Thank you, Warsaw Will. Indeed. My points exactly.

It's time for WW, Jayles, and I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?? Oh no, something wrong here, surely?
It's time for { WW, Jayles, and } I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?? Take out the others ...
It's time for I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it. ?! That's what's wrong: time for I ??
It's time for me I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it.
Me, not I, after preposition 'for'. Put the others back in:
It's time for WW, Jayles, and me I to take this back to the Anglish thread if we wish to keep talking about it.

Hold hard there, Warsaw Will. Personal attack is not playing the debating game. "It is also about idiomatic, natural, everyday language, something you seem to despise. It must be hard going through life with all this ugliness around you."

I have repeatedly written of how I enjoy the peculiarities of Scottish English, Scots, South African, West Country, Australian and even American English. Life is not hard at all, I assure you. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am arguing that there is a standard form suitable for formal occasions, and it should be known what it is so that it may be used when it is appropriate to do so, and that the people to show the way include teachers.

What's ungrammatical about "Fuck the speech"? Seems fine to me. A simple imperative. In my working days as a teacher I often thought in such terms when attending interminable meetings listening to old bores droning on.

In the UK the answerphone service tells us that we were called at such and such a time, then that "the caller withheld their number". One caller, but their number. Same unhappy clash of singular/plural as in your lines above. Sounds terrible - but they never thought that grammar mattered when they recorded it.

(By the way, who cares about a missed call, if the caller's number remains unknown? Why would we want to know that a mysterious stranger called at all?)

Porsche says 'But, "was sat" can only mean "was placed in one's seat".' and argues that this is unambiguous. Yes. Exactly my point. But what has been at issue all through this debate is that this unambiguous expression is all too commonly used incorrectly, rendering it ambiguous after all.

Some have said that expressions such as "you lot sat there in the corner" (describing where you lot are, not to what you did) sound plain wrong and the users of such ugly expressions are diminished in the opinion of the audience who may be job interviewers, or potential donors to worthy causes, who will be put off. So there may be serious consequences to using such terms.

Some say they are ungrammatical, because the wrong parts of the verb are being used, so causing confusion as to what is meant.

Others say it doesn't matter as long as the drift of what is being said is clear enough so let it all hang out and don't bother to get it right because folk'll probably know what you mean, hey?

Is 'Pain in the English' the right forum for arguing that it doesn't matter whether it is correct? We all know that hardly anyone uses correct English in informal situations, but we should look to to ensure that people have a chance to know what is correct so that when it matters, especially in formal situations, we may use it.

Did I say 'referring to what was to come, and to what had gone before'? I meant of course 'referring to what was to come, not to what had gone before'. I like colons, but you don't see them much these days.

You, Porsche, say: Sit does have a past participle. It's "sat". It isn't "seated".

I say 'sit' has a past participle active "sitting" and passive "seated". Active when he chose to sit, passive when it was forced upon him, so to speak, and he was made to sit.

"Sat" is the past, or perfect, tense of sit. As in the cat sat on the mat. If you say the cat was sat on the mat it means it was told to do it (but it wouldn't, of course, because it was a cat). If you say the cat was sitting on the mat it means it was already there, in that position, having sat down there earlier.

Warsaw Will quoted with approval Sue Perkins "When nobody's looking, I like to watch Graham [Norton] sat at a stool, braddle out ...", then eight months later Tessa asserted, without giving any grammatical argument or reason whatever, "both of these are completely correct ... " which I took to be a reference to the argument so far. She then suggested "was sat" and "sat" and "was sat sitting" as being just fine. The colon at the end of her first paragraph shows that she was in fact referring to what was to come, and to what had gone before. It's a very small colon, but it is there and I missed it. mea culpa.

Porsche - my point exactly. Tessa quoted with approval "... was sat the table" and said it was perfectly correct grammatically. (As you say.)

It isn't.

No way, Porsche. "Both of these are perfectly correct grammatically" are from Tessa's contribution on 14th May 4.17 am UK time , as you will see if you scroll up a bit.

And "sat" and "sat sitting" in place of "sitting" and "seated" just aren't correct. When these terms are used they do not pretend to be standard English.

Taking some examples from many years ago of this stuff, may I suggest a lesson from French, where the word for "I" which is "Je" when it is the subject, and "me" when it is the object, is "moi" when it is used after prepositions (with me = avec moi", after me = apres moi - can't do accents on keyboard) and disjunctively with the complement of 'be', as we say "It's me" = "C'est moi". The corresponding English word for "moi" is "me", and that is what all the confusion has been about, as it is the same as the accusative word for "me" used for the object of the verb (He sees me = Il me voit). So "him" "her", "them" and "me" and "us" can be i) obect or ii) disjunctive. In case of doubt, use one of these, and claim it is disjunctive; you'll probably get away with it.

So "Me and my friend are going out." is ungrammatical, although it establishes the speaker's demotic credentials, because 'me' is the subject, so should be 'I' so correctly "My friend and I ..." - subject of "are going ...".

"Who wants to go? Not me!" Fair enough - just say it's disjunctive, for emphasis, "pas moi!"

"She is taller than me." Fair enough. Disjunctive, "moi" in French. Used in comparative phrases as the complement with 'than'. Also "taller than I" is correct if explained with reference to ellipsis: "taller than I (am)." But that is a bit far-fetched.