"Words like n***** were telling it as it was than - now it is a term regularly used as abuse - by people on the street, by the police, bt openly racist scumbags like Jim Davidson who one boasted publicly, "I'm not prejudices I hate all the fuckers"
Bernard Manning made Britain roll in the aisles with his contempt for The Irish
That has been stopped elsewhere because it has been deemed offensive - why not in folk clubs"

Well you've just made the point for us, Jim. Manning and Davidson deliberately set out to be openly racist. Context is everything (you're beginning to sound like a parrot, Steve...) It entirely depends on how stuff is put across in folk clubs. In my experience, I'm supposing that putting forth an "iffy" song by someone with racist intent would be instantly shatupon by any folk club audience I've seen. In fact, the ethos of folk clubs wouldn't permit stuff to be put across that way in any case. Maybe somebody here knows of a different type of folk club...

And has it really been stopped elsewhere? And if you really want to tell it like it is, it's nigger, not n*****. Guardian style guide: no asterisks in naughty words. Type the word in full or don't use it at all.

I think I might be calling for self-policing, which is the democratic way forward. Unless someone has the answer to Dave's much-asked but still-unanswered question...