Is it that 'I would hate the Union Jack to disappear' would sound too formal in conversation, Dunlop? It would sound OK to me (and the extra 'for' jars rather) but I'm very much an old fogey, linguistically at any rate. (By the way, thank you for silently correcting my non-capitalisation of 'union jack'. In my defence, 'The 'Observer' got it wrong too. Still, at least they didn't 'correct' it to 'Union Flag'!)

'I would hate it if the Union Jack were to disappear' (or 'I would hate it if the Union Jack disappeared'?) illustrates Jane's point about subjunctivophobia. Whenever I meet a linguistics expert, I always ask them why it is that there seems to be a trend in so many modern languages (English, German, French, Italian) for the subjunctive to disappear. Nobody has yet been able to tell me.

One example I've noticed recently in British English (but haven't seen commented on) is in conditional clauses. Increasingly I hear e.g. 'If he would phone, I'd go today' rather than 'If he phoned ( subjunctive) ..'. I gather this is an American usage - we seem to be adopting it. I also gather that it is parallel to a development in German ('wenn er anrufen wuerde' rather than 'wenn er anriefe'.)

I wasn't actually querying 'gotten', seeformiles. Some Americanisms are very useful and, as you say, more ancient than our own usage. However I don't myself care for 'gotten' very much. 'Got' is shorter, and I think that, other things being equal, the shorter the better.

Jane's 'as much as I should like to...' is interesting. I discussed it with my wife over supper, and we thought it might again be that 'Much as' sounds rather formal and archaic, and that 'as much as' is creeping in, under the influence of the common usage of the phrase in e.g. 'I don't like you as much as I did.'