and I genuinely didn't like reading Ruth saying that a "highlight" of an English folk festival was a "disco".

With anyone else I'd accept that as a matter of personal taste, but with you it's bound to be part of your somewhat absurd and idiosyncratic mythconception of what constitutes Our Own Good Culture. As for cheap shots - when you write (and publish) such drivel as English culture is taking a hammering and when people lose their culture society suffers how else are people to interpret that other than the product of xenophobia, if not outright racism? I believe the argument might go something like this:

WAV : I genuinely didn't like reading Ruth saying that a "highlight" of an English folk festival was a "disco".

Mudcat : Why?

WAV : Because English culture is taking a hammering and when people lose their culture society suffers.

*

Fact is WAV, Real Living English Popular Traditional Folk Culture is thriving. As an anthropologist you ought to be out there revelling in it instead of mistaking Revival Folk Music & Dance for Real Culture, which it most certainly, and most demonstrably, is not. You conceded you were mistaken with your reading of The Lord's Prayer; methinks it's maybe time you did the same regarding Our Own Good Culture.