If I understand it correctly, and ET may correct me, if an amendment is put to the vote and defeated, convention requires that it be not put again in the same form. If it is withdrawn, it may be put again in the same form. I hope that makes sense to those who are not (UK)constitutional lawyers: I am not but I am having to teach the subject so I am learning!

The "please yourself" amendment is not politically workable because it will meet the objcetion fromthe public that it would de-restrict the electric jam as well: get 45 talentless musicians each with a Marshall stack and a house PA rig all trying to play "Wild Thing" and you'd deafen every living thing within 5 miles. In theory the existing law on noise nuisance enables this sort of noise nuisance to be controlled but in practice it does not work. I know because I bought a house between what were two nice quiet pubs but now both have featured electric entertainment usually DJs or the talentless musicians who cannot play without their backing tracks and rigs. If I (a lawyer, and one of the pushy middle classes) cannot get the local authority to stop it, what use is the existing law?

What might work is the "acoustic exemption" which was put in the Lords. Mind you I made the first draft of it, so I am biased. If you want to go for any sort of electric exemption it will in reality have to provide an effective means to control electric noise. Ironically, I like loud electric music, but not causing public disorder in my village.

The only alternative I see is, instead of an exemption, a deemed licence, importing some sort of noise limits.

But this is only music in pubs. Other sorts of music in other places, and, more importantly (in a sort of paleontological sense) is avoiding the smae harm to folk dance that the bill may cause to folk music, and I ahve no idea how to draft that...