Thank You

Blogging worlds has been great fun. I want to say thank you to UBC's OrgComm for taking it in the spirit in which it has been intended, especially those who accidentally dropped a copy of the draw on the floor - you know who you are, and you're a gentleman. I want to thank anyone who bothered to read it and to comment in.

I especially want to thank the various people I had a chance to talk to over the debating days in an effort to get a comprehensive set of results for the higher echelons of the tab - everyone, from every country and University I spoke to was really nice, and having the excuse to come over and say hi was great!

Finally, I want to thank my girlfriend Doireann for her patience with me - she came over to Vancouver thinking she'd be an adjudciation widow and she ended up a blog-widow instead - Thank you!

Worlds Results

World Champions: Sydney G – Julia & Anna

Top Ten Speakers at Worlds:
1) Jess Prince
2) Sam Block
3) Josh Bone
4) Patrick Meaher
5) Will Jones & Adam Bott
7) Adam Chilton
8) David Denton
9) Alex Campbell
10) Jack Wright & Christopher Clerk

ESL Champion: IIU Malyasia A
ESL Top Speakers (The spelling is all over the shop!):
1) Said Hassan
2) Alkheim ????
3) Parat Sayta
4) Tamsin Elias
5) V Naranjan

EFLChampions : Singha A
EFL Top speaker: Masako Suzuki

Masters Champions: Quebec – Ali Dewji & Mathew Sinclair

Public Speaking: Michael Eielson I(s this spelt correctly)?

Best Comedy: Willard Foxton

Clarification and Apology

It appears my post about Thai Night has caused some degree of upset to Kevin Massie. I understand that that post could be taken to mean that Kevin gave legal advice at a point in his legal career when he was not entitled to do so and when doing so could be considered a breach of a number of guidelines and standards. It was not my intention to suggest that this was the case.

I want to apologise to Kevin for whatever upset the post has caused him - Kevin and I have always had a good relationship, that has included a good degree of verbal sparring and barbs, but I have never sought to cause him upset and I hope that he believes and accepts that.

The post was intended to have some humour value - the humour is gone so the post is too.

ESL Final

The team advancing to the World ESL Final are:

IIU Malaysia A
SSE A
National Law School of India A
Hebrew B

Semi-final announcement postponed

The announcement of the cut to Semi-Finals and ESL Final has been delayed. It was scheduled to take place before the Masters Final, the the decision was tekn to postpone the announcement because one team was not present.

It seems ridiculous that all those teams who turned up on time should be made to suffer because one team didn't bother turning up. If you give a time to announce something and a team isn't present then surely it should just "suck to be you" for them, especially when the semi-finals themselves aren't scheduled to take place until tomorrow morning.

Almost everyone is extremely frustrated with the decision - noone who deserved to benefit from it does, and a whole load of people are pretty angry.

Cork to Host Worlds 2009

The UCC Philosophical and Law Societies will host the 29th World Universities Debating Championships. A close vote saw the Cork bid win out over a strong challenge from Botswana. Derek Lande will be the CA for Cork Worlds and Art Ward will be the convenor.

Logan was to CA the Botswana bid, but he was announced well after the start of UBC worlds, and the lack of clarity about the adjudication team made it difficult for them to convince many A-status nations to vote for them.

Hopefully Botswana will consider bidding again next year, as many aspects of their plans looked spot on.

For now though, congratulations to Derek, Art, and Cork.

Irish Judges Breaking

Those breaking as adjudicators from Ireland:

Margeurite Carter
Diarmuid Early
Sharon Dillon-Lyons
Dave Kenny
Derek Lande
Simon Larragy
Ciarán Lawlor

Worlds' Council News: AU Worlds Confirmed

Assumption University, Thailand, have been confirmed as the hosts for 2007/2008 without opposition. They gave a hugely impressive presentation, leaving everyone pretty enthusiastic and already looking forward to spending next year's New Year in a holiday resort.

Congratulations.

The Harvey-Smith Family

During Debate Day 1 one delegate was heard to comment on "how close" Neil and Jess were, and "how well they get along". They followed that up by asking "how much older is Neil?" I wasn't sure but the next comment was more troubling: "They're like you and Julia"

Now Julia is my younger sister - she has debated for her school a few times, and won one of the Irish School's Mace competitions. Obviously, I get a lot of stick from everyone on the Irish circuit - "how do you feel about your sister being taller than you?"; "how do you feel about your sister being a better debater than you?"; etc - but I've never been accused of marrying her!

I've heard about people who have been together a long time, starting to look alike (see above - maybe this is what the Harvey-Smith's will look like in a few years) but I just don't see the resemblance between Neil and Jess.

Of course it also begs the question: what sort of relationship does that delegate have with their sisters?

ESL Break

1) Hebrew B
2) Bonn A
3) IIU A
4) MSIU A
5) Bonaparte A
6) SSE A
7) Tilburg A
8) Sains Malay A

The Main Break

1) Oxford D 23
2) Cambridge B 22
3) Oxford E 22
4) Sydney A 21
5) Sydney E 21
6)McGill A 21
7)Sydney D 20
8) Sydney B 20
9) L&H A 20
10) Cambridge C 20
11) Cambridge A 20 (after a Coin toss)
12) Oxford C 20
13) UCC Phil A 20
14) Yale B 19
15) Stanford A 19
16) Oxford B 19
17)Oxford A 19
18) Durham A 19
19) Queensland A 19
20)Sydney G 19
21)SMU B 19
22)Alaska A 19
23) Birmingham A 19
24) Durham B 19
25)Queensland B 18
26) Helsinkis A 18
27) Melbourne A 18
28)Manchester A 18
29)Middle Temple 18
30)KCL A 18
31)George Washington A 18
32)St. Andrews A 18

Backtabbing

OK, so without the top third of the draw for Round 8, it's virtually impossible for me to extrapoltae meaningful results for Round 7. Obviously, it's possible to deduce somethings from the data I have, but it's not really worth posting. For example, I can tell you with certainty that L&H A did not take a last, but that's really not particularly useful information.

