What about the long 'o' in the first syllable of Kosovo, which seems to me to be standard in American English (we give it a short 'o'). But the same thing happens with us; most British newsreaders gave Sarkosy a stressed long "o" that it certainly doesn't have in French. And why can both the English and Americans pronounce the /x/ sound in Rioja, but not in loch? It's all a mystery.

@D.A.W. - The word aerodrome is not used so much nowadays in the UK, and when it is it refers to small private airfields or military air bases. The larger commercial airfields have been referred to as airports since the beginning of the fifties, and are run by the BAA - the middle letter of which stands for "airports". In any case, it seems that the word aerodrome (to mean airfield - it also had an earlier different meaning) has been around about ten years longer than thee word airport.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=aerodrome

When I look up vacuum tube amplifiers in Wikipedia, it redirects me to valve amplifiers, though I admit that when I google "Valve amplifiers", the hits are mostly .co.uk. And it seems that although Edison and others in the States worked on the idea, the first working valve was in fact developed at Marconi, in London, by John Ambrose Fleming. The Ngram for American English books also suggests that valve amplifier was the original term, so by your reckoning isn't it you who are being the contrarians?

http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vacuum+tube+amplifier%2Cvalve+amplifier&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=

But even if you were right, why should not slavishly copying American usage be called contrarism (by the way, I think you've coined a new word there). After all you don't slavishly copy our spelling of spectre. What about a little mutual respect between these two branches of our language?

@DAW - as a fan of logic, you will have no doubt noticed a slight inconsistency. In your original question back in the summer, you complained about a British announcer saying "much more ready", and asked what was wrong with "much readier". And I would be inclined to agree with you - the only comparative my usual dictionary gives is "readier". But then a little bit later, when supporting NotAGrammarSnob in saying that someone can't be very competent (which is where my dictionary doesn't agree with you), you say someone or or something is either:
competent or not competent;
ready or unready;
ideal or not ideal; etc
So which is it? Is "ready" gradable or not?

The rules for making comparatives and superlatives of adjectives are, I imagine, just the same in British English as American English:
One syllable - add -er - hot, hotter, hottest etc
Two syllables when second syllable is y - add -er - ready, readier, readiest.
Two syllables other (1) - some usually take -er/-est - narrow, narrower, narrowest
Two syllables other (2) - with some you have a choice between adding er/est or using more/most - common, commoner, commonest, more/most common
Two syllables other (3) - with some others more/most is more usual - careful, more careful, most careful
Three syllables and more - more/most -competent, more competent, most competent

So in answer to your question - "Also, is the source of the phrase “much more X”, where X is a simple one or two syllable adjective, in British English?" - The answer is no, one British TV announcer notwithstanding. I really don't think you can keep blaming the British for all the ills you seem to perceive in English usage.

"The principal thinks Sally is more competent than any other candidate." - from the 'English Grammar from Dummies'. Quite appropriate in the circumstances.

http://www.google.pl/books?id=yDtX_YeuRP0C&pg=PA217

And there are plenty of other published examples here.

http://www.google.com/books?q=%22more%20competent%20than%22&hl=en

'Perfect' and 'parallel' are indeed absolute adjectives, but 'competent' and 'ready' are certainly gradable - "Is Bush readier to use nukes?" (CNN)

http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/2002/03/18/readier.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=readier

Mashed potatoes - I would suggest that you can't have a few mashed potatoes, as mashed potato is a mass and so uncountable. What Mrs Mrs. Jones had was 'some' or 'only a little' mashed potato(es). And yes, we do sometimes use 'less' for countable nouns - "there were less people than usual", but that doesn't make it the comparative of 'few', just as saying "It's me" doesn't make 'me' a subjective form.

While American dictionaries mainly list résumé as the main spelling, they also seem to allow two variants, resumé and resume. British dictionaries, on the other hand, don't.

