The Queen's English is sadly a diminishing phenomenon - or as some would have it, 'phenomena!' Everywhere one turns, there's a high chance of encountering examples of poor English, and worse, a complete ignorance that there's anything wrong.
I was 'on hold' recently, eagerly awaiting input from a human at a call centre. An automated message chirped intermittently, with:
"Your call will be answered as soon as we possibly can."
What complete nonsense! There was no point in raising the poor grammar with the hapless woman who eventually took my call.
On 11th November, Richard Madeley (who was standing in for Chris Evans on Radio 2) had with him Fiona Phillips who was there to give comments on the day's newspapers. It says it all, really, when a broadcaster utters rubbish, and includes:
" . . . .the more costlier . . . ."
A TV advert a few months ago included the phrase "just one bacteria" and also started a sentence with "The bacteria is . . .".
The whole world has dumbed down, and it appears that nowadays, there is no high standard to be achieved to qualify for broadcasting, journalism, or teaching! Even songwriters can be twats. Take "Old Town" by The Corrs. The song sounds like Alan Shearer could have written it ('wrote it', in Alan's case). It rather irks me that understanding of past participles is so rare. The songs lyrics include:
"She's broke his heart"
and
"This boy has broke down"
And this evening, on It Takes Two, on BBC2, a chap called Ben was commenting on the dancers' dresses, and mentioned there were sequin on one particular dress. Since when has cuntin' sequin been plural?
Even Elvis Costello was not immune back in 1979, as a line in a song demonstrates:
"Oliver's army is here to stay, Oliver's army are on their way". Army is SINGULAR. You have managed, Elvis, to get it right and wrong in the same line of a song! Surely you had to have noticed that one of the two fuckin' versions must be wrong!
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