Berlin day 2

This post unfortunately is not going to be too comprehensive but I thought you’d like to know that our team is doing good. they are on straights. they took a fourth , third and a first. You can find the motions online or on twitter so I will not state them here. I thought round 2 was particularly interesting and I was curious as how different people will view it and I quite liked the third round ( interestingly, apparently it is status quo in Germany) .Me and Ruairidh had an interesting day . My fourth round was really bad and I wanted to cry( I gather someone wasn’t happy with me on day 1 ) but it picked up after that and I got to see good rooms and more importantly had good chairs because ultimately that’s who I learn the most from. Ruairidh got to wing one of the DCAs so yay .

Duncan( GUU B) is on -1 . I’ll try and ask him to make a post explaining more but everyone and I do mean everyone is stressed and snappy so that will probably not happen but I promise any breaks announcements will get back to you quickly.

Penny

 

Berlin WUDC 2013, Day 1 – Scotland Update

At the conclusion of day one things are looking very well for Scotland. Bearing in mind that changes to the break rules means it is possible to pass into the ‘partial double-octos’ on -1 the team scores for Scotland are as follows:

St Andrews A (Ben Adams and Alex Don); 2nd, 1st, 1st (8 / +2)

Edinburgh A (Andrew Beverstock and Ben Lau); 1st, 2nd, 1st (8 / +2)

Glasgow A (John McKee and Ross Mitchell); 2nd, 2nd, 4th (4 / -2)

Glasgow B (Duncan Crowe and Graeme Cowie); 1st, 2nd, 1st (8 / +2)

Motions:

Round 1: THW build housing for the poor in rich areas.
Round 2: THBT Japan should acquire nuclear weapons.
Round 3 THW not imprison criminals who do not pose a continued threat to society.

Penny, Ruariadh and Kitty (Kitty’s Scottish, right?) have been seeing good rooms and Francesca from Glasgow has been chairing since round 1. A good day all round and everything to play for going into Round 2.

PS – Worlds council have adopted a system whereby the top 16 teams on tab will progress to the open break octo-finals and the next 32 (those finishing 17th to 48th) will have an additional knock-out round termed ‘partial double-octos’. Worlds Council have also ruled that Durham isn’t in Scotland. They may have a point.

PPS – You can watch Glasgow A’s R3 here: http://youtu.be/mk0IGCSmdZo

WUDC Berlin 2013

The biggest event on the debating calendar is upon us . This year hosted by Berlin Debating Union, World University Debating Championships is held between 27^th of December 2012 and 4^th of January 2013. There are 400 teams and 300 adjudicators from 82 countries participating. The Chief Adjudicators (CAs) are Sharmila Parmanand and Douglas Cochran. Doug is a St Andrews Alumni and previous board member of the UDS as chief whip. If you want to find out more about WUDC, check out their website: www.wudcberlin.com

St Andrews delegation this year is smaller than usual , we are sending one team and two judges. Our team will be consisting of Ben Adams and Alex Don. Me ( Penny ) and Ruairidh Macinstosh will be judging. For those of you who are interested in how we are doing, I will be updating the blog after each day of the preliminary rounds and hopefully in the out-rounds. I actually won’t have much news till the evening of the 29^th, when the first 3 round will be done but there might also be random posts if I have time. We might also tweet and post on the competitive group on Facebook. The length of the posts will depend on the day I have had and whether I am having fun or recovering from having fun. I shall try and get others to help with the blog so you would get different perspectives.

Wish us luck !

Penny

Morning of the final

The hotel is weirdly quiet and there is no one around , I’m guessing that people now knowing who is in the final and having partied all night no longer care about breakfast. I want to give you a quick update on yesterday.

As you might know Ben and Ruairidh broke to quarterfinals and we were pretty excited about that , it is an incredible achievement. The motion for the quarter was something to the effect of “THB that The Republic of Serbia should secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina”. It was a very good room with ULU B in first prop , Warwick A in first opp and Oxford A in second prop and St andrews in second opp. It was a nice debate but it was unusual as it required teams to know a lot about a specific country but it was expected when we came to Belgrade that such motions will come up . Despite a great effort by Ruairidh and Ben we were eliminated and both of the teams from prop went through to semis.

The semis was a really interesting motion about whether or not This House should stream kids in school. The debate was held in the parliament  which was really beautiful and in formal clothes. We sat at the back and discussed the debate as it went on with passion , I think this is what non-debaters do when watching sport. There were some really good arguments in both prop and opp and this meant that the deliberation took especially long. In the end they announced the results at the incredible social which was held in a venue with great view of the castle and a great band which played Irish music most of the night. The breaking teams from the semifinals are Oxford A, BBP A, UCD A, Cambridge A for the main final. It shall be a very interesting debate.

I shall try to get someone else to write a post and I also promise to give you more stories and updates when I can .

