As has been mentioned in another recent discussion, it's only quite recently that Americans have been outnumbered here; the default assumption used to be that everybody must be from the US unless they specifically stated otherwise. It may be disconcerting to find folk from a (geographically) small place like the UK posting to a thread started by somebody from the UK and neglecting to mention that they aren't American; this isn't, I think, an example of their imagining themselves "the centre of the universe", but of their forgetting that America has long since arrogated to itself that assumption.

"Leadfingers", meanwhile, seems to be making the same assumption that I used to make about MacColl's "policy", until I had the opportunity of learning more about it from people who were there at the time. It was not at all so dogmatic as is now often supposed, being more to do with trying to get people to sing songs that they actually understood or had some sort of connection with, instead of whatever was currently fashionable. An equivalent now would be all those folk who insist on singing Gaelic songs learned parrot-fashion, in spite of the fact that they don't understand a word of the language. Now that is disrespect.