IB - I was aware of what you just posted...I did a lot of reading, during my first year of folk

Bollocks, WAV - if you were aware of it, you wouldn't hold such ludicrous opinions, let alone demonstrate so consistently just how little you're aware of anything. So how much reading did actually you do in your first year of folk? How much have you done since? Not a fat lot evidently since you're still blogging the same tired old conclusions you reached in you folk year zero, viz:

(ORIGINAL) MESSAGE EMAILED-OUT DURING 2005

To many online folkies:

Folk music IS meant to be local/regional/national. Our forebears were loyal to this when they formed the English Folk Dance and Song Society, as have been contemporary Scots by forming a Degree in Scottish Traditional Music. Furthermore, I'm told several of our earliest folk-clubs strongly encouraged participants to select from their own culture.

My usual and only complaint with our present English-folk scene is the lack of loyalty to our own good tradition. There are more than enough good English songs, tunes and dances (plus instruments) for anyone's lifetime – let's appreciate others but perform our own!

More broadly: nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade (via the U.N.) is good for humanity.

Yours Faithfully,

David Franks

This from your latest myspace blog update. No new insights, no fresh appraisals, no evidence of any learning, just the same old rhetoric, year in, year out, stuck in the rut of your relentless ignorance on every last fucking thing you claim to hold sacred.