Hall, nice post! Perhaps you have noticed, as I have, that British English often uses plural number agreement with what we Americans would consider a singular collective noun. So, Brits might say "The staff were all in attendance," while Americans would say "The staff was in attendance." Brits say, "The Cabinet agree on our current course of action," while Americans say, "The Cabinet agrees on our current course of action."

The Brits and Greeks seem to pay more attention to the semantics of collective nouns while Americans pay more attention to grammatical form. Collective nouns, after all, do represent more than one item in the group.