If your only criterion for performing a song or tune is whether you like it that reduces folk music (or other the form of music of your choice) to mere entertainment.

That's not what I said. (Word to the wise: quoting people is quite easy - see above - and it makes it a lot easier for everyone else to see who and what you're responding to.) I sing the songs I do because I love them, because I think I can do justice to them and because I want other people to hear them - there's a bit more to it than 'whether you like it'.

What I did say - apologies for the repetition, but I don't want to rephrase it for the sake of it - was:

I am not Bob Copper or Shirley Collins; in musical terms, "the tradition from which I come" means precisely nothing. I sing traditional material because I like it, just like WAV. I get the material I sing from books and records and from the Net, just like WAV. Neither of us is doing anything to perpetuate "the tradition from which [we] come", because at this point in history that tradition doesn't actually exist.

"Because I like it" is counterposed to your notion of singing to perpetuate your tradition, which you seem to think has something in common with WAV's truculent defence of the 'English'. There are still a few people out there - even in England - for whom the words "your tradition" means something real and definite, but I'm not one of them and neither is WAV.

Incidentally, I also believe that traditional fruit and vegetable and floral varieties ought to be preserved, and it pretty well goes without saying that the narrowing of the animal gene pool carries serious risks.

I agree entirely, although I'm not sure how it's relevant.