Some people, for reasons best known to themselves, wallow in dumbed-down farce, variety and pantomime and care nothing for musicianship or respect for the tradition. In failing to recognise the distinction between the necessity to value our heritage and those conventions which can, and indeed often should, be broken they are stifling the life out of traditional music in their cliquey little 'sing-songs' and outright refusal to countenance those artists who are devising new and fresh ways to present the music as relevant to how we live today and giving it the impetus to survive and thrive.

They are the reason why I rarely go to 'folk clubs' nowadays as - with few notable exceptions - these are so depressing, unwelcoming and sterile: the same under-rehearsed, embarrassing crap from residents and floor singers, same duff notes, mondegreens and tired, unfunny jokes. There are infinitely more congenial venues which those of the wanker persuasion thankfully don't go near and where exciting music and dance flourish.

And this is the kind of material that needs to be presented during the sole hour which the BBC - through an outsourced production company - deigns to schedule for 'folk and acoustic' music if the public at large is even to consider reimbracing our cultural inheritance as an art form in which they can take pride.   Not Celtic pretentiousness and sub-Nashville tat - those who actually want to listen to this have plenty of opportunities to do so across a plethora of networked output.

It's problematical to decipher just what the person Betsy is attempting to convey by ' R-soles like you go wamping on about pure Tradition'. Peculiar choice of words. Suffice to say that I have been writing about music in anywhere but the Tory press for more years than she claims to have had an involvement in it and I can safely say that I have never used the words 'pure' and 'tradition' together. That would scarcely be logical. I do have a concern over the image problem the music undoubtedly has among the wider population which is in no way enhanced by the demeaning charabanc- party, pseudo-jolly amateurism Betsy and her ilk seem hell-bent on purveying.