Key over and above anything . . . .

"If your major shareholders are getting the impression that there is a major problem here then that is key over and above anything the chief executive or his board of directors has done", he told the BBC.

There, word for word, is a sentence from the website of a major (my turn, now) organisation that I came across yesterday. The verbal sequence from the word 'then' to the end of the passage in quotes* is awful. Perhaps it may be pleaded in mitigation that someone has transcribed an oral comment made in haste, and that whoever made the comment had no opportunity to edit it before it was published. But the statement as a whole shows at least half a dozen faults of grammar, cliche, syntax, semantics and euphony. Any self-respecting organisation, especially one that takes a pride in communicating, should be ashamed of that.

* Yes, slang; lazy of me, you might say, but you would be wrong. I chose the abbreviated word deliberately, just as I did the term 'awful', which deserves a paragraph of comment itself.

Key over and above anything . . . .