From one of those who has left the scene as a whole.

Matters came to a head over the death of Countess Richard. I took to heart the critique that local folkies had done nothing to care for her, being a local folkie: I now sing with the Bowes Road Community Choir, rather than the new Bounds Green Singers Club. Our turf is where she lived, although I did not know that.
Consequently, I took it on me to try to find out what had actually happened, and posted as soon as possible the data obtained from the responsible authorities concerning the rumours. For example, it was thought that she had died in the local hospital, who confirmed that to the best of their knowledge she was still alive. For that, I was thoroughly vilified. None the less, I kept going, and after plaguing the local registrars of deaths discovered that yes she had died some time back, and that yes no funeral had yet happened because they had had trouble finding her family. I then trogged up to the coroners who welcomed me with open arms because they had just found her brother, who remembered you bunch but not what you were called, let alone had any contact with you. That then allowed him to get in contact, I backed off and the rest is history.

I put myself in her position. Would I want friends who behave like you did? I do not. The Germans distinguish between humans and real people, they have a word "mensch" for the latter. It does not apply to the members of the local clubs who did nothing to support her when alive, nor to the ivory tower theoreticians here who expected perfect and instant knowledge when they weren't bothered to actually get off their fat arses here and help find out. Friends like that I don't need either, and that includes most of the folk community in North London.

So before you get too comfy and self-justified in your complacency, kindly take this thought from someone who still wishes you well from outside the tent: what you have done in the past belongs in the past. It is what you are doing next which matters, and although you are building that from the wreckage of the experience of what you have done in the past, you are only as good as your next gig. It will stop being negative, and cure the aforementioned problems - and might restore the folk world as we know it.

No, I'm not open to self-justificatory replies or acerbic criticism: as far as I'm concerned that's in the past, this is simply a statement of the personal viewpoint of one ex-folkie who walked away and whose mind is made up. Too many of you don't give a folk about folk, real folk, proper people, and that is a serious character defect. However much you may pride yourself in ecky-thump robustness, it has to be backed with common humanity, which if lacking, just turns you into a pit of bile and shite. It is up to those who have some to sort out those who don't, and it is the task of the mods to back them up. It's not being prissy to expect some human heart in someone's general postings, to mix toughness and gentility, if all you are becoming is a grinder, and perhaps that is what this is about: build, don't destroy.