You don't bloody listen, do you, Ian? Peter Bellamy & Eric Bogle had long years of singing traditional songs and learning about the tradition to draw on when they created their 'folk-style' songs, for which they never claimed any other status. Geldof didn't. & he wasn't folk -- and didn't claim to be; so what point you imagine yourself to be making by bringing his name into the equation I cannot imagine.

But some who are no more 'folkies' than he is do make such claims, supported by those who make a virtue of their selfindulgent antidiscriminatory unselective haphazard singing-horse-lovers tastelessness, as you do. I will occasionally enjoy & sing some of the products of the first group — always in the back of my mind the consciousness that it is good imitation but not true coin; which is OK as long as one isn't trying to purchase with the counterfeit.

If you are really too thick to get this distinction, then bugger off & ride an aardvark with Bob Geldof. And enjoy your selfrighteous sense of all-inclusive anticritical death-to-taxonomies virtuous lack of discrimination. And I hope it keeps fine for you.

≈M≈