The Wonderful World of Ewanland

[macdoof]

Sorry to all for the failure to update for a while, life has been busy, if a little bizarre. Last weekend I turned into the ultimate sports fan, at one point there was football on BBC1, Tennis on BBC2, F1 on 3, and I was watching the cricket on four, fabulous. I acheived nothing but got to watch sport, woot

Comments

[vasovagalvegan]

hurrah! glad it's all going well and you're having fun. I can't find your articles on the courier's website- any chance you can send some down to Bristol? i'd be interested to read some...

Hope everything carries on going well:)

[macdoof]

I imagine my articles to date haven't been on there as they have only been rewrites of press releases. The one I have just finished should be put up, assuaming Catriona (My Boss, Features editor) doesn't see sense and bin the thing. Hope all is well, have fun in Venice (sounds like a musical!).

[lordrosemount]

Good luck with the rulebook rewrite! It's badly needed. I'd recommend you to focus heavily on what's expected of first prop, so that we can finaly do away with these stupid conceptual debates, and get down to the proper business of proposing and defending concrete changes to the status quo. Of course, it's also up to you to choose proppable motions... ;)

[macdoof]

funnily enough the major change is on making people aware of Role on the table, especially first prop (challenge status quo and policy). But aside from that no one has changed it for years and I would rather it was closer to BP style, that way it should lead into Senior's debating, and therefore the competition fulfils its remit of preparing young people for debating. You are right about the motions, but I plan to run them past John and Kizzy first to ensure they are all debatable, although they all should be. And no open motions, ever, ever ever, they are wank (As he prepares to go to an Open competition, oops). But its all good, hope all is well in the frozen north.

[lordrosemount]

I've always thought that the biggst problems with the Courier style of debating was the middle teams. The style is BP, except for them, but the problem with them isn't primarily that their presence is incompatible with BP (though this doesn't help because it gets the kids doing something they'll never have to do again), but that their role is too indefinite, and they set the other roles out of whack. You can't have an extension at second-to-last prop, for instance, if there have already been two speakers between them and first prop, and anyway how are the middle teams supposed to prepare for a combination of rebuttal and new material when for all they know everything they research might have come up already

[vasovagalvegan]

any chance you could email them to me? I can't find anything on t'courier...and you know me, the queen of nosiness...if you write anythin incriminating about me I WILL SUE! :P