Bryan,
My 'crap standards ' comment was not aimed at you or anybody specifically (though it was prompted by a comment by Richard) - it was an opinion that if you don't apply standards you throw the floor open to singers who can't sing - that is my opinion based on my experience.
If you are allowed to use 'audition' rhetorically aren't the rest of us afforded the same privilege?
I have no doubt now that the Lewes club is a good one - how could I - but suggesting that this is the case throughout Britain flies in the face of the evidence to the contrary, again based on my own experience and, I suspect by the number of hits on this thread, by many others.
Saying that all's well as long as my club is ok is more than a little like - as we used to say in Liverpool - "Ding-ding; I'm on the bus".
Jim Carroll