I betrayed my passion for the old grammar rodeo in an entry earlier today. Now I've revealed my guilty pleasure, I'll keep my 'grammar anorak' on for a bit longer :-)
So during the BBC piece I noticed that the beeb itself failed to notice one more 'mistake' in its final sample: there wasn't a full stop at the end of the second sentence in the last example.
See some things don't just come down to rules. Some of it's cultural. Some of it's historical. And some is just the language shifting. A quick note on each:
Culture: The BBC example might not be considered wrong. In North America, one always, always completes a sentence (an independent clause, if you like) with a full stop, no matter what. In British English, it is rather less strict, particularly in a bulleted list. This is in educated communities as well as amongst the uncertain. I'm not sure of the cause of this one. I am very happy to admit my ignorance and would love a discussion if anyone knows more!
Interestingly, many Brits put a full stop after everything, even after each line of an address. The best I can make out from this one is that it's a result of poor education - apologies to all I've observed and learned from, but I have actually heard you repeating your teachers' instruction to end every line with a full stop.
History: Some people say you should neither end a sentence with a preposition, nor split an infinitive. Sticking to these 'rules' produces two famous corruptions of statements:
'To go bodly where no man has gone before'
'Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. '
The latter is attributed to Winston Churchill.
You can see how silly it looks. You don't have to follow these rules. They were introduced by the Latin-loving educated classes during the 19th century. True, gritty, Germanic English ought to happily split infinitives all over the place.
Language shifting: If we use a word or phrase to mean something, we all understand its meaning, and we communicate with it on a regular basis, does it matter if we're using it incorrectly? At some point the dictionary meaning becomes obsolete. There's a big debate about whether the dictionary should be prescriptive or descriptive. The role of the communicator is more about getting the point across than about trying to educate the audience about how words ought to be used.
'Inflammable' is a good example of this. It actually means 'capable of catching fire' - as in 'inflame'. And yet 'flammable' means the same thing. Because of langauge shifting, we try to put our modern 'in-' prefix on it to create the opposite, when 'inflame' is already a word in its own right.
'Not flammable' is the opposite of flammable, and of inflammable.
It isn't clear, is it? When it's a burning (or not burning) matter, who's got time to look it up in the dictionary?
So all this to say...
The rules aren't as clear as you'd like them to be. Even Oxford and Cambridge have their own schools of thinking on some issues (such as 'single' or "double" quote marks).
But even though there are a few loose threads, the rules are clear and committed, and even used corrected by toddlers just learning the language. Observing the rules isn't just being pedantic. Learning them and how to play within them can be hugely liberating, and we should love them and use them. Beyond that, the only real rule I advocate is to be clear: so if a rule gets in the way of people understanding your point, by all means break it. In the end you are trying to connect with your audience. Don't put stumbling blocks in the way.
after all. Cause this isn't it. 