Sorry, to thos who were hoping.

I'll announce the break as soon as possible after it's release - but I have a girlfriend (seriously!) and it is New Year's Eve.

Debate Day 3 Plan

Obviously today, the rounds are closed so I won't have as much imnformation to put out for you guys. I'll continue to post the motions as they are announced and I'll backtab the rersults as best I can. The very clever Dave Kenny from Trinity is going to help out with this.

Obviously, all the usual health warnings apply to the results we come up with, but I won't post them unless I'm pretty sure they're good.

I won't have any information on results until after the draw for Round 8 though, so bear with us!

Roll on round 7....

Candy Canes, Cookies, and Happiness

So apparently some girl and guy from the OrgComm spent hours baking bags and bags of delicious biscuits for like everyone at worlds.

These people are heroes! If anyone knows who is responsible can they post in their names so they get the credit they deserve.

Mmmmmm, cooookieees....

Well done to the tab room...

We're about to announce almost on time for round 6 - given they're using Singapore Tab, which doesn't facillitate Speed Ballots, this is pretty amazing.

Congrats to those involved - whoever you are, don't let Massie & the DCAs take the credit!

Que sera, sera....

Erik wants to know what I'm doing at worlds - though he doesn't put it quite as accusingly as that!

I'm at worlds to judge. I wanted to be here for Thailand's bid defence as I'm a DCA there next year. That means that when I take the "retirement position" that DCA seems to be, I'll only have spoken at two worlds (Singapore, UCD L&H B, Octos; Malaysia, King's Inns A, Quarters) and convened UCD Worlds 2006.

I did nearly end up speaking this year. After doing Cambridge with Jeremy Kinsella and Cork with Marguerite Carter, I REALLY wanted to speak. Unfortunately, my request didn't make it high enough up the waiting list to make it in. Que sera, sera!

Motion Analysis Day 1 - return of the casefile?

Well I don't think people could really complain about the first motion, it was a standard first principles case - the only criticism you could have is that there is a risk of people debating at cross purposes due to differences in the educational systems around, well, the world. To be fair, that's a problem for the teams and you can't fault the A-team for it.

The other two motions are quite "specific-knowledge"y. It's not unfair to ask people to debate about the UK nuclear detterent though, and to be fair if people are prepping for worlds, they really should know something about South Africa's situation with urban poverty, slums, and inequitable land distribution, maybe a little knowledge about something called apartheid also.

It's probably worth mentioning that these motions aren't exactly new with the UK Trident debate being run at Cork last year and the Land resdistribution case being set by Derek for a round in the Irish Mace - maybe Derek's day of motions is over and done with, and without a WTO case!

That said, people seem to be saying that the motions are more specific than trends in the last few years would indicate. Teams with specific knowledge of either of the later motions would have been at a significant advantage. The consensus is that the four volume casefile may be back.

Canadian Coca-Cola

As some of you may know, I am a self-confessed Coca-Cola addict. I'm currently in recovery, thanks to a strict regime enforced by my wonderful girlfriend Doireann (now a suffering blog widow - anyone who feels her pain, please comment in).

Well my recovery is not being helped by the size of the Canadian portions. A standard 500 ml bottle of coke is actually 591ml in this country. Now you gotta ask, how did they come up with the number 591ml - the best guess is when they changed to the metric system they kept the bottles the same. I can only imgaine the debate in the coke offices that day, bigger, smaller, stay the same. Oh the trials and tribulations of being a high earning coca-cola executive - they really have it tough!

Team Names

I'll edit this post with teams that I can identify speakers on over the next few hours, check back!

If you know the names of any other teams drop me a comment and I'll add them to the list. Here's the first list of names:

Team Speakers
St. Andrew's C Tony Murphy & Jason Vit
UCD Law B Susan Connolly & Ben Barnett
L&H C Stephen Boyle & Ian Boyle Harper
UCD Law C Shane Cranley & Eoin Martin
Cambridge B Sam Block
L&H B Ross McGuire & Gregg O'Neill
St. Andrew's B Rachel & ?
Galway B Nuala & John
L&H A Noel McGrath & Frank Kennedy
UCD Law A Michael Clark & Irwin Gill
Stanford A Michael & Ray
Galway A Lorcan & Ronan
Yale B Josh Bone & Dylan Gadek
TCD Hist B Josephine Curry & Chris Kissane
Oxford D Jones & Drey
UCC Philosoph A Jimmy & Tiernan
Oxford E Jess & Alex
TCD Phil A Ed Gaffney & Ruth Fallor
Cambridge A David Tite & Susie Riddel, I think
TCD Hist A David Boughton & Pciaran Denny
Yale A Dave Denton & Adam Chilton
UCC Law B DannyP & Paul
UCC Law A Danny Gleeson & ??
St. Andrew's A Connie & Doug
Cambridge C Bob & Ranold?
TCD Phil B Andrea Mulligan & John Gallagher
Oxford A Alex Just

Hi to the OrgComm

Just thought I'd give a shout out to the OrgComm - apparently you're the ones reading this blog so thanks.... God this is so sad.