punkfolkplacidrocker demanded:
"please re-read this entire thread carefully and note
that i only start from, and try to remain in,
a peacable and concillatory
neutral corner of the ring.."
He also accused me of singling him out for "hazily focused invective.."

OK - I've just re-read all my own posts on this thread and ask punkfolkplacidrocker to do the same and then to quote to me, verbatim, all the instances of invective, however focused, that he can find in them - whether aimed at him or anyone else.

Before I entered this discussion, Punkfolkrocker had already used such expressions as

"those supercilious diletante classical musician folkies
that stretch my tolerance levels.."

"..sounds like you're well over 40
and down to your last failing brain cell.."

"highly dubious intolerant supremacist characters
who take pround refuge in their version of its shadily retrogressive
traditionalist agenda
and inward looking social sub-culture.."

My own first contribution came after his insulting attack on Kendal - a man who I have had the pleasure of meeting (though only once). Kendal simply stated that "Rap is to music what graffiti is to literature." Hardly invective! And certainly not deserving of punk...'s "down to your last failing brain cell..". This was where I came in because, you see, I hadn't realised that this remark to Kendal was meant to be "a peacable and concillatory neutral corner of the ring.."

punk... also says "you are the one who brought an unneccessary 'fight' to me..
at an indecently late UK time of New years morning
when i was more than adequately wassailed on the SPIRITs
of new years celebration..
so dont be so surprised that my exasperated response
was expressed in a less than sober manner.."

Perhaps he was actually too well wassailed to have read my post accurately. I'm assuming, from he has written since, that the unnamed Guest I quoted was indeed he. In his direct reply to my pleas for tolerance to those he disagreed with I mentioned punk... simply because I was answering his attacks on other people. It seemed to me then (and he has confirmed it since) that people who had a different opinion from his own would be attacked by him. I pointed out that to question someone's intelligence for simply saying he didn't like RAP was, perhaps, not a very intelligent thing to do. He saw that as "invective" while his own insults were "peaceful and concilliatry".

Unfortunately, since that time, people on both sides of the argument seem to have felt the necessity for simply hurling insults. I have never said that RAP was either "C**p" nor "s**t". I simply don't find it has the same effect on me as a good piece of folk, trad jazz or classical music.

Once again I simply say, let's discuss the music without insulting those we disagree with.

Frank L