'it is, or should be about what we mean by folk song.
The pair of you, to a lesser degree, have turned it int a slanging match.'

you've turned it into a slanging match. by disavowing what we call folk music to be folk music. the fierce rejection is mostly on your side.
the historians and grant givers, and so on will always be your side. they are more comfortable with dead miners and the like than the current brutalities and working class diversions of modern life. i understand that you feel you need the academics conferring the tags of respectability on your work.

but publicly denying the validity of experience of folk music by guys like myself, ian and dick - well its not right. frankly its not good behaviour.