how come bad performers do not attend the Lewes Arms

There's a question for the ages. The last time I suggested that bad performers must be so effectively discouraged from attending that they never turn up at all, Bryan objected strongly:

We don't "discourage" anybody, Pip. That's the point. We don't tell people "You aren't good enough. Go away and don't come back until you cam prove you've put in the necessary work.

All I can say to that is that it depends what 'discourage' means. There's a regular Irish tune session at a pub near me; massive thing, twenty or thirty players in perfect time, reeling off tunes by the yard. I know some of the tunes they do, more or less, pretty much, but I've never sat in with them; in fact the thought of sitting in with them makes me go hot and cold all over. Nobody's told me I'm not good enough for that session - in that sense (the sense Bryan's objecting to) nobody's discouraged me. I've still been discouraged, by the sheer quality of the playing - and I suspect that a lot of the 'non-improvers' we've been talking about would be similarly discouraged if they turned up at the Lewes Arms.