"Jim Carroll has just been gratuitously offensive to around one thousand people.
No I have not - I have never been "gratuitously" offensive to anybody
I have responded to being talk down to - sometimes badly, but I have always kept my responses within the subject
I have no intention of breaking that habit here
I get angry and frustrated occasionally, but it is usually in response to being insulted
For instance
"You are a self obsessed pratt" was a response to "we don't mistake it for a balaclava helmet, i.e. something to stuff your head into. "
Over the top on my part maybe, but a reaction to what I believe to have been an insulting remark
The original poster on this forum made a comment on what he/she believed to be the declining standards on the folk scene - the immediate response was "Has anyone noticed the decline in quality of whining on Mudcat?"
I see no rush of protest to object to that particular piece of nastiness
On this thread, Bryan Creer responded to a reasonable, calmly laid out argument with
"For F*%$#S SAKE! It makes you wonder why we bother."
We are all prone to losing it occasionally - Bryan included
I have dedicated my time over the last half century to finding out about the music from the people who kept it alive and generously passed it on to us (the "tit-trousers, according to one contributor here - a remark aimed at elderly people like Walter Pardon and Fred Jordan, whose sartorial tastes obviously don't meet up with those of the writer)
Was there a howl of protest at that particular piece of nastiness aimed at our source singers - there was not
The writer was, as far as I could make out, that same thing that many people are saying here - that folk music as documented has had its day and it's time it was replaced with something else.
In arguments like this I have been called "finger in ear", "folk police", "folk fascist" "dinosaur".... par for the course on this forum
When I lose my rag and respond in kind, as I sometimes do, you all leap up on your chairs, highly offended
Give us a break lads
I believe the folk scene has moved away from the music that inspired it in the first place, and nothing that has been said here has convinced me otherwise
I find no respect for the music that brought me to the folk revival here, on the contrary, in places I find contempt for it.
I didn't spend my life recording the last of our old singers in order that they should be confined to archives - I hoped to pass it on to others who I thought might get something from it - arguments like this have shown me I am wasting my time
Our recordings of Walter Pardon have been locked away in a cupboard somewhere at the B.L. for over twenty years and for the life of me, I can't think of anybody who will ever want to use them in Britain - perhaps The World Music Group at Limerick University, who is planning to take our collection will put them on line
I believe the music I know as folk music is an important part of our culture and our history and I have done my limited best to pass on what evidence we have gathered to back up that belief
If the definition of folk song has changed, nobody has ever offered an alternative one
There are constant complaints like that of the OP on this forum which all boil down to the same thing - there are very few places in Britain now where you can go to sing or listen to folk songs reasonably sung - as limited as my experience now is, that is my opinion too, and that of many old friends in Britain who have given up in despair
Arguments like this, that I should be prepared to take Bob Geldof as a substitute for Sam Larner, Harry Cox or Phil Tanner, only confirm that opinion
If that is not an opinion you all share, where are your howls (or should I say "whines" of protest
The folk song revival I knew would have confined such suggestions to the dustbin it merits.
If folk song has changed, what has it changed to, and where do the songs defined as "folk" fit in to the grand scheme of things   
Jim Carroll