Thing is, I just can't relate to this:

"The number of clubs and the size of audiences have been literally decimated over the last twenty odd years.
You can no longer go to a club and be guaranteed that you will hear and enjoy an evening of folk songs.
Whatever you get to hear, you can no longer rely on it being of a standard that you can enjoy (deliberately so, to some arguments).
The loss of direction and the lowering of standards has led to folk music losing (what little) public respect it once had outside the clubs and the present situation more-or-less guarantees that it will never regain that respect.
This isn't evolution - rather it is deterioration to the point of disappearance"

Point-by-point it just doesn't coincide with my experience of going to clubs.

And, while some of the clubs I'm thinking of probably wouldn't fall into some people's category of folk (ie you are not *guaranteed* to hear a song from recognized traditional repertoire at all of them), even at the least "folky" of the clubs I'm thinking of, you will recognizably derived from the folk tradition. I don't wanna dig up that old traditional versus original song chestnut: suffice to say that I still think folk is a useful term. And I will continue to use it to describe music that objectively or intuitively reconnects to trad, Dad.