[BeebBoy]

My God, I heard that mess last night too. Combined with the embarrassing intro today, one has to wonder who exactly are these people and were they really dragged in from street, just because they tick certain boxes?

Properly spoken English should be BBC's priority No1 when choosing on air announcers. It's plain and simple. Especially in these circumstances.

I don't expect to hear the Queen's English anymore (but how pleasingly appropriate would that have been today of all days?), but standards in the art of announcing have dropped to an alarming and embarrassing degree in a desperate attempt to 'tick certain boxes', as you say. "Positive discrimination" (as it used to be called) is still discrimination, whichever way you look at it. Appointing someone to a certain role should be done on merit and nothing else.