Having said that, I'm talking from a Northern perspective.
Things could have been a lot different down in London.

Well I know when they started Weller was a supporter of Thatcher. He renounced it pretty quickly later on but I know some people never let him forget about it.

punk always struck me as being more straight up back to the roots "rock n' roll" than most of the music it was reacting against

and the reason there's a punk forum is because someone decided (accurately? perhaps not) that it could generate enough discussion to warrant an independent forum. if you want to argue that it should be a sub-forum of rock & metal be my guest, but who really cares?

Nah, y'all are right. I mean yeah, it's true that Punk came straight out of rock'n'roll, but if it was a reaction to one of the paths rock'n'roll music went down (i.e. prog), which, incidentally, became what was known as "rock" music, I suppose it's fair enough to not put Punk in the same category as Rock. But historically speaking, there's no doubt that it came out of rock'n'roll. And also, contemporary and alternative rock has had so much influence on much of the punk scene (whether you purists accept it as being the "real" punk scene or otherwise) and VICE VERSA, that the lines ARE pretty blurred.

I'm also not sure there's any particular ideological difference anymore. You'll even find progressive rock/metal bands frequently discussing topics probably more traditionally associated with punk music.