@D.AW. - I don't see why are you are still going on about a building sitting or standing somewhere; I have absolutely no problem with that. I just find using the example of something that has been there for a hundred year or so, and will continue to do so in the future a strange example of "right now". But let's leave that one as we're obviously never going to agree.

Let's talk about the team instead. This is simply a different way of thinking between Americans and the British. You prefer formal agreement and we prefer notional agreement. We often see a team, or any other group, such as the government or a company or newspaper, as being a group of people rather than a single entity, so we say that the government are introducing a new law, or the company treat their employees well etc.

I know Americans feel uncomfortable with this, but I feel equally uncomfortable when I hear a family referred to as it, or that the family is coming for Christmas. For you it's an entity, for me it's a group of live people. Neither of us are more correct than the other; it's just a different way of seeing things. Just like American humour is different from British humour. Because we look at things slightly differently.

But now you've opened Pandora's box, I'd be fascinated to know what other aspects of British English lead you to call it "that twisted mess". I'm sure it'd be great fun. I do so enjoy your lectures.

@Holy Mackerel - "Mostly they have no clue what they're talking about" - Who would they be here, and what are they talking about? Just curious.

I've been doing a bit of research on the -ise/-ize business, and although I haven't got to the bottom of it yet, I'm finding it rather interesting. Although there was quite a lot of inconsistency, with the same word sometimes appearing with both spellings in the same work, -ize endings seem to have totally predominated in Britain until the end of the 18th century. But these -ize verbs were used pretty rarely compared with the French -ise verbs like surprise, compromise etc. until the end of the 18th century. Then two things appear to have happened. There was quite an increase in the use of -ize verbs, followed by very rapid changeover to -ise spelling, so that by about 1850, it seems to have dominated in books and magazines. Modern commentators say this is due to French influence and a mistaken analogy with the French -ise verbs, but I've found nothing contemporary to give the reason.

But whatever the reason was, the changeover was very rapid. The original editions of Jane Austen's six novels, published between 1811and 1818, have about 90% -ize endings, with about 10% of -ize verbs appearing with an S. But when they were all republished by a different publisher in 1833, they appear with -ise endings throughout. And most of Dickens seems to have been published with -ise endings, including those published in his own magazine. I'm not convinced that this was a deliberate bow to French influence. I think it's possible that British publishers realised they had to clean up these inconsistencies, and went with the flow of the more common French -ise verbs. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster had decided to go the other way.

We are sometimes told that the -ize version is correct because of the Latin and ultimately Greek origins of these verbs. But one thing I've learnt, is that while this true for some of the earlier adoptions, already by 1600 people were creating -ize verbs from existing English words. Shakespeare is credited with five of them, including the wonderful "sluggardize". Probably the majority of the ones we use today are formed this way, without a Latin root at all.

I've written about on this my blog and am collecting material which I hope to put in a little blog dedicated to -ize/-ise verbs soon.

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/01/some-random-thoughts-about-ise-and-ize.html

@jayles - OK, I do check with Swan now and then, and the OALD occasionally, but that's about all.

@jayles - Why do we need more concrete benchmarking? I'm sure your experience both as an educated speaker and as an experienced teacher has given you a feel for what is grammatical or natural and what is not. I don't know of any of my colleagues having any benchmarks other than their own good judgement. After all, the vast majority of native speakers manage perfectly well without any benchmarks.

As for my dialect, it's RP, without the faintest trace of a regional accent, unfortunately. It's not much fun constantly being called a foreigner (i.e. English) in your own country (Scotland).

No, the government is / are isn't an issue for my students, whereas articles, as you rightly say, most definitely are. But when it comes to differences between BrE and AmE, it's definitely an issue, as you can see on this PITE thread - http://painintheenglish.com/case/4394

@jayles - you do know about grannies and sucking eggs, don't you? :))

When do you ever date an email? It's done automatically for you, isn't it?
Anyway, it's not an issue here, as other European countries use exactly the same short form as we do. I don't think many of them write emails to the States, unless they work for American firms, in which case they probably know anyway.

But I grant you the comma / decimal point thing can be a problem.

Awra best

Unfortunately I can't claim to have had a mother who was a teacher, but I can claim to be one myself. Putting aside your insults to British English, which of course are just a lot of prejudiced nonsense, I'll try and answer your points one by one:

1. Editorials - as far as I'm aware these are rarely written by the editor in person, but by a group of editorial staff, especially if the editorial is not the first leader. But anyway, apart from your good self, most of us wouldn't mention the person or people. That was my point. Here area a few example I got by googling "in an editorial the times said":

In a recent Sunday editorial, the New York Times said Johnson & Johnson “has a lot of explaining to do” (Rottenstein Law Group)

China Should Speak Out About Hacker Attacks, Global Times Says (Bloomberg)

In a series of reported stories and a strong unsigned editorial, The New York Times has vividly illustrated the faults with the Federal Trade Commission’s disappointing ruling in its antitrust investigation of Google. (FairSearch.org)

2. A building sits or stands somewhere - I don't know why you think this is specifically American; we do the same. But that wasn't the problem. When you said that the Houses of Parliament stand in London, that's about general time, not necessarily about right now. And when you did use the words "right now" to talk about the moon, you rightly went into Present progressive, "It is doing so now", because "It does so right now" would have been ungrammatical. I have to tell you that "Right now I write this comment," would be marked wrong in any English Certificate exam for foreign learners. Shakespeare and other writers are allowed poetic licence.

