“Can ye no keep singin' 'boot politics?”

This is probably the most perplexing question that I am addressed with in my capacity as a folk musician.

It strikes me as being quite bizarre, that anyone could think of removing poltical-social issues without reducing our wonderful heritage to a thin unpalatable soup of lauderesque bilge.

Think, dear readers, of the immediate casualties. Artists such as Dick Gaughan, Brian McNeil, and Dougie McLean would be bannished to an underworld of clandestine gatherings, while the finger-in-one-ear Arran sweaters rule the world and sing about heather all bloody day.

Great songs like 'Both Sides the Tweed,' and 'Parcel of Rogues' would disapear from the face of the earth to be supplanted by crud such 'Donald Where's yer Troosers!'An outcome of culturaly apocalyptic proportions.

So then, keep politics out of folk music? This writer would prefer to take up morris dancing in the Sahara. The next time someone says it to you, suggest that they go and boil their heid, rather than reduce the folk scene to trite, meaningless drivel.