Quoting McGoldrick as an example of a player "encouraged by the English folk scene" shows complete lack of understanding of the culture in which they developed.

Yes- players like McGoldrick and Dezi Donnelly were English by birth (of Irish family) and their music developed in England- in Manchester to be precise.

But not in the English folk scene. Incubated in the Comhltas competition scramble, they developed through bands revolving round the Manchester Irish pub session scene. This had very little to do with English folk- of which they tended to be somewhat contemptuous. As a beginner on the whistle, one fine old player (Jimmy Taylor if I recall aright) praised my style as "very folkloric". I took the hint.

Judging by recent posts over on The Session, those sessions have all but died. There was a plaintive quest about Manchester sessions recently- twenty tears ago you would have had a choice of three within a couple of hundred yards of each other, and half a dozen others if you went two or three miles further afield. Pubcos and their serf tenants don't want sessions, they want football on TV.