On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:48:07 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Even reporters on the BBC cannot actually speak English any more.

This is true and on the childrens TV News service Newsround as well.

The current standard of 'official' talking and writing would have got
you a failed 11 plus ..

Also I would say that every letter that we get home from the local
primary school has at least one English error in it somewhere. They
are written on computer using Word so there really isn't any excuse.
OK the spelling and grammar checking isn't perfect but at least it
will pick up stupid things like where/were, lose/loose and wave a
flag over more complex grammatical problems with the text.

And indeed, that's probably because all those 11 plus failures got
together, joined Nu Laber, and the rest is history.

Not this 11+ fail...

--
Cheers
Dave.