I am reminded of the scene from The Life Of Brian - and how much wisdom there is in that supposedly purely comedy film - where the two rival Judean Liberation groups break into the palace to kidnap Pilate's wife and when they find that they both have the same aim, they end up slaughtering one another whilst the Roman guards look on shaking their heads in disbelief.

Do the various Judeans resemble the fractious British folkies on Mudcat and the Roman guards, the American board administrators?

Mudcat can be source of knowledge, information and fun but recently too many threads have decended to out and out insults. Two things will need to happen to recover the position.

1] The board administrators will need to take a much more firm hand than in the past; distinguish between differences of opinion - which are healthy - and personal insult - which is destructive and will frighten users off the board. They should act more quickly to close threads where the line between difference of opinion and insult is crossed.

2] The users of this board should give more thought to what they are posting and not rush to post in anger. The admirably open policy of Mudcat and its reluctance to ban individuals does mean that there will be internet trolls posting here whose main aim is to draw attention to themselves, whatever form that attention takes. The only way to deal with such posters is to ignore them by making your own points and only responding with pro- or anti- statements to the views expressed and leaving all personal insults out. No amount of name-calling will discourage a troll, so please just ignore them and post round them. Perhaps they will then go away and post elsewhere

This is a call for a fresh start which I feel in much needed here.