A barrister friend of mine, Cheryl Jones, has written a very witty letter to the TImes.

I bet they don't print it, so, for your enjoyment, here it is....


By e-mail
The Editor
The Times
letters@thetimes.co.uk


Sir

Kim Howells is absolutely right (30.11.2002). The scourge of unamplified folk music must be driven from these shores! Why, only the other night I was sitting in a pub when two men started to play guitars and sing "All Around My Hat". The noise levels were phenomenal! It silenced the chanting football crowd in the pub next door - and the customers of the trendy bar three doors down could not hear the pounding beat of Eminem above the strumming of the plectrums and the nasal strains of the folk singers. All those who heard were in fear of being assaulted by a Morris Man or someone brandishing a mouth organ in a threatening manner.

The present laws on nuisance are clearly insufficient to deal with this danger to British civilisation.    As Kim Howells has said, one amplified musician can make as much noise as three unamplified musicians. If the threat of three unamplified singers is removed then there will be no comparator for the amplified singer and therefore the amplified singer will not be able to make as much noise!

Of course we can trust local authorities to set reasonable terms and conditions for having unamplified music, such as bouncers to control the dangerous followers of folk singing. It would be wholly unreasonable to take a view that English folk music is a minority activity and that there are no recorded instances of folk music riots.

Of course it is right that local authorities do not have the same powers to set terms and conditions for recorded music or wide-screen televisions. Kim Howells says so and he is the Minister for Culture. If he considers three folk singers in a pub as his idea of hell, then it must be so and it is right and proper to take all steps possible to regulate and suppress them.   There being absolutely no nuisance or danger from football matches being shown in pubs or from the volume of recorded music flooding from trendy bars it is obviously not necessary to have any regulation of those activities.

Go for it Mr Howells. Who cares if you have no evidence of nuisance and plenty of evidence that the licensing of folk music could result in it dying? You, as the Minister of Culture, are not in slightest bit interested in ensuring a thread of musical history continues. Not when you can replace it with wide-screen TV and pounding recorded music. Not when you personally can avoid the whole thing by sticking with the House of Commons bars, which are not regulated at all.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant

Cheryl Jones (Miss)