a number of flour, an amount of flowers

I know language has to progress. I know it has to change. I know our grandparents spoke different to us. They knew about adverbs and adjectives. They even knew that if you were disinterested, you might not also be uninterested. These preserved nice distinctions. I accept, however, that at some stage in the not-too-distant future I'm not going to wince when somebody says 'none of them were there' ('none' is singular) or 'he talked fast' ('quickly' is the appropriate adverb). At present these misconstructions still sound a bit ignorant and illiterate to me. However, when a BBC Radio 4 presenter says 'no amount of newspaper headlines', I have no intention of progressing or accepting further abuse of the English language. Radio 4 is considered by many, especially the English, to be the finest speech radio in the galaxy, and it behoves it to err on the conservative side of change. It's what most listeners expect. Let them say an 'amount of flowers' on Radio 2, but on Radio 4 I insist on a 'number'. Otherwise those who want to simplify and degrade the language's many fine distinctions will win, and the rest of us -- those who want a rich, analytical language -- will suffer. As I am suffering from Edward Stourton's 'amount' on tonight's Pick of the Week.