A scheme of things would have to be pretty minimal for the outcome of the 2008 Mercury Music prize to matter in it, but placed in series with all the other notable misfirings of critical opinion over the past decade (make your own list) it does have something to do with “violence / a long way back, and wrong rewards”. I’ve nothing against Elbow, but equally nothing for them: they’re relatively worthy and sincere practitioners of a totally unambitious music, better at what they do than most but ultimately not needed.

At least Laura Marling is young and shows evidence of having more than one idea in her head; at least Rachel Unthank and the Winterset seem a little strange (and that’s because they are). Obviously it should have gone to Burial, and for Untrue, which in more ways than the listeners who dismissed it as coffee-table music were able to recognise speaks to our condition; theirs too. But no: what’s wanted, apparently, is uplift wrung from the three-chord treadmill-pounding of dour thirtysomething blokes - as Belle and Sebastian put it: “This is just a modern rock song, / this is just a sorry lament. / We’re four boys in our corduroys, / we’re not terrific but we’re competent”.