 

 

Evening of Day Three

Sorry, more of me, but tomorrow you get Penny with a full update. We don’t find out who broke or what the results for the day were, so merely some discussion about socials and the motions for today for now. The drama!

First motion was that THW require the military to recruit in proportion to the socioeconomic background of their country. We know little of how it went, but considering the room they went into, there is a strong possibility John and Farhan won. Ed and Jack decided it was a good idea to rebrand infantry training as a graduate training programme in order to attract the middle class.

Second motion was to give Palestine a sovereign state in exchange for complete demilitarisation. Everyone is hopeful of seconds or worst case thirds.

Final motion was to allow anyone to take up residence in any country provided they weren’t an economic burden. It should be noted that all three were in very good rooms at this time, almost certainly all live, and we are all hopeful of a positive result. Keep your fingers crossed…

Now, that’s all well and good, but for some reason there is a suggestion that you might be interested in these strange things called ‘socials’. They seem to be occasions intended for social interaction with others, something I (and many debaters) have found troubling and constantly tried to avoid. Nevertheless, the people of Serbia, but particularly the volunteers, have been exceptionally welcoming, and my memory of the Serbian people so far has been particularly positive. But onto the socials themselves;

Last night’s social started pretty good, going to a normal club with music and dancing (for others, not me. English people shouldn’t dance) and had a lot of fun for the majority of the night. Afterwards, it became epic, as we took a left instead of a right, and ended up walking around the oldest, and some might say finest, fort in Belgrade at the dead of night. As is my basis for studying history at university, Historical epicness wins out over ‘socialing’ anytime. It was a truly great experience, and we all really enjoyed it (other than the people who chose to rest at home. Disgraceful that they didn’t want to go out and enjoy themselves the night before the most important day of the tournament…).  The other organised social we (those who had arrived) had gone to on the Sunday night was also pretty cool, being held in a reconstruction of Belgrade from the 20’s, but it was the added dimension of the really cool fort that made the other social exceptional. The Monday, we instead stayed downstairs catching up not only with each other, but plenty of old friends and experienced debaters, which was still a great deal of fun. Tonight’s social is somewhere down by the rivers with a live band,(named Al Jazzera…) and we’re already looking forward to it. That and the whole, break announcement, thing.

Kind regards all, and Penny’ll update you tomorrow morning on results.                                               

Evening of Day 2

Another quick spartan to just tell you motions and how they did. Penny judged all three rounds again, while Duncan judged 2 and chaired one, while  I judged three quite interesting rounds, particularly enjoying hearing how Germans were more than happy to give money unconditionally to the Greek government with no strings attached from a pair of very talented German speakers, which was both ironic and convincing at the same time.

The motions today were a bit of a mixed bag. My personal fave was THB that the Mexican government should remove all restrictions on the police and military in their war against organised gangs, which elicited a cheer from the judging room when announced. Jack and Ed bounced back brilliantly from yesterday, taking a solid first, while Farhan John were legitimately, but sadly, given a fourth even though they had good stuff but couldnt connect them to their other good stuff and the debate as a whole, but were in an exceptionally good room. Roo and Ben were placed into one of the highest rooms, and got a more than respectable third. Overall, it was a highly enjoyable round.

Next was the obligatory Euro’s motion on the Euro, namely that the ECB should unconditionally purchase debt from struggling european nations. Ed and Jack again took firsts, however the doom and gloom of an economics motion seems to take some of the happiness out of Ed’s eyes out of sheer boredom over inconsequential stuff like economics. Both other teams got good seconds in difficult rooms, keeping them well established on the tab.

Finally, I had the absolute joy of judging a debate about limiting spending by corporations on lawsuits and stuff with a corporate lawyer from London, who had ironically tried to get away from all the lawyer bashing in the city, so came to euros. It was a good motion, but unfortunately Jack and Ed recieved a fourth, mostly because it was an exceptionally good room. I believe the other two teams both got seconds, but it is possible that I am wrong, and if so then we shall correct it with a more comprehensive update later.

More stuff hopefully later from people who aren’t me.

Morning of Day 2

Sorry for the lack of updates and the very spartan post, there is no Internet in the judging room, and the wireless in the hotel cut out on me for some undetermined reason last night, so its a bit rushed this morning.

St Andrews B (Ben and Roo) are on 8, St Andrews C is on 7, St Andrews A is on 5.

All three won their first round (As parents, not sending kids to private school), A and C came second and B won round 2 (First peoples getting autonomous states), While B and C came second in the third round (as music industry, allowing the comebacks of artists who commit violent crimes), despite busting some rhymes unfortunately Jack and Ed came fourth, however this was a very minor blip, and they are certain of coming back strong this morning.

Penny has chaired all of her rooms, Duncan has chaired one and otherwise been in really good ones.

An update this evening is more likely, due to the whole no Internet thing, but John may ‘tweet’ (supposedly the kids are doing it) throughout the day.