Neil Saunders:
Surely the whole point about Estuary English is that rather than being a genuine accent it represents a levelling of many genuine accents by a combination of factors: the influence of the mass media (especially, perhaps, the baleful popularisation of a Cockneyfied way of speech on the back of the late 70s punk movement, which has resulted in people as far away as Leeds saying "fink" and "fought", and employing glottal stops); the spread of London outwards into the Home Counties as a result of the overpopulation of the South-East (turning once quite distinct country towns into mere dormitories for the Metropolis), in tandem with the depopulation of rural areas through labour unintensive, "prairie" methods of agriculture; as Peter Hitchens has already pointed out, a kind of aspiration downwards (!) to the level of the kind of culture and society embodied in and exemplified by Radio 1 and Bluewater. (The inexorable outward sprawl of London was noted as early as 1910 by E. M. Forster in Howards End.)
wiki: Estuary English
Estuary English
Estuary English taking over England | Antimoon Forum
Varieties of English
Estuary English
Variation in English
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Wiki: Regional accents of English
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