As for your famous last words bit, when talking about existence, the verb "to be" is a stative verb and not used in the progressive form, so you are right there, but this is not true with most verbs. To be honest, your verbs "sit" and "stand" in your meaning were also stative. I said they were bad examples not because the grammar wasn't correct, but because "right now" is not the main use of Present simple; it can only work with stative verbs. And stative verbs, by their very nature, describe states: things which don't change much day-to-day.

For example, your sentence "A large statue of Abraham Lincoln sits in Washington, D.C", sounds the sort of thing you might read in a guide book. Yes, it is there right now, but it was also there yesterday and it will be there tomorrow. This is about a fairly permanent state of affairs. And the criminal was still alive (just), so of course he would say "I am" - this is an existential "I am".

Anyway, this is what one of the biggest ESL sites (American, not British!) has to say about the use of present tenses. It no doubt explains it better than I am doing:

http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/simplepresent.html
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentcontinuous.html

I notice you've said nothing about historical present or present tenses being used for future reference, so perhaps you now accept them.

@Holy Mackerel - Here's one Brit saying that any Brit that told you that is talking out of their proverbial. Unfortunately, there are a few idiots in Britain who think that BrE is the "only true English", especially amongst Daily Mail readers, but sometimes egged on by the media.

Of course, people are most comfortable with what they know, and I have some problems with certain aspects of American English, especially in relation to group nouns (and dates - see below). But I understand that it is simply a different way of thinking, just as our national senses of humour differ.

Linguistically, no language or dialect is superior to any other. Whether it's a matter of BrE vs AmE, or standard dialects vs regional or ethnic dialects (including the much maligned in these pages ebonics or African American Vernacular English) . Anyone who says differently doesn't know very much about how languages work.

@jayles - There is one city in Britain where subway has the same meaning as for Americans - the official name for the underground line affectionately known as "the clockwork orange" is "Glasgow Subway". Dates are the ones that get me; I can never get my head around the American dating system.

Here's another little difference:
Brit - I got really pissed last night.
American - Who with?
Brit - Oh, there was just me. And a bottle of whisky.

@jayles - I don't think your definition of Standard English - "as being anything that a well educated English speaker would understand clearly and could use" is that far removed from my "sounding natural", although I agree with you that there will be variations. For example you mentioned feeling uncomfortable when hearing Past Simple used with "already" and "yet", but I'm sure that you know from your TEFL training that this is quite standard with some American speakers. Another AmE / BrE difference lies with group nouns. We often feel more comfortable saying "the government are", they feel better with "the government is". So, yes, there will be variations, even within Standard English.

Unfortunately I don't have any dialect, so speak Standard British English as my normal day-to-day language. I think I have a reasonably good idea as to what is normal language for my peer group - that is what I call natural - nothing obviously ungrammatical, but similarly no overformal constructions. Good old idiomatic English, in fact. And I don't usually get any big surprises when I check my hunches in MWDEU or New Fowler's, so I don't think my idea of what is natural is particularly unusual.

@D.A.W. - Well, it no doubt makes a first that we are in agreement, but without wishing to spoil the moment, I can't understand your objection to "the Sun writes". This is quite standard English and is sometimes referred to as the historic present:

"In linguistics and rhetoric, the historical present (also called dramatic present or narrative present) refers to the employment of the present tense when narrating past events. Besides its use in writing about history, especially in historical chronicles (listing a series of events), it is used in fiction, for 'hot news' (as in headlines), and in everyday conversation (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 129–131). In conversation, it is particularly common with 'verbs of communication' such as tell, write, and say" Wikipedia

On your second point, to take your logic to its extreme, we would need to say something like "In an editorial yesterday, the editorial writers of the Times stated that bla bla bla..." That would be nonsense; the norm would be "In an editorial yesterday, the Times stated that bla bla bla.."

"So many people have lost sight or the fact that the present tense means RIGHT NOW." - including me, I presume!

Apart from "it is doing so right now", which is in Present Continuous (or Progressive), none of your examples, the rest of which are in Present Simple, are in fact about right now. The moon has been orbiting the Earth for millions of year and hopefully will continue to do so for millions more. As far as I remember the Houses of Parliament were there last time I was in London, and I imagine they will be next time I'm there. But what's happening in Parliament right now, I don't know.

I'm afraid you're confusing your tenses (or at least aspects): Present Simple is used for things that are always or generally true or are regularly repeated, especially with expressions of frequency like "every 29 days". It's Present Continuous (or Progressive) that's used for right now. Right now I'm writing this comment, not right now I write this comment.

In any case we don't use present tenses to talk exclusively about the the present; they're also used to talk about the future:

Tomorrow afternoon, I'm meeting my cousin off the train. (arrangement)
The train gets in at 3pm. (timetabled or scheduled event)

So if you're going to give me a lecture on tense use, it might be a good idea to have a look at a grammar book first.

Apparently even newspapers (well, the Sun) get confused with this one. The Sun writes:

With all but a monumental collapse now standing between Manchester United and a record 20th league title, all eyes turn to who will win the fight between the also rans for second place.

What they mean of course, is "With nothing but a monumental collapse ..."

I imagine the confusion arose because of the old meaning that but sometimes had of "only".

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4492