The sad things about the Guardian story is that they told crew a few weeks ago not to bother doing the PA as in reality few crew said it.
Of course, it's fine for airlines like GB Charter to have an "article" in their inflight magazine about the Cabin Crew Resource Manager which consists of half a page of "I recruit cabincrew and we like don't have any so if you walk on 2 legs and support your own head without it flopping over to one side can you do the late Paphos tonight?" etc.