Sorry Richard (Bridge) I left my name off as I was busily replying and pressed "submit" too quickly.

I always try to be constructive but, as with most things, opinions is all I can offer. Others opinions may differ but it does not mean they are wrong or right. So many times in life there is no right or wrong: just a persons individual opinion. All I am saying is that if we had a truly tolerent society then equal opportunites acts and hate crimes offences would not be part of our vocabularies. But, for now, I think they are needed to try and steer society and communities to a safer place. Most of the time it works without the laws being invoked but I, for one, feel safer that they are in place.

Folk music is a case in point I guess. Whilst we all have our own likes and dislikes - and opinions as to what even constitutes folk music - seldom do we see people fighting over choice of songs. We merely agree to disagree what is good on individual basis. But if we started hating people because their instrument of choice is not what we would have, or that they sing too 'trad' or not 'trad' enough, and be willing to beat them up just because their choice of instrument/song was not ours, we would all consider that totally unreasonable. I have seen threads on here where people have immediately defended the rights of the individual to do things that were not necessarily their own choice. I cannot think of many who would tolerate someone bullying over choice of song/instrument. We certainly have many a heated debate on Mudcat but I cannot think of any examples of a hate crime (against a folk singer scenario) here despite the arguments/differences of opinion that inevitably happen. Why it should happen in other minority groups and against seems to make no sense at all.

I'll shush again now as this is a area of debate/controversy that can get quite emotive. I would hate to get too emotional on the thread ;-)

mp