London School of Economics – InterVarsity 2007
As the last few posts of mine have shown I was away in London with the UCC Philosoph for last weekend. All in all a fun, if very expensive weekend. To be honest, some of the things that happened can’t be talked about to protect the drunk and guilty (I have to admit that I fall into both categories)…
However, I can talk about the motions and some of the other bits and pieces. The flight over was grand, which was strange because it was Ryanair – they more than made up for it with the flight back though, where the plane actually was an inch smaller in every proportion… More on that later.
The motions were a bit dodgy – in order (as best I remember – also the wording may have been slightly different but I’m trying to preserve the gist of it) they were:
1)TTH (That this house) would make the British PM directly electable.
2)TTH would allow Taiwan into Nato.
3)TTH would give tax breaks to married couples with children (a motion so boring to judge my Chief Adjudicator and I drank a third of a bottle of wine during it and kept yawning).
4)TTH would make it a crime to smoke and drink while pregnant.
5)TTH would allow British Citizens to sell their citizenship (a motion made more entertaining by the Malaysian girl tearing into the Irish and their stupidity – not realising that the two judges were Irish. Unsurprisingly she lost.
The final three motions I had nothing to do with – I simply just watched. They were TTH would introduce a 28% flat-tax on all income over 9000 pounds. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds – the teams involved were very good.
Theres semi-final – TTH would try people for for crimes against humanity regardless of nationality or country where the crimes were committed. (Universal jurisdiction basically).
Then there was the final. The motion was TTH would leave the European Union. Seeing as it was two Americans in first proposition they knew nothing about British policy towards the EU. So, they made it about France instead. It quickly turned into a farce. The Irish teams sat in a block in the middle of the pub, singing and generally making nuisances of ourselves. This led to much abuse off the English teams. But we more than made up for it!
A few choice quotes:
One of the Americans (I think – my memory gets a bit hazy at this point) – ”anyone feels like waving to me when I’m doing badly please do”! You can imagine the response.
Diarmuid (the Auditor of the UCC Philosoph, and part of the team who won – ”this motion would lead to the EU having 26 member states, and as an Irishman in Britain I see that as a slightly important number!”
Finally – Sam, Diarmuid’s partner for the debate – in relation to a point made ”If everyone has a veto on everything, what the fuck is pooled sovereignty??”. A line that caused much laughter… (I do realise that we are not normal to find such statements funny – don’t judge).
After the final there was drinking and more drinking. The Irish teams – DCU, Trinity and UCC stayed on ’till the closing time of the pub. The British teams were all gone by 12 which was weird. We had nowhere to go because we had to be in Stansted by 6am. So we headed there. To be honest, I was somewhat worse for wear than most. By the time we got to Stansted around 4.30am I had been up since 8am the previous morning. I also had gotten about 8 hours sleep in the previous 49 so… But, I survived the flight, went to bed and eventually recovered.
The University of Limerick IV is this weekend coming…. Should be interesting…
