'widen the terms of reference....stupid, stupid, stupid'

okay lets see what a bloody marvellous experiment narrowing the terms of reference has been.

You've narrowed it so even educated members of the working classes can't relate to it. Just a gang of professional ...what? I hesitate to give them a title.

The great sadness is that so many talented people have bought into the lie that folk music is about a dead culture, like Latin verse or something. Songs about things we haven't experienced and scarcely understand.

The fact is that you've turned the idea of folkmusic on its head. Its a sort of chamber music for middle class types with a superiority complex.

The folk art of playing the guitar is regarded as unimportant - compared to the cardinal virtue of having solidarity with that tradition that has bypassed every family in the land that I have ever met.