There IS areas?

[Cecily]

When the (British) Labour Party were trying to strike a deal with the Lib Dems yesterday, the minister with responsibility for education, Ed Balls, said:


There's areas of agreement. There's also some difficult areas.

Hmm. That non-standard usage is clearly gaining respectability in some quarters.

Are you happy about that?

[Maeve]

When the (British) Labour Party were trying to strike a deal with the Lib Dems yesterday, the minister with responsibility for education, Ed Balls, said:



Hmm. That non-standard usage is clearly gaining respectability in some quarters.

Are you happy about that?

I think that "there's" as a sentence opener regardless of the number of the verb that follows is with us to stay, Cecily. At least in conversation. No excuse for it in writing. It presses horribly on my grammar nerve, but it will prevail. Same as "anyone/their."

[Cecily]

I think that "there's" as a sentence opener regardless of the number of the verb that follows is with us to stay, Cecily. At least in conversation. No excuse for it in writing. It presses horribly on my grammar nerve, but it will prevail. Same as "anyone/their."

I agree that it's likely to stay and is more excusable in speech, but I don't think it's the same as "anyone/their".

There is no grammatical, historical or utilitarian justification for "there is areas", whereas singular their (which is what "anyone/their" is) unarguably meets two of those criteria and many would say three (see http://www.dailywritingtips.com/forum/showthread.php?47-Gender-Sensitive-Language&p=2409#post2409 ;)).

[Mr Fish]

There is no grammatical, historical or utilitarian justification for "there is areas", whereas singular their (which is what "anyone/their" is) unarguably meets two of those criteria

It's not pretty, but perhaps the word Mr Balls was contracting was not 'is', but 'exists?