ok I finally worked that out - however this is not a logical way of providing role access to the forums - to post to the forum you are not editing the module but actually using it. The settings in the module settings display denotes that a user can edit the primary configuration of the module ( as per the framework) - the role restriction on the posting should be handled in the actual forum module configuration. This breaks the acknowledged function of role setting in pages and modules. it breaks the framework standards of us

john