IT may sound petty to the badly educated but increasingly poor use of the English Language – due to ‘dumbing down’ to accommodate the last 50 years’ reduced teaching quality – is, at best, mildly irritating.

For example, local buses are described regularly as ‘public transport’, when they should be correctly described (since deregulation in the 1980s) as ‘private transportation of the public’.

This makes a difference under English Common Law, which argues that order of priority on highways should be: pedestrians; horse riders; cyclists; public transport; then private transport.

This affects the logical and legal arguments on whether public money should be spent on road modifications, etc., for private companies, when other ‘public’ areas could use that financial resource.

In fact, the only form of actual public transport left that I can think of are NHS ambulances and possibly the rear seats of police cars.

Perhaps the more enlightened could add to this list. Some might argue fire engines are public transport because they carry firemen employed by the ‘public purse’.

Other irritations are the frequent , incorrect descriptions of countries as continents, ‘USA’ instead of ‘the Americas’ and ‘Australia’ instead of ‘Australasia’.

You regularly hear these errors on TV by supposedly ‘educated’ people, from news programmes to quiz shows.

There was I thinking that ‘dumb and dumber’ was the name of a film rather than a description of those having left the UK educational system.

A shame that these items were highlighted by a foreigner learning the English Language.

MICK HEAVEY Oxford Road Old Marston