you've made more comebacks than Nellie Melba

I had to look this one up, WAV; another example of your indelible cultural roots.

we should endeavour to sound more earthy when singling folk than when in church, e.g.

When singing in church (which I do two or three times a year) I'm not aware of singing any different to how I do when I'm singing in a singaround chorus, though of course I don't harmonise, and I'm careful of my dynamic too, not wishing to dominate the increasingly feeble congregations. Whatever happened to singing lustily and with good courage, I wonder? Even singing Gelineau Psalms and Latin Chants with the monks of Worth Abbey I was very conscious of singing in my own voice, though quietly studying the method of the unison devotional chorus in a particular acoustic space. Often, one just listened! I think it's a matter of not affecting any sort of voice one way or the other. Do people still put on the folk voice I wonder? I don't hear any evidence of it - certainly not as much as when watching the X-Factor (or some such show) and you hear kids putting on the pop voice because they think that's what singing is.   

...so don't sing them - just enjoy listening to Scots sing them

By the same token, WAV - you shouldn't be singing Cob a Coaling at all, let alone attempting to adopt (however so unsuccessfully by the way) any sort of faux-northern accent to do so, no matter how much I might enjoy your rendering of the song otherwise (I've even been moved to work up a version myself; expect to hear it on my Myspace page nearer the time). Anyhoo - THESE are the songs you should be singing; great songs one & all. If you really believed in this policy of singing your own, then put your cultural currency where your mealy-mouth is, dear boy - and lead by example.

Actually - how far should we take that policy? Should I, for example, only sing Northumbrian songs? It's a tempting notion - and one that would keep me busy for the rest of a very happy folk-life no doubt, but, as usual the overriding maxim must be I think you'll find it isn't quite as simple as that... No, I'll stick to singing from the English Speaking Tradition, which might just include a few Australian songs too, such as Jim Jones and Glass on the Bar though I don't attempt the accent, any more than I do when I sing The Santa Fe Trail or Up on the Roof. Be true to your own, WAV - but above all, be true to yourself, because whatever your race, your ethnicity, your country of birth, your country of adoption, your culture both actual and imagined, there's only ever going to be one you, a life too short at any rate (though I dare say many here would disagree) so just wind in your neck and enjoy yourself.

Again: "nationalism with conquest is bad; but nationalism with eco-travel and fair-trade is good for humanity"

I disagree; nationalism with conquest is the stuff of human history and has been good for humanity for thousands of years. Without it we would have turned to a passive lifeless hippy slop which would certainly NOT be good for humanity in the slightest. Eco-travel and fair-trade? These are choice oxymorons, WAV - trendy liberal middle-class platitudes with which you hope to curry favour with those trendy liberal middle-class folkies you mistakenly feel must be somehow sympathetic to your bizarre cause. High ideals that fall some way short of the mark...

Nellie Melba, though - great stuff, kidda; I'm still chuckling.