The British usage annoys me to no end. I attribute it to an incapacity for abstraction.

Welcome to the board, deanjens. I have just noticed a couple of posts from you today.

I presume you mean the aforementioned treatment of collective nouns as plural. Firstly let me say that, in my experience, we Brits treat them as plural or singular depending on context. That is if the collective noun is shorthand for "members of the group" then it is plural; if it is shorthand for "the group, acting as one", then it is singular. This difference is more obvious in some contexts than others. In both the examples given (and without any other context) I would have used the singular. Any other Brits care to comment?

As such I think we abstract fairly well

Rod