What's badly needed in all this is specific examples where the existing law has caused damage and upset. General principles turn-off the media, the public and the politicians. What is needed is precisely this kind of incident.

If all the members of the shellback chorus were to take ten minutes to fax a protest to their MP in time for the adjournment debate mentioned above that really might help things along a little bit. With copies to the local (and for that matter national) press.

And once again, here is a link to FaxuourMP - http://www.faxyourmp.com/index.php3.

The problems with all this is that the law exists and stops new things happening. Pubs and cafés turn down the idea of allowing sessions and so forth out of hand, because they know about the PEL requirement and don't want the hassles. But something not happening like that isn't news.

Again, it happens often enough that a landlord will know enough to ignore the law, and let things go ahead. And if there's a sensible local authority, and noone makes a complaint, things go ahead smoothly. And that isn't news either. But people keep their head down a because you don't want to stir up trouble, so the session is publicised by word of mouth only. And that's not news either.

Not news. Who's interested - and even here it tends to be seen as a boring old obsession, or as a reason to grumble without doing anything about it. But meanwhile the mere existence of the law grinds away at our freedom and our dignity, and it closes down all kinds of options for the future. Back in the 50s there was an explosion of home made music in coffee bars and such all across the country, skiffle. That's where the folk musicians came from. That's where the Beatles ("the Quarrymen") and the rest came from. And it couldn't happen now. Because the law has changed in a way that rule sit out.

But all that is Not News. Who's interested - and even here it tends to be seen as a boring old obsession, or maybe as a reason to grumble, but without doing anything about it.

So when you get instances where an existing session is closed down, or when something happens like this, it truly is worth making a fuss; because if we don't make a fuss nothing is going to change - or if it does change, it won't be the way we want it to change. If we don't speak up how can we complain that noone is listening to us?