Folk music in my experience is made up of two threads at least. One is about aesthetic things, music and poetry, the other is about "political" things, meaning how people live alongside each other. A lot of the time that has a left flavour to it, not always. When the two threads are intertwined it tends to work best, though it can get uncomfortable at times.

Like the Mudcat, I suppose. In fact that last paragraph could have been written with "The Mudcat" instead of "folk music".

And I can't agree with what George said "cllr's appears to me to be the first deliberately provocative article in this thread" - unless saying "I disagree with you" is provocative. ("You're bigoted" he or she said of AliUK, to which AliUK replied "Yes I am, so what.)

I suppose in a sense saying you disagree with someone is potentially provocative, but if we aren't able to say that to each other, honest communication dies.

Nothing new in any of this of course:

"Two lovely black eyes,
Two lovely black eyes
Only for telling a man he was wrong,
Two lovely black eyes"

Though we only get virtual black eyes here.