George, I take your point and to some extent I do agree that it is wrong to stifle creativity in such a way, and also of the difficulties of defining standards. I too am quite willing to put up with the occassional poor performance but the problem arises when say 50% of the performances are poor. As you say I can (and in fact have) walk out of such places but, if everyone walked out for that reason you are then left with a club of nothing but poor performers. Surely it would be better to excercise some judgement in order to keep the club alive? Also, by allowing such performers to continue then they think 'oh I always get a nice round of applause so I must be OK', and thus never have the incentive to improve.

Like I say I do have some sympathy with your point of view but I do wonder whether it does more harm than good in the long run.