Last Saturday I went to the Welsh leg of the John Smith Memorial Mace Debating Championships (so called because the prize is a ceremonial mace, apparently). England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland all hold debating championships, the winners of which compete against each other in the inter-national final. My debating partner Dee did a great job, and we enjoyed debating such issues as civil liberties, how to deal with Iran and animal experimentation over the course of the day.

The way the championship works is that over the course of the day, there are four rounds of debating – two before lunch, and two after lunch. During dinner time, the four teams that did the best over the course of the day are announced, and they then go through to the final after dinner. Much to the surprise and delight of Dee and myself, we got through to the final.

The final was on the controversial subject of Intelligent Design – is it science? is it just creationism repackaged? should it be taught in schools? Dee and I were arguing in favour of it being taught in schools, which suited me, since that’s where my sympathies lie, although I’m not entirely convinced – but that’s another topic for another post. I know the subject quite well from reading up on it and discussing it on Internet forums, but I think that I ended up with too much to say, and my speech suffered because I ran out of time even with 7 minutes, and didn’t really spend enough time on the heart of my arguments.

In the end, Dave and Lowri, another team from Cardiff, emerged victorious – congratulations once again to them! Naturally I’d have liked to have won, but I was delighted just to get as far as I did. Perhaps next year…!

I’ve written a news article for gair rhydd reporting on the competition, and have almost finished a factual piece on Intelligent Design for the Science section, so watch out for those soon!