Incidentally, has there been an "accentuation" of accents in the UK in the past 40 years? As a non-native speaker, i used to be able to mostly understand british english, and can easily understand the accents from e.g. the Thatcher-era UK parliament. Nowadays in british media i often hear accents that range from heavy (but still intelligible) to very highly 'oxford' or posh to the point where they are annoying. I think it didn't use to be like that, but i might be wrong.