""I would check with the UK Musicians's Union that Ann mentions above. Why re-invent the wheeel?""

The Musicians Union is of little use to performers out of the mainstream of pop.

The attitude to grass roots performers is pretty much the same as used to be the case with relatives with a learning disability, namely "hide 'em away when we have visitors."

They are highly unlikely to take us seriously unless we are already making substantial earnings without their input, and then we wouldn't need their input anyway.

For folk performers Alan's idea would not be re-inventing the wheel, but more like releasing the brake.

The music industry in general is engaged in blocking folk music from any access to Media airtime, since they can't control it and therefore can't make money out of it.

It isn't, IMO, coincidence that the BBC is rapidly doing away with local radio folk programs and local television has never really featured folk in the first place.

With very few exceptions, radio music presenters are given playlists, from which they are not allowed to stray, containing all the latest manufactured groups and artists whom the recording companies want to promote and surprise, surprise, those playlists contain no folk music, nada, zip, zilch.

It's time we had some sort of organisation which represents the grass roots who would like a little more sunlight and slightly less fertiliser, supplying a chance to grow.

EFDSS have changed their attitudes and become less dance oriented, but I see little evidence that they particularly care about performers or clubs. It is the folk songs and folk dances which are their concern and raison d'etre, not the places in which they can be heard or the people who perform them.

Somebody has to make them see that the songs and dances will be an historical relic like the dead sea scrolls, absent the facilities for broadcasting them, and the facilities are the clubs and their performers.

Don T.