So I've decided to commit to buying the whole Topic Records 'Voice of the People' collection, all twenty of them. It's going to cost me something like £300 overall, which some will say is well worth it and so I should and suchlike. Yet financial circumstances for me, mean that this will be a genuinely very expensive undertaking. I only ever buy second hand stuff (clothes/books/household items etc.), as we are not well off by a very long straw.

By contrast, The Max Hunter collection (field recorded early American folk singing), is of course a free online resource. The equivalent British cultural 'folk' resource however, is arguably only readily available to a niche group of affluent middle-class dilettantes and academics. Being a pretty poor working class person, who sings traditional songs and wants to learn more about traditional singing in the UK, so I can in my own way carry it on, there is something about this that sits poorly with me...

Just throwing this 'discomfort' (not exclusively about 'me') open to the forum for comment.