As you say St George's day is not celeberated in England, in fact if you asked most English people if they knew the date they would probably have no idea. However in the local pubs near me in Yorkshire, over the past few years, I have run a St Geordie's night with stories, songs music and food from the North East of England (the land of the Geordies) These have gone down very well even in deepest Yorkshire.
I think you have to look at the Millenium celebrations to see the real attitude of the English media controllers. The whole world, that night, showed traditional music and dance from their own countries. What did the English show? The bloddy Spice Girls. Only a couple of months before the New Year 422 the folk band with Sam Pirt, Ian Stephenson, Emily and Sophie Ball and Joey Oliver won the BBC Young Folk Musicians Award. Why then did the BBC not show that trad music was alive and well and in the hands of these fine young musicians, they only needed to show one tune after all.
It seems very strange that we can attend a Folk Music Festival every weekend of the year as well as folk clubs and music sessions every night in all regions but the radio and TV producers don't recognise this fact. They seem to play "pop" all day every day but there are only a handfull of annual "Pop" festivals. There are even less Jazz, Country, and Clasical festivals but they all seem to have media coverage, some even have dedicated radio stations.
At present on TV we have the "Pop Idols" talent programme. some of the kids have very good voices but it is evident that the reason for this programme is for the recording company executives to earn millions of pounds exploiting these kids who will in all probability be on the scrap heap in a couple of years. Perhaps we should put pressure on the TV companies to produce a "Folk Idol" who will sell millions of copies of Wild Rover (Like the Spinners and Clancy Brothers did in the 60's) and put lots of arses on seats in folk clubs