The current Govt blathered about this in their manifesto and then did nothing.  Brown is very against England having any separable visible identity from GB, for obvious reasons.  Similarly ideas of celebrating Trafalgar Day haven't taken off (and personally, it seems to me like tinkering after the fact).

Although there's a small part of (very small, in fact) that would like to see Shakespeare's birthday celebrated (I don't give a stuff about St George, although the Turks are welcome to celebrate him),  this is outweighed enormously by my certainty that the party in power will abuse the holiday for its own political ends.   It strikes me as particularly fitting that England can celebrate Banking so very frequently in the calendar, yet doesn't have a single public holiday that celebrates cultural achievement.  Until last year, Britain couldn't even manage Two Minutes Silence out of the mercantile day to remember its own War Dead on Armistice Day, and shunted them off to the nearest Sunday.  Of course War Dead are a very untidy thing, which is probably why our Glorious Leaders haven't attented a single funeral of any of those who've fallen under their orders during the C21st.

Probably by 2015 Britain will probably feel able to remember the Battle Of Agincourt without any possibility that aggrieved relations of the dead might attend to spoil things?  Shakespeare wrote something about it, apparently, and he's out of copyright - so it can all be done on the cheap as usual. Issue some stamps. Rename a street in Milton Keynes. Have a special McHarryburger month. The usual British approach.

If the red cross were removed from the flag it would indicate the real reason it's flying there

The Devil's Dictionary has some smart-aleck remark about the last resort of a scoundrel, but I'm darned if I can remember it?

I don't quite get your point, BBM. Should PM Gordon Brown not be flying the St George Cross flag on St Georges's Day because he is Scottish?

I was a keen home-made wine maker (before we had kids) and I well recall following the advice of my little recipe book, to collect dandelion flowers on St George's day for dandelion wine.

I also recall the four gallons that I used to make each year were very tasty. I remember too making once a gallon of wine from purple clover flowers, don't remember what was the best day to collect those (the little recipe book is in the depths of my garage in the  no-room-in-the-house-for-these-books box.

Just looked at our back lawn - about 20 dandelions and a lot more daisies 

I have just found this from The Press Association:

"Mr Brown is encouraging all UK Government buildings in England which have two flagpoles to fly the English national flag alongside the Union flag, said the Prime Minister's spokesman

The only recent occasion when the flag of St George has been flown over Number 10 was during the 2006 World Cup, a spokesman said.

He confirmed that, following the completion last month of the consultation on flag-flying, Number 10 will in future fly the Scottish Saltire and the Welsh Dragon on those countries' saint's days. Northern Ireland does not have an official national flag, so the same practice will not apply on St Patrick's Day"

So there is the answer for BBM.

A Place Called England


"I rode out on a bright May morning
Like a hero in a song
Looking for a place called England
Trying to find where I belong
Couldn't find the old flood meadow
Or the house that I once knew
No trace of the little river
Or the garden where I grew


I saw town and I saw country
Motorway and sink estate
Rich man in his rolling acres
Poor man still outside the gate
Retail park and burger kingdom
Prairie field and factory farm
Run by men who think that England's
Only a place to park their car


But as the train pulled from the station
Through the wastelands of despair
From the corner of my eye
A brightness filled the filthy air
Someone's grown a patch of sunflowers
Though the soil is sooty black
Marigolds and a few tomatoes
Right beside the railway track


Down behind the terraced houses
In between the concrete towers
Compost heaps and scarlet runners
Secret gardens full of flowers
Meeta grows the scent of roses
Right beneath the big jet's path
Bid a fortune for her garden
Eileen turns away and laughs


So rise up George and wake up Arthur
Time to rouse out from your sleep
Deck the horse in the sea-green ribbons
Drag the old sword from the deep
Hold the line for Dave and Daniel
As they tunnel through the clay
While the oak in all its glory
Soaks up sun for one more day


And come all you at home with freedom
Whatever the land that gave you birth
There's room for you both root and branch
As long as you love the English earth
Room for vole and room for orchid
Room for all to grow and thrive
Just less room for the fat landowner
On his arse in his four-wheel drive


England is not flag or Empire
It is not money it is not blood
It's limestone gorge and granite fell
It's Wealden clay and Severn mud
It's blackbird singing from the may-tree
Lark ascending through the scales
Robin watching from your spade
And English earth beneath your nails


So here's two cheers for a place called England
Badly used but not yet dead
A Mr. Harding sort of England
Hanging in there by a thread
Here's two cheers for the crazy Diggers
Now their hour shall come around
We can plant the seed they saved us
Common wealth and common ground

[Maggie Holland]

                      
                      Nice knees too.

May I nominate someone still with us, for future sainthooding?


You can even see the beginnings of a halo developing...

Though perhaps St Humph and the Trumpet doesn't conjure up quite as dramatic an image as St George and the Dragon.