (And that the Gift is a tremendous album, obviously.)

I would probably vote for Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, on the grounds that they used to live in Bath and are wonderful. They are even better with Robert Harbron, but when there are three of them, they are arguably not a duo.

Best Group

Now, wouldn't it be cool if Coope, Boyes and Simpson got it, so that the Simpson part of the act could say "Cancel my ***ing radio show, and then give me an award, will you?" in his acceptance speech? Not that Lester uses language like that, I'm sure.

Fisherman's Friends will get it, on the grounds of being new and famous and not having won anything before. I haven't heard them, so couldn't possibly comment. (They are at the Brizzlefolk festival, in May, so I will doubtless Tell You What I Think of them then.)

I'd vote for Bellowhead, I suppose.

Best Album

You see, now it gets complicated: am I allowed to vote for Chris Wood in every category, or do we assume that if he gets Best Album he doesn't get Best Song and vice versa? My priority is for Hollow Point to end up with a gong saying "Best. Song. Evah." And to be honest, I didn't think that Hedonism (the Bellowhead album) was that good.

OK: I would vote for Handmade Life, and think that Handmade Life will actually win.

Best Original Song.

Queen of Waters is a stonking, stonking song, and has now had a book named after it. I think that, if they've already given Chris the prize for best Singer and best Album, they'll give the best song prize to Nancy and James for this one. And I'll grudgingly say they deserve it.

Best Traditional Track

I heard Andy Irvine in Brizzle earlier in the year, and picked out "The Demon Lover" as an utter highlight, not only of the gig, but of all the gigs I went to last year. He really really knows how to do a ballad. (Particularly leaving in the bit about the lover turning out to have cloven feet.)

Bellowhead will win it for New York Girls. The whole audience will have been going la la la can't you dance the polka, and will be such a good mood that if the song doesn't get the prize, they'll riot.

Best Live Act

Bellowhead. Inevitably, obviously.

SUMMARY:

BEST SINGER

VOTE: Chris Wood

PREDICTION: John Boden
ACTUALLY WON: CHRIS WOOD.

BEST DUO

VOTE: Nancy Kerr / James Fagan

PREDICTION: Norma Waterson / Eliza Carthy
ACTUALLY WON: Nancy and James

BEST GROUP

VOTE: Bellowhead

PREDICTION: Fishermans Friends
ACTUALLY WON: Bellowhead

BEST ALBUM

VOTE: Handmade Life

PREDICTION: Handmade Life
ACTUALLY WON: The Gift 

BEST SONG:

VOTE: Hollow Point

PREDICTION: Queen of Waters
ACTUALLY WON: Hollow Point

BEST TRADITIONAL TRACK

VOTE: The Demon Lover

PREDICTION: New York Girls
ACTUALLY WON: Poor Wayfaring Strange 

BEST LIVE ACT

VOTE: Bellowhead

PREDICTION: Bellowhead
ACTUALLY WON: Bellowhead

so andrew why have you decided that you'd rather listen to folksingers than politicians or newspaper pundits or clergymen

this is why

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7VXxZgpK3U

vi

The example that keeps cropping up, and which proves that gay now runs the country and everyone else is an oppressed minority is the case of an hotel, run by a Christian family, who allegedly refused to let a homosexual couple rent a room.

The story strikes me as rather more nuanced than either side is admitting. As I read the story, no-one was turned away for being gay: and neither have the Secret Elders of Frankfurt launched an attack on the hotel owners for being Christians.

What seems to have happened is that the hotel had a policy of only renting double rooms to married couples (and had, in fact, frequently required unmarried straight couples to sleep in separate rooms). Now, this might very well be silly and priggish. We might very well ask why the hotel wasn't equally strict about kicking out guests who didn't go to church on Sunday or honour their parents; or people who take the Lord's name in vain and go around coveting other people's oxes. Or, why God was okay with people committing fornication in single beds. Or what they did to stop unmarried straight couples signing in as "Mr and Mrs Smith" in the time honoured fashion.

But the rule that said "We only rent double rooms to married couples" wasn't illegal per se. Daft, maybe, but there's no law against being daft.

The problem arose because the representatives of the Secret Gay Conspiracy were Civil Partners. They regarded themselves as married under the law. Mr and Mrs God did not. And therein lies the problem. Mr and Mrs God were perfectly free to turn away unmarried couples. What they were not free to do was to pick and choose which forms of marriage they regarded as valid. They would not have been free to say that Mr and Mrs Smith were not married because they got married in front of a registrar, as opposed to a priest; or to say that Catholic weddings didn't count.

So everything turned on whether "civil partnership" is legally the same thing as marriage.

Common sense suggests to me that it is not: the clue would seem to be that one is called "civil partnership" and the other is called "marriage"; that registry offices hold "civil partnership ceremonies", not weddings, and that The Gay Lobby is still lobbying for the right to marry. However, after due consideration, M'Learned Friends decided that civil partnerships and marriages were the same thing.

This strikes me as a rather subtle point of both morality and legality. It's not illegal for someone to say that it's immoral for people who are not legally married to have sex; but it is, apparently, illegal for someone to say that an institution which is not legally the same as marriage is not morally the same as marriage.

It makes my head spin, rather.

The question about whether gay people should be allowed to get married in the eyes of the law is a good one. Getting individual judges to decide whether civil partnerships are or are not marriage on a case by case basis may not be the best way of answering it. But it's a rather subtle question and it has been argued about right up the legal system to the highest court in the land: and a judge (himself an Anglican) has given a considered judgement, which Mr and Mrs God have the right to appeal against. (They may even have the right to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.)

It is hard to see how that equates to dragging too poor innocent Christians before an Un Gay Activities Panel.