Two issues are being interconnected here and they don't need to be.

We don't need another "What is folk" debate. There is only one answer and it's only the terminally unthinking who say otherwise - and ironically it sort of mirrors the "GEFF" debate. The unthinkng say that anything can be called folk.

Then there is the "Are you good enough" debate. Again, there is only one point at the core. Should the great and the good have the right to say who can sing, or not? It's pretty much on a par with the eugenics arguments, when the great of their times and places decided whou shouldbe permitted to breed and who should be sterilised.

It is ironic that pretty much the same people who say that anything can be called "folk" (or, in one case, a person who says that nothing shouldbe called "folk") argue that those who are not good enough should not be alowed to do it (whatever it is).

No-one is suggesting that today's western society is largely agrarian, nor, even in physical production of anything. Only the wilfully ignorant could suggest that that was the issue.