Yesterday I was off at the Welsh national Debating competition at the University of Glamorgan, which was good fun. My partner was Dai Suke, who I’ll say a bit more about later. The motions we debated were:
- This house believes that the state should stop binge-drinking
- This house believes Iran should be next
- This house believes the majority of players in Premiership football teams should be British
- This house would give heroin to addicts on the NHS
In the first debate, we came second, with which I was very pleased. I was a bit surprised that the Glamorgan team came first though. Although the content of their speech was reasonable, the manner in which they delivered it was rather flat. A dull, hesitant monotone is not an engaging style! They were both already dressed in suits despite not needing to do so until dinner. But they relaxed as the day went on, and I just about beat them in the next debate (third place to their fourth). The full results for all the debates aren’t available yet, though.Speaking of that Glamorgan team, I chatted to one of them at dinner about politics, and I said that I thought political parties didn’t really communicate their core values or a coherent basis for their policies enough. He said that in the Labour Party that did happen at committee meetings where policies are decided, and that people could find out about these things once they joined the party. He didn’t seem convinced by my suggestion that people ought to be persuaded of a party’s ideas before they join it and not after! I can just imagine him as some uncooperative bureaucrat in middle management sometime in the not too distant future – or worse yet, a government minister.For the Final, the motion was “This house believes free trade means freedom from poverty”. I did some reading on that beforehand – not that I thought I had any chance of actually getting into the final, but because I want to try and understand better issues surrounding trade justice, relieving poverty and so on. I’m thinking of writing an article for Gair Rhydd on the subject, so I’ll save my opinions for the time being. Shantel (Sorry, I’ve probably misspelled that!) and Kate won the competition, and Dave won Best Speaker. He’s really funny – he’s not the competitive sort when it comes to debating, more in it for fun and a laugh, and found himself in the final almost by accident.I did feel rather frustrated still by it being about debating for debating’s sake. At the end of the final debate, the chair said “We were planning to open this up for questions, but I’m sure you want to get to the nibbles and free wine”. Though in terms of carrying out a formal debate, the final was very good indeed, I didn’t however feel it really helped inform me all that much or really grapple with the questions of free trade and global poverty themselves, as opposed to grappling with the motion which was about those things. This makes me all the more determined to try and develop my ideas relating to that society idea…
I also enjoyed getting to know Dai Suke a bit more. He’s an international student from Japan, and so it was interesting hearing a bit about Japan. I can’t imagine myself debating in a foreign language, but he did really well. Quite a few international students join the Debating Society – it’s a good chance to practice English, as well as being a fun way to get to know people. One of the ironies of the competition is that Wales will be represented at the International Competition in Edinburgh by a South African and a Slovakian! He also took lots of pictures, which should be up on the Internet sometime soon.
Dai Suke and I also chatted about was our beliefs – he believes in Shintoism and myself in Christianity, so I think we both learnt a lot from each other. It was quite an experience for me explaining Christianity to someone who knows almost nothing about it. In doing so, it made me realise more just how amazing and wonderful a message it really is.
That God loves us, became human, died for us, rose from the dead and now seeks to make us one with him once more so that we can know him, love him and be loved by him, and share in his holiness and eternal life, is really mind-blowing. It’s sad how even us Christians in our culture can be blasé about this – it’s absolutely beautiful and incredible and awesome! What else can I say except “Praise the Lord!”