you are one of the people who are actually doing something to promote folk music rather than sitting at home whingeing

Don't you dare accuse all who don't fit with your Utopian view of folk clubs as people who sit at home whingeing. I have been helping to run Swinton Folk Club for as long as it has been going, nearly 30 years, as a resident singer, doorman, treasurer and general dogsbody. For 25 of those years I have also run an annual festival. In my time I have booked people like Martin Carthy, the Corries and the Oyster Band. Btw - We sold 75 tickets for Martin and fitted them all in a 50 seat room. It was tough and very sweaty but Martin was a good friend of the club and we wanted to make sure he went away with a bonus!

But lets not name drop either. Have you ever arranged a day of traditional entertainment for a school of young people with severe disabilites? Have you ever stood in the open hold of a redundant trawler on Salford Quays in the pissing rain, singing shanties to an audience of three men and a dog to support your local councils effort to promote folk music? Do you arrange concerts and ceilidhs when you know that if there is a shortfall you make up the difference out of your own pocket?

But, again,I don't want any thanks or glory. Never have, never will. And from what little I know of the other people you are slagging off they are pretty much of the same ilk as me. Believe it or not we do know what are talking about. We have paid our dues and are entitled to our opinions as long as we continue to support live music. When we stop living in the real world and start to believe that everything in the garden is roses it will then be time to hang up our gloves.

Now, please, will you just stop with the insults, stop harping on about how good Lewes is and just accept that the 'folk world' is not all banks of primroses and punch bowls? There are flaws, there always have been, there always will be and sticking your head in the sand is not the best way to make them go away.

Cheers

Dave