I attended the division-level competition of my public speaking club and I have some opinions. I’m going to let them stew and bubble for a while, while I voicenote my friends and then immediately demand they tell me how funny the voicenote was.

In the interim, then, how was my week?

Intense. On Sunday I had no idea what to write, so the rhetor suggested safety warnings. I had fun with those, but that was mostly the last bit of fun I had for the week.

I had a full-day away day on Monday, my end-of-year and an offer to do a lateral move for 6 months on Tuesday, a workshop on Wednesday and a two hours on the train. Then on Thursday public speaking club where I won the evaluation contest and everyone wished me good luck, and then finally today: where I did not even place.

As part of my lateral move, I’m taking on responsibility for running the directorate’s private (or outer, if you’re a MoD bod) office. It’s part of a wider piece of work to improve the whole directorate: our processes, information flow, and delivery methods. I’m hopeful that in six months I can go back to the usual job, having thoroughly set up totally invincible processes that will never need changing.

Hang on, I’m just getting some news in my ear…

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I’m trying to reflect on what I’ve learned this week. There is something about figuring out what I want to do, and how I’ll get there. This lateral move should give me something that will help me move to the next level: my end of year assessment is that I should be ready to move up in a year, if I want, and if I’ve got a bit more budget-and-running stuff experience. I’m planning to set up a public speaking club at work, possibly through Toastmasters.

And this brings me to the perfect and the good. Something is bugging me about Toastmasters, and I’m not sure yet what it is – but I know I saw it today. I also know they’ve got a huge bunch of resources that can be brought to bear, and that with a bit more effort I can use that to start teaching rhetoric in schools.

I’m becoming something of a zealot: rhetoric – the art of influencing, persuading, arguing through written and spoken speech is absolutely essential. You have to know how to do it. You have to know when it’s being done to you – when charlatans with more style than substance are selling you snake oil. In a representative democracy, under the rule of law, absolute power goes to people who can use rhetoric to their advantage.

And so I think it’s essential, beyond essential, even, that we teach kids this stuff. We used to! We used to have something called a liberal arts degree, and the three foundations were logic, grammar, and rhetoric.

This will be a speech, soon enough. Today I’m tired, and my pockets are greasy with snake-oil I wasn’t fast enough to dodge.

Tomorrow. Until then, you can see what I’ve been saying previously.