News bulletins often establish their own grammar, but over-use of formulaic intros needs watching.
Today, I can reveal I waged a very long but eventually successful campaign against Countryfile presenters handing to weather presenters for the "all-important Countryfile forecast". It was a meaningless piece of verbiage, with no evidence that this forecast was in anyway more significant that any other.
Today, I launch a new campaign, this time against "the very latest". Mostly used by Huw Edwards, and embraced by Clive Myrie, we're told before a report "So-and-so has the very latest", and then after the report, reminded "So-and-So, [insert title] with the very latest, there".
Only poets should be allowed to qualify superlatives. And in many cases, the so-and-so is reporting the 'very latest' three hours after close of business, outside a court, hospital, government building long since hunkered down for the night, with no new information in the report since the previous bulletin. Leave it out, eh ?
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