Look, WAV - you're the one who has set out his stall here (repeatedly). You argue for people to sing a certain repertoire, in a way which you deem appropriate. You have argued vociferously for people to sing English song. Yet it seems you don't even really know the provenance of many of the songs you sing (even if you do hear them in singarounds or festivals).

If you wanted to sing these songs purely for your own pleasure, you know what? It wouldn't make a blind bit of difference which songs came from where, when or how. And I think most of the people with whom you've tangled here would positively encourage you in this. The music is fabulous - enjoy it! Don't get anal about whether ia song comes from Northumberland or just over the Scottish border. If you love it, sing it!

The problem is, WAV, that you set out your approach to singing as part of a wider political agenda. You have preached - and tried to dictate - on thread after thread, to people who have known and loved folk music much longer than you have. This is the other issue, you see: even if you wanted to set up these narrow - and entirely false - parameters for yourself, most people would have shrugged and said, "Whatever." It was when you started telling others what they ought to sing, using your own repertoire over and over as an example, that people got pissed off.

Now it turns out that you can't even defend your choice of repertoire, because you couldn't even be bothered to do the most fundamental research on where the songs originated. How can you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Going back to the origins of this thread; when I think of the irony of you sitting in judgement on the Newcastle degree students, and their choice of repertoire...those students are compelled to study the canon of English music and song far more deeply than you have, or likely ever will. They have tutors like Chris Coe and Sandra Kerr, for god's sake, teaching them about the value of the tradition and the sources for the songs they sing. The degree has produced some very fine young singers of English traditional song. And you sit there with your fistful of cliched, done-to-death songs culled from the internet, and judge those young people for what they choose to sing?

Shame on you.