Letter: Mangled syntax and lost hopes

AS A language interface facilitator (translator), I am often cast adrift in a sea of my clients' turgid business-speak, and I look to the BBC as a bastion of linguistic virtue. In recent years, unfortunately, the light has faded badly ('Memo to John Birt: re gobbledygook', 17 January).

I have come to expect mangled syntax from synergy-unlocking, high-tech/high-touch administrators (corporate hatchet men) in private, but when they start to spread their miasma over the airwaves, it is time to raise the alarm.

BBC television, in the main, is appalling, and we are in danger of losing our one great gift to civilisation, BBC radio. The corporation's managers should listen to the public. In France, radio is taken about as seriously as the promises of the politicians. I have no desire to see the same fate befall the BBC.

Anthony Bulger

Paris, France