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So last night won the 'coveted' , waltzing off with £20,000 and the more nebulous benefit of critical acclaim.

It used to be that a Mercury win would benefit an artist, boosting sales and public profiles substantially. And back in the day, the prize was given to some pretty commercial offerings: the first five winners were Primal Scream's Screamadelica, Suede's Suede, M People's Elegant Slumming, Portishead's Dummy and Pulp's Different Class.

Then things began to get a bet weirder as the judging panel pushed the boat out. Roni Size and Reprazent, Talvin Singh, PJ Harvey, Dizzee Rascal (back when he was a grime star, not a chart-bothering pop colossus), Antony And The Johnsons and last year's abject failure Speech Debelle have all been winners.

The only recent winners with significant sales have been Franz Ferdinand, Elbow, The Klaxons and Arctic Monkeys. It's a fairly random award, with no pattern to the recipient. There's always a feeling that a million-selling, MOR, indie rock choice is the easiest one - but that leads to accusations of conservatism when the UK music scene is as inventive and vibrant as ever it was.

But when they've given it to someone of more selective appeal, they get the accusation of wilful oddness. And that's the difficulty of operating a non sales-based, arbitrary judging system that's not a Brits-style 'oh-you've-made-the-record-industry-lots-of-money'. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. Speech Debelle is the first time they've really dropped a clanger, but M People's godawful début is also far from a classic, judging by the amount I see for sale in charity shops.

We shall see whether The xx's xx manages a sales surge in the next couple of weeks. More likely, people will simply listen to the album on Spotify and make their judgement there. I doubt the Mercury really has much relevance any more.

One side issue, one that each year nags at my mind, is the lack of Welshies in the mix. Tracking back through the years, Manic Street Preachers were nominated in 1996 (Everything Must Go) and 1999 (This Is My Truth...), Super Furry Animals were nominated in 2001 for Rings Around The World and - from leftfield - Scritti Politti's White Bread Black Beer was nominated in 2006.

Four nominations out of 190. That's less than two per cent, and Wales accounts for five per cent of the population. What's up?

I think our musical output is often either cool or sufficiently successful, but very rarely both. There's no way the Mercury Prize would nominate Lostprophets, Funeral For A Friend or Bullet For My Valentine. They just wouldn't. Duffy's début was a soulful massive seller but it missed out as being maybe too obvious or insufficiently inventive.

It would have been great and entirely justified to have had a Mclusky or Future Of The Left album in the mix over the years... and I have no idea why the Super Furries missed out in the Britpop years - they had more ideas in one bar than Oasis did in an entire album.

Wales does rock very well and always has done, but it's unreconstructed, uncomplicated rock. If the Mercury Prize is about doling out gongs to acts pushing the musical boundaries then we may have to wait a while. Not that it matters: I love unreconstructed, uncomplicated rock and any prize given to the foghorn that was M People isn't worth hankering after.

What do you think? Why aren't Welsh acts nominated more often? And does the prize matter? If you want to have your say, on this or any other ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ blog, you will need to sign in to your ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD account. If you don't have a ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iD account, you can - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ sites and services using a single login.

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