Accents - a privilege to hear them

Can anyone tell me what this Estuary English thing is?

I LOVE different accents, it would be so boring if we all spoke the same. It adds to the fun of going to a new place or meeting a new person who doesn't speak the same way as you.

1953 my parents moved from South Wales to Mid Wales, I was 11, we moved from a mining county to I can only describe as a farming county, my accent was mocked ! I hated it.

All I will say is you will know Estuary English when you hear it Magenta8 !

I had better not elaborate!

Stacey Dooley and Ricky Gervais are examples.
Tony Blair - when speaking to "ordinary people".
Tracey Emin.

Soft vowels but standard English. Dropping the "T" sound at the ends of words. Often something a bit nasal about it.

"Malcolm Bradbury, novelist and critic, writing back in September 1994, asked rhetorically, ‘Is there today a standard English? Estuary English, sometimes called Milton Keynes English, seems to be bidding for the position.’ He was referring of course only to the English of England, not the multiple dialects and accents of the wider anglosphere. He went on to characterise this apparent novelty: ‘It seems to have been learnt in the back of London taxis, or from alternative comedians…it’s southern, urban, glottal, easygoing, offhand, vernacular…apparently classless, or at any rate a language for talking easily across classes.’"

I'm not sure if they're accents exactly, but there is a 'Labour Party accent' which drives me nuts. Please note I didn't say any of this, but it sums it all up.

Someone said to me "Every time I see Rachel Reeves her awful nasal voice drives me mad, she sounds to me as though she should be sitting in a pub or bingo hall in curlers with a fag hanging from her mouth." 😂

Then I read this which really made me laugh.
Quote:
Jan Ravens, the voice behind Theresa May, Nigella Lawson and the late Queen on Radio 4’s comedy impressions show Dead Ringers, laments the absence of Labour top brass from the show.
Speaking to veteran impressionist Rory Bremner on stage at Worthing Assembly Hall, she said: ‘It’s extraordinary that Rachel Reeves has this adenoidal, miserable voice. And so does Keir Starmer. And Ed Milliband. Angela Rayner is like the northern version of that.
It’s so weird in the Labour Party, like a nursery school where there’s always a cold going round. 😂

As Kat Slater said in Eastenders a couple of years ago: "Enjoy yourself in Birmingham. Just don't come back with the accent". Such snobs, these cockneys!