I read the letter by Emanuel Cilia Debono (December 18) regarding the state of spoken English in Malta with great interest; I sympathise when he says that listening to the level of English being spoken on local radio stations causes considerable annoyance to him. Please rest assured, Mr Cilia Debono, that the standards have also nosedived within the broadcasting industry of Great Britain, to such an extent that an excellent radio journalist by the name of Edward Stourton is being ousted from the Today programme by those in the seats of power within BBC Radio. Coincidentally, there is a Facebook group which has been set up with the sole intention of asserting pressure upon Auntie Beeb to reinstate Mr Stourton - whose only crime, it appears, is that he sounds "too posh".

There is absolutely nothing wrong with "regionalism" but it is blatantly obvious that over the past decade the British media have positively discriminated in favour of applicants with strong regional accents at the expense of anyone who sounds even remotely "posh"; this has now reached the laughable position whereby our Shadow Chancellor, Eton-educated George Osborne, has been paying £60 a time for coaching lessons in how to sound more "normal" (My Fair Lady has indeed come full circle, in politically-correct Britain!)

As to an exchange system for British and Maltese teachers: in principle fine, but in reality British teachers are paid anything up to £35,000 per annum, so would they be interested in experiencing a dose of the Maltese education system? I rather doubt it. Oh, and by the way, if any Maltese venture to go to Britain they would be well-advised to steer clear of our "soap operas" (in particular, Eastenders and Coronation Street, neither of which will exactly help to extend their vocabulary).

There are a great many reasons why spoken and written English have declined both here and in Britain: "dumbing-down" within institutions and the media; text messaging; e-mails; even HM The Queen no longer pronounces her vowels quite the way she did in the 1950s! In Britain the causes and effects have been self-induced; within Malta, I suspect that the only solution is to insist upon English being taught in schools only by those with the very best qualifications in the English language.