"They are there because someone has put in the effort to find a venue, spread the word, do some advertising (possibly at their own expense) and generally make the thing work."

And that's the sad thing. Others have *already* put in a lot of personal time and effort, but the local folkies don't necessarily all see fit to return the favour. From the available evidence of my local err 'scene', if I were to try to begin something local to me, the same GEFF presumptions would be likely to prevail and in all honesty I wouldn't wish to be forced into a position of having to 'exclude' people who think it's OK not to practice what they plan to perform or at least get a reasonable handle on their instruments before taking them into the public arena.

In order to create a thriving and engaging folk scene, it seems it takes years of dedicated work and while some areas in the UK have certainly achieved that, others haven't and I don't have sufficient enthusiasm for the kind of long-term uphill struggle required to do so - though I may yet assault the local WI ladies with the suggestion to initiate a 'traditional song and ballad group', I definitely wouldn't call it a 'singaround' or imply it had anything to do with what people generally think of as 'folk'.

It's great that people do what they want to do and enjoy themselves doing so - all power to them, but I don't personally want to go to pants singarounds and I wouldn't encourage people unfamiliar with the folk scene to do so either - in person or on internet chat forums.

And before I start upsetting people too much more, that's me done. As you were ;-)