My brother or sister debater, heed these words, for I tell you that you are in great danger. Through unhappy accident I have stumbled across details of an ESU plot that threatens the very existence of the debating circuit and promises to plunge our way of life into turmoil and civil war the ferocity of which has not been seen since the WUDC break regulations changed. I have awoken an evil the power of which I even now cannot fully comprehend. If you ever wish to drink yakka until the room goes wibbly or laugh at Jake Armes for prepping the wrong side of the semi’s motion again, then you will believe what I tell you.
For weeks now my enemies have pursued me from city to city, time and time again I have ever more narrowly slipped through their fingers. From Berlin, Manila, Botswana and Koc to Serbia, Galway, Tallinn – the list blurs and my head spins. I fled far from civilisation to wander empty deserts in unworldly silence, befriended the Yukaghir and trod their secret paths through the Siberian tundra, snatched uneasy sleep in the ruined temples of forgotten Aztec cities and entered a kebab shop in Hull – still their dead-eyed enforcers remained mere minutes behind me: untiring, unceasing, pitiless. Harnessing skills of persuasion honed in a thousand break-rooms they have subjugated governments to their ends, argued the world’s police into submission and presented every lone-wolf vigilante with three expertly analysed points as to why they should cease their investigations. They are everywhere, and they are powerful.
Now my strength and resources are exhausted, my wit at its end and they are sure to find me soon. By getting David Jones to judge a school’s round whilst drunk I have distracted them long enough to scribble down the letter below, which I have entrusted to my last surviving friend with orders to publicise it on the foremost debating blog the internet. The truth must be known. They must be beaten. Even now I hear jackboots on the staircase, feel the draught on my neck as a window is expertly forced open and I hear sirens in the distance. Run my friend, seek out the council in exile and carry my message to safety!
The horror, the horror!
* * * * *
Debaters of the world,
What if I told you the ESU is not actually the benign debating organisation you thought it was? What if I told you that the people who worked there are not in fact self-sacrificing and occasionally cuddly individuals, resolute in their noble cause of padding the CVs of the privately educated? What if told you that Steve Nolan once refused a drink?
What if it I told you that the ESU is in fact a front organisation run by a shadowy overlord intent on World’s domination? What if I told you that for the last decade they have been collecting the best speakers from the debating societies of Britain and offering them employment only in order to monitor their behaviour and harvest samples of their DNA?
What if I told you that deep underground and in total secret, they toil with warped and perverted sciences to isolate the debating gene and splice it into selected hosts? What if I told you that beneath your feet are vast fields, that on those fields are hellish camps engulfed in a miasma of death and blood, and that in those camps thousands of these hosts are training and drilling, only the strongest and quickest hosts surviving? Disguised as children, they are in fact the diabolical and pitiless avatars of their dark ESU masters, versed in the ancient art of analysis, International Relations and sarcasm? What if I told you they are awaiting the day they will get to University and begin their mission of gathering trophies and titles to adorn the throne-room of their lord? What if I told you I have seen them, and I am afraid?
What if I told you that the Kent IV was founded as nothing more than an excuse for them to test their prototypes for the first time under the close surveillance of their ESU masters? What if I told you that that the reason the final motion was so mental was to discover the glitches in their “dealing with insane CAs” training program? What If I told you that Kent isn’t even a real University?
What happens if my concerns are completely unfounded? Nothing. But what happens if my concerns are justified and ignored? Nothing good.
There remains but one solution. We must debate the 14 year olds. We must debate them and we must win. We will debate on to the end. We will debate in France (at the Paris IV,) we will debate on the seas and the oceans, we will defend our island whatever the cost may be. We will debate them on the beaches, we shall debate on the landing grounds, we shall debate in the fields and in the streets, we shall debate in the hills; we shall never surrender.
For me it is too late. But for you, who now know the truth, there may still be time to foil the plot of those who would tear down all that is pure and good and drunken and random about debating and cover all the world in a darkness of robotic competency. Sober up the troops, you have a war to win. The fate of debating lies in your hands. Do not fail me.
Godspeed.
Ben Adams
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