Why can't you write/speak proper?

You may remember my post from a little while ago about our poor old Australian Broadcasting Corporation suddenly being unable to work out the difference between plural and singular nouns. Well, their latest SCOSE report includes a section that seems to suggest they’re still struggling to understand it …

‘A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after it was asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.’  

Treating the Aboriginal leaders as a single entity is faintly ridiculous. Anyway, the head of the subject phrase is ‘leaders’, not ‘group’. So it’s better to say:

A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia are calling for an apology after they were asked to leave…

Again, Aunty appears to be saying that the subject in the first version is the ‘leaders’ and therefore it should be treated as a plural. But the word ‘group’ modifies it, making it singular. Though, in this case you could have used the plural in the second half of the sentence if you’d wanted to:”A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after they were asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.” No, that’s not clumsy, it’s quite legal.

UPDATE:

I am getting sick and tired of hearing this misuse of singular and plurals. This one tonight on Channel 7 …

“The Chinese government are funding …”

ARGH!!! Freakin’ idiots!!!! The word “government” is singular. You should be saying …

“The Chinese government IS funding …”

For god’s sake you morons, it’s not difficult!!