To be pissed off at the BBC

[badlydrawnperson]

Fed cup with adverts for the kids 500 words competition on every BBC Radio channel already. Also for an organisation so (rightly) keen on diversity - the chirpy kids advertising it are from the South of England and the big selling point is the finals are at Windsor Castle.

Yabu. DD and I have just watched the 500 words Live Lesson on BBC iPlayer and as it's based in Manchester all the kids from the local primaries who took part were locals. As a pp says if you really want to be ignored there are plenty of other parts of the UK who have it worse off.
I'm from the SW and we don't exist

Also, there are huge sections of the country that speak with a neutral/London/RP accent
That's not neutral - it's regional - Southern English.

I really enjoyed that programme that was partly in Welsh (and I'm in London eek!)

OP actually proving my point - ‘Southern English’ an accent. It’s a broad spectrum ranging from estuary to the Cotswolds that get lumped together as one. It covers a broad section of the country and the highest population density so it’s not totally surprising for that to be the accent used in an advert.

OP actually proving my point - ‘Southern English’ an accent. It’s a broad spectrum ranging from estuary to the Cotswolds that get lumped together as one. It covers a broad section of the country and the highest population density so it’s not totally surprising for that to be the accent used in an advert. You literally have no idea what you're talking about.

are they still doing that awful five huuuuuuuundred words?

what do you mean Derxa?

southern English can be anything from cockney, brightonion, Kentish, Cornish.....?

southern English can be anything from cockney, brightonion, Kentish, Cornish.....? of course it can but that's not what Fenella's saying.

@derxa umm, yes is. That “literally” is what I’m saying. Please don’t use words if you don’t know what they mean.

To be very clear for @derxa: THIS IS WHAT I AM SAYING. There is no ‘southern accent’. There are many regions in the south that have similar sounding accents: London/home counties/stretches of the Cotswolds/Oxfordshire/Cambridgeshire/south coast. To someone who is not from that geographical region, those accents can easily all sound similar but they don’t just represent London and one London-centric accent. If you want to be representative of the general population in one short advert, there is a heavier population in the Southern ‘hemisphere’ of England so it’s not as though the children OP is complaining about in the advert as having ‘Southern Accents’ are unrepresentative of the population. I do hope that clarifies things. Literally.

Likewise, there is no 'northern accent'.

There's no such thing as a 'southern accent' or a 'northern accent'. There are regional accents and non regional accents.

swphonetics.com/articulation/accents/sbe/
It's complicated.

What’s a non-regional accent? RP

Do you mean old style bbc? Well that's an old form of RP. The Queen used to talk like that but she doesn't now. I guess Prince William's accent is the modern form of RP or perhaps Fiona Bruce's accent.
Here's Rose Leslie (she's Scottish)
www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/08/121120/rose-leslie-posh-english-accent

I've just seen the BBC Facebook ad for this, and it's very ethnically diverse - done as a cartoon. Main character is black/mixed race. I think the BBC try extremely hard to get diverse backgrounds into their programming, especially their children's stuff.

There are southern and northern accents, but there isn't just one homogenous north or south accent, is what you are trying to say. It is usually easy to tell from a person's accent whether they originate from the north or south of England, and usually which county or even which city or town. Yes, everyone has an accent, no such thing as a neutral way of speaking.

There are southern and northern accents, but there isn't just one homogenous north or south accent, is what you are trying to say. It is usually easy to tell from a person's accent whether they originate from the north or south of England, and usually which county or even which city or town. Yes, everyone has an accent, no such thing as a neutral way of speaking. Yes that's exactly what I mean. Thanks for your clear explanation. Yes everyone has an accent.

Please inform Newswatch. It's my favourite program of the week, listening to people moan about small irritations on the BBC. Everywhere week us Welsh folk (and sometimes Scottish) complain about the English bias. Very entertaining.

Please inform Newswatch. I love Newswatch. It was all about bloody Southerners going on about a wee bit of snow otherwise known as 'winter'