"But that's what makes me a fucking idiot, and a PC one at that, along with everyone else here."

No it isn't. It's what makes us people who are happy to freely impart the wisdom they've learnt, encourage and cajole newcomers to the music and to care enough to get worked up about it.

WAV has wound me up royally on a couple of occasions, and I can't decide if he's a wind-up merchant, enthusiastic but deluded or even not very well. Some of the responses on his threads have been quite ugly and while this is partly due to the frustration of posters in getting their messages through it's also because WAV has been so utterly intransigent all some folk can do is scream at him. His political opinions may be odious, he may not be articulate in expressing what he really means and we're getting the wrong end of the stick, we may not be intelligent enough to comprehend what he is saying, or he may simply be playing us all like fiddles for his own amusement.

A Tibetan Buddhist nun once told me Buddha teaches us all people are teachers, even those with whom it can seem we have no common ground. If this the case then WAV is a teacher to be cherished. The threads he started contain some of the best advice ever seen on this website for a newcomer to any of the traditions of our Islands. To be given access to some of the people who have posted here and expressed their opinions and thoughts is a great opportunity - one that I certainly have taken something away from. have a look through the tirades, rants and bullshit and there are gleaming nuggets of wisdom to be found.

One more thing. WAV's opinions may strike many of us here as contemptible and backward but they are shared by many more people in his beloved England that many of us might care to admit. It may be naive of me, but I always think folkies have a broader outlook on life than many people, and tend to embrace multiculturalism and enjoy the benefits of living in a rich and diverse society. We understand that even the divisions within to our own peoples here on these Islands are the result of ignorance, laziness and intolerance. However tens of thousands, possibly millions of people in this country don't see it that way and maintain the sort of opinions that perpetuate old animosities and misunderstandings that should have been put to bed a long time ago. If, as many think, WAV's opinions are of this ilk then perhaps he truly is home in England and in tune with so many of his fellow countrymen, where ignorance of their own traditions and the lack of tolerance to people who come to live here for whatever reason is the norm, not the exception.