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Governments and educators seem to be waging a war against English. It is a war that is being fought by negativity and a refusal to recognise the need for the teaching of correct English in the education systems of English speaking countries.

It is a strange thing that, while the French government is fighting to keep French pure, educators in English speaking countries have espoused the philosophy that so long as the meaning of what is written is clear, correct spelling and grammar are not important.

This attitude has prevailed for enough time that there are very few teachers left who have the ability to teach correct English, making the rot very hard to stop.

I have previously written about the incorrect use of personal pronouns, he and I being used where him and me would be correct, for example. My theory is that children who might say, "Him and me did it," are immediately corrected and told "He and I...!" with no further explanation. As a result, they grow up thinking that the use of "him and me" is wrong in every circumstance and we hear such as "They did it to he and I" when the correct form is "They did it to him and me".

He, she and I are used when the persons referred to are the subject of the verb. Him, her and me are used when the persons are the object. Unfortunately, today's teachers do not bother with such unimportant details as English grammar, so many recently educated people do not know what a subject or object might be.

Television presenters and sports commentators are great misusers of English. How often do we hear "I am stood here..." or "We are sat...". What happened to the present participle? I am sitting here at my keyboard. I have sat here before, but I am sitting here today.

Sports commentators will come up with such as, "The gap between he and his competitors...". The gap is between him and his competitors.

The media are no better. When I was a lad, half a century ago, we were told to read the paper or listen to the ABC radio (BBC in the UK) to absorb grammatically correct English from those who practised the art. That advice no longer applies. The deterioration in the language has spread to all of the news media.

The word media is also misused. It is the plural of medium, and takes the plural form of any verb. Not everyone knows this and one of those who doesn't created a poster that I saw outside a local newsagent. The poster was advertising prints from digital cameras and offered to print from a variety of "medias". Ideal for printing your photographs of sheepses.