I was looking forward to the programme and rearranged my schedule to hear it. There would be 30 minutes about a badger that Shackleton took to the Antarctic. It seemed one of those wonderful curiosities that the BBC unearths from time to time. 'The badger survived' promised a happy ending.
Anyway it turned out to be a banjo (or nasal guitar). Not quite so interesting. In fact not itneresting at all.
We really have to do something about the pronunciation on the BBC. Many of the more senior correspondents and news readers speak clearly and well, but for some years it has been impossible to get a job there unless you had a regional accent. I remember tuning into a programme about stockings, only to find it was about stalking; the late Michael Vestey wrote of a programe on the importance to us all of psychopaths (cycle-paths).
Italy, Germany and France have greatly varying regional accents, but maintain a system of received pronunciation, which everyone can understand. The BBC finds it not politically correct to do so, and I am finding I am paying for an organisation which conveys news in a manner I often can't understand.
I have noticed no howls of public anger about the BBC's badgers - sorry, budgets - being cut. In my view, that is because the BBC is not providing an adequate service. It could begin to change by offering received pronunciation on its news service, keeping the regional brogues for the local stuff.
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