Let me elaborate.

Dear blog readers, you get a nice view into my historical world this evening as I share with you part of my critical view on a lecture that I attended just today.

Firstly, I would like to thank the lecturer in question for opening his research up to the slings and arrows of our studious minds. Believe me when I say, I'm sure there will be a lot of slings and arrows directed at him for the lecture. Not that it was bad research, but that in my opinion, his area of study was misdirected as it leaned too heavily to one focus of his title, whilst totally neglecting his other subject areas. The lecture was called 'Auditing Leviathan: Corruption, growth and state formation in the 18th Century'. It certainly had a lot about corruption, specifically referring to several generals at the turn of 1700 until circa 1720. Now I recognise that generals are often at the forefront of state formation and whilst I recognise that he was suggesting that corruption was an integral part of state policy in Britain - which was his focus - and whilst they used it as a method of both gaining money and speeding up the bureaucratic system in place, he in no way attempted to suggest that this allowed for success on the field of battle or off it, save for one fleeting reference when bureaucratic inefficiency nearly cost Britain a significant battle. In my opinion, he should have focussed a lot more on the the difference between the corrupt but efficient state and the incorruptible but inefficient state. A significant comparrison between battles fought at the different points would go a long way towards helping his case. Also, he made no attempt to show anything to do with the growth of the nation, except for one graph at the beginning of the lecture that made little reference to corruption or to the formation of Britain.

In my opinion, therefore, he needed to neatly tie everything together more and to elaborate a lot more on the state as a whole, rather than focus on individuals who exploited the system, ok they had a part to play, but they were not the be all and end all of state formation.

Thanks for reading, I need to expand on this further before I turn it into the 1,500 word critical review, but this I hope has been a decent start.

Echo Tango Bravo - Or as I like to call it, ordering a taxi.

I had a frightful experience with a taxi company earlier today, when in the process of ordering a taxi, I was forced to sit and listen to the taxi receptionist speak in code at the taxi drivers. Who was monitoring their radio channels? The military? Did they have to encode their radio chatter in an effort to thwart an international drugs smuggling ring? Needless to say at that point, I made up my mind never to use their company again, unless of course I am concealing a significant shipment of something that requires encrypted radio chatter and I have plenty of time to sit and listen to the phone conversation - which was extremely difficult by the way. Unlike my home town's user friendly service, the receptionist at this company either didn't have a clue where I was, didn't have a clue about the town or simply wished to be difficult and thus the conversation dragged out for nearly 20 minutes.

Also, much to my dismay, several of the codenames were of places. Imagine if one were to get them confused? The shock and possibly abject horror of Codename Chatham as he is sent to Glasgow town centre to pick up a fare going to the railway station in 15 minutes. Luckily I only got London, but that in itself was enough to confuse me as I heard my instructions for where I was repeated loud in clear as being for London. Not fun.

I would name the company, but they might attempt to track me down - if they can actually find me. It took them nearly half hour to find somewhere in their own town, at that rate, I'd be waiting over a year for them to come find me here.

X-Factor travesty.

As a singer of more than 10 years experience, I was absolutely disgusted by the presence of Frankie Coccozza (Or should that be coccaine) in the X-Factor, because quite honestly he sings like either he just had significant throat surgery or he's got severe laryngitis. I don't know about the latter, but I would gladly be willing to pay for the former. It might give him a vocal range of more than 2 notes.

Thankfully now he's gone from the X-Factor due to use of narcotics. Oh, I'm not talking about his drug abuse, I'm talking about the thousands of people who watched him and had to slip into a drug induced coma to forget his existence.

Beauty in the danger.

I'm not one to get overly sentimental about Britain, but I do have a sense of pride when it comes to the things that Britain has been known to be great for. One of those things was Britain's airforce and today, their embassadors, the Red Arrows, suffered an awful setback when another of their members tragically perished. I would therefore like to make my own tribute to the Red Arrows as I saw them just the day before they lost Flight Lt. Jon Egging back in August and I was utterly moved by the beauty in the danger they create. Such a thing cannot be understated and truly, their bravery is one of the things that makes me proud to be British.