A local problem is a problem that happens locally. When your house gets burgled it's a local problem. But it doesn't mean the house next door isn't liable to get burgled too.

If the proposed legislation is not changed, if a pub has not got told the new licensing authorities in advance details of the kind of entertainments they might want to put on, it is going to be illegal for even a single "performer" to sing a song or play a musical instrument.

Sweet-talking local councillors about it will do bugger all to get that kind of law off our backs.

And no, this whole business of interfering with out freedom to make music is not new, as DMcG's interesting quote that opened this thread demonstrates.

Now if the state of informal musicmaking in England and Wales was flourishing in spite of it, the fact that's it's been under attack for a long time might actually be quite reassuring. It would indicate that in spite of it all, we've pulled through. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

To some extent in recent decades we've pulled back from a situation that was even worse than it is now, and for those of us who really want to, we can still find opportunities to play and listen, though that's likely to get a lot harder, if some of the "reforms" aren't stopped in their tracks. But the repression over the past century has done unmeasured and unrecognised damage.