I suggest that if you are really interested in what this is all about you look up the recent 'Robin Hood Ballads'thread

In which my only crime was to suggest (as the thread requested) a Robin Hood ballad to listen to. That my suggestion was our setting of Child #102, Jim responded with his customary stream of infantile bilious put-downs because it didn't fit in with his elitist state-funded scheme of how such material really ought to be sung - despite the fact that I've never heard any Traditional Singer sing Child #102, and only Revival singers I've heard were Spiers and Boden who did a version few years back, but many years after our recording was featured on the first volume of John Barleycorn Reborn (not that I'm suggesting their version was in anyway inspired or influenced by ours). Since Jim seemed so convinced that we were so off the mark in our interpretation, I suggested that he was privy to some darker secret lore on ballad singing; some heremetic tradition which qualified his absolutist hysteria, and his willingness to stamp out the efforts of infidels such as ourselves - and The Watersons, Mr Fox, The Young Tradition and Steeleye Span if I remember rightly.

as he refuses to qualify what he says I am left with "I can't get a grant so the system must be crap"

Like I say, I've rejected a lot of Arts Council money in my time & regard arts funding as fundamentally immoral when it could be better spent elsewhere. As of the present moment I neither want nor need Arts Council funding. This isn't an absolute rule, for there are many exceptions, and many deserving causes where I feel arts council money would come in very handy indeed, but, for the most part, the best of it happens because of the passion and hard work of those involved & pays for itself as a result. That's generally the way things happen over here anyway, for those who work very hard at the Folkface however thin the seam might be, and however small the reward.

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I'm convinced that it won't happen until some sort of consensus is reached on what folk music is about

Well, you'd know all about consensus, Jim - meanwhile, Folk just does what it likes without worrying what it's about. Maybe we should start a What is Folk About? thread to address that very issue and see how many answers we come up with...