As others have already pointed out, in British English we usually use C.V. with this meaning, but we do use résumé with a less specific meaning of summary - "I gave him a quick résumé of events" - Macmillan Dictionary.

But strangely enough my spell check is not recognising any variant with accents.

@Jiva - the fact that "whom" is correct in formal language doesn't make "Who do you trust" incorrect, unless you think the vast majority of educated speakers are wrong. When did you ever hear a native speaker start a question with "whom"? From whatever part of the English-speaking family.

I'm not sure you can make a general rule for steak, break etc as itorredel1 has done. Both words seemed to have started off with "brake"-like spellings. To back up Sebastian - Etymology Online Dictionary has this to say about "steak"- 'mid-15c.... probably from Old Norse steik "roast meat," cognate with steikja "to roast on a spit," and ultimately "something stuck" (on a spit); related to stick (v.).' Somewhere along the line, the spelling got changed.

And "break" seems to have come from the Old English brecan. I think you need to look at these spellings individually to see how we got them. Much of it is no doubt partly down to the whims of the earliest dictionary writers

I tried looking this up at Morewords.com, and found that the pattern - two consonants followed by "ea" seems to have four main pronunciation patterns. The majority are indeed /ɪ :/, like "speak, cheap" etc, but there are also /ɪə:/ - "clear, dreary" etc, /e/ - "bread, dread" etc, as well as /eɪ/ - "break, steak, great". This last sound doesn't seem to happen after single consonants, only double ones.

@Brus - Yes, that is one definition of judgemental, but I think you know perfectly well I meant the other - "having or displaying an overly critical point of view:" or "judging people and criticizing them too quickly". And no, I don't think the point of Pain in the English is to constantly criticise other people's use of English. There are so many other much more interesting aspects of language to discuss.

For example, when I write judgemental my (US) spellcheck red lines it, but when I look up judgmental in a British dictionary it takes me to judgemental. I never realised there was a spelling difference there.

I don't quite share your view of history, I'm afraid. As I remember it, teaching grammar wasn't stopped because it was elitist, but because traditional grammar teaching was stultifying creativity. Unfortunately, yes, they threw the baby out with the bathwater, but that has been remedied to a certain extent since.

And finally, I think I'll stay with Swan as my guide - "It's me/you who is wrong" is absolutely fine in informal English, which is what most of us speak most of the time.

Have a good holiday.

@Brus - on my keyboard (US) - apostrophe and then the letter - é, for grave ` then the letter - è, circumflex - ^ and then the letter - ê. I can't remember cedilla, unfortunately.

But back to your opening sentence - "This is an expression used to pad out the otherwise empty expression of a vacuous thought" - would you say the same for "It's just a suggestion", which for me has just about the same meaning. Don't you ever want to qualify something you've just said, or are you (and a lot of others on this thread) always so certain about things? Lucky you if you are! (actually I'm not so sure about that).

The other thing that strikes me is this a lot of stick is being thrown at what is, after all, a pretty harmless informal expression. Are we really meant to go around the whole time uttering perfectly crafted masterpieces of prose?

I have to say, I find words like lame and vacuous pretty judgmental. Why are so many of the comments here about finding fault with others' use of English? If you don't like it, don't use it, it's as simple as that.

Interesting stuff Dave, which made me decide to check with Etymology Online Dictionary. It seems "hello" is surprisingly new, dating back only to 1883, being 'an alteration of "hallo" which was itself an alteration of "holla, hollo", a shout to attract attention, which seems to go back to at least c.1400' (Etymology Online). It then lists a string of "H" words listed by Fowler along the lines of what you said. "Hello's" popularity was no doubt boosted by it being adopted as the standard telephone greeting on the suggestion of, I think, Thomas Edison. Alexander Graham Bell apparently wanted it to be "ahoy", another of the "H" family.

So the roots of "hello" also seem to lie in a call to attention, not it is not so dissimilar to "hey" in fact, although "hey" is in fact older.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=hello&searchmode=none