Every year on St Andrew’s day, the austere chamber of the Scottish parliament sees a huge increase in the amount of debate, as school and university speakers descend for the St Andrews Day Debating Competition. In this competition, organised with the ESU and the parliament, the teams are made up of one school speaker and one university speaker, who debate on pre-released motions. It’s great for getting school kids over the barrier of speaking at competitions, and a nice chance for students to help out with the next generation of speakers. Our current fresher teams were previous finalists at this competition in past years. The motions were:
- This house would make it compulsory for Gaelic to be taught it in all Scottish schools.
- This house would charge for waste disposal by weight of material going to landfill.
- This house would make international aid contingent on democracy.
As one might expect of a competition held in parliament, there were plenty of free goodies and food, and the airy meeting rooms a much nicer place to speak than the grotty lecture theatre that typifies a University IV. Attending from St Andrew to judge was Duncan Crowe and I, although I ended up speaking in the last two rounds, as did our school’s secretary Andrew Malcolm-Neale. The tab is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhoHiRzg3us5dHVDQUx3eWJEZnYxcThFX2E2SzBBd3c#gid=0
As you can see, Andrew and his talented partner Rebecca Scott, broke to the final. Normally this is a place for lengthy description of the arguments, but today I can do so much better: here’s a video of the entire final: http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/newsandmediacentre/44792.aspx
A big well done to the winners, team Douglas Academy, Ruairudh Ferguson and David Norris from Edinburgh, on the motion: THW make voting compulsory.
Ben Adams
