Still going too fast for me, I'm afraid. Manoeuvring around figures like that was never my strong point. However the basic point, that the effect of the reforms is going to be to make things worse, is clear enough already.

And unless more people involved in live informal music actually stop shrugging it off and do something about it, it's going to sail through and we'll be stuck with it for a generation.

And yet it's still true that, if you mention it to most folk music people, they don't see it as having any relevance to them. There's a deafening sound of silence. And that goes for the Mudcat too, I'm afraid, unless there are an enormous amount of lurkers who have been writing letters to MPs and tourist boards and local papers and so forth, and not reporting back, .

When they brought in the restricted drinking hours all those years ago, there was some excuse for people not noticing, because there was the Great War raging. And it took the best part of a century before the rules got loosened some of the way.

Is there any point going on about it? The tiny number of people here who give a damn about it have probably written their letters, and the rest aren't going to do anything except grumble when its happened.

Well, it is worth banging away, as a matter of principle. And thanks for doing so Shambles especially. But I'm not optimistic about getting much response.

I suspect at the root of it may be a reluctance, a sense that it is embarrassing, to be on the losing side. (That never worried the people who gave us the songs and held on to them and passed them on. Proud losers to a man and woman.)