Scotland bid for 2011

Irene McGrath from Scotland writes;

Dear All

As promised, here at last is our revised bid document. It was sent to the Executive at the weekend and will require to be voted on fairly soon as the university residence is pressing us to pay a deposit.

We have been able to change the dates to 16th - 26th August 2011 and hope that these will find favour with everyone. The changes are to be noted on the front cover, on p19 and on p24. We have also deleted the now unnecessary reference to Eid on p18 and remain conscious that the tournament will take place during Ramadan.

There is one other change which we require to bring to everyone's attention. Diana Gotts has decided for personal reasons to step down as Chief Adjudicator. We are very pleased to be able to announce that she has been replaced by co-CAs Beth James and Andrew Marshall. You will find reference to this on p15.

I'm afraid you will just have to imagine the tartan ribbon this time, and me doing my best to hand these out individually at breakfast! You will no doubt be advised of the voting procedure in due course and in the meantime I hope you will have time to read this through.

Best wishes to everyone.


Irene


Note: A postal ballot will be emailed to all members about this on or about 13 April 2009 with a short time for the return of voting papers, firstly because it would have been done immediately at an AGM, secondly because all nations have had the bid document for some time and the only changes are to the dates and the Chief Adjudicators and thirdly because Scotland has to pay the deposit to secure venues on or by 20 April 2009. Watch this space - and your inboxes. Claire

Invitation to join working groups

Greetings everyone.

As you know, the Executive members of WSDC Ltd facilitate working groups in areas the WSDC Council has deemed important and the work in those groups is done through e-discussion lists.

The Executive therefore invites interested members of the WSDC community to join one or more of these lists and bring to the group or groups your experience and enthusiasm so that you can firstly help WSDC progress and secondly, have some good recommendations and proposals for the Council Meeting in Doha in early 2010.

Some of you may already belong to a working group. If so, there is no need to resubscribe. Some of you may soon receive an invitation via netpals or because you were your nation's voting delegate in Athens. So I'm sorry if you end up receiving the invitation to join a working group many times but at least you will have received it!

Before you (hopefully) say yes, here are a few pieces of information for you.

The e-discussion working group lists are run through a website called "topica" ( http://lists.topica.com/) and joining the list involves a process of applying to join plus being approved to join so that only people from the WSDC debating community end up being part of the lists, not some random spammer or flamer.

You will need to be someone who is not at secondary school (or younger!) or is not in a national schools debating team for 2010. You will probably find the working groups most helpful if you are someone eligible under the rules to judge or coach at WSDC . You will also need to subscribe. Do so simply by sending an email to the subscribing address below of the group(s) you want to join.

You will then receive an email from topica asking you to confirm your subscription. Just follow the instructions and click the link. You're almost there!

You will then receive another email saying your request has been sent to the list owner (none other than WSDC's renowned sage and IT icon Trevor Sather) for approval.

He'll review your request (to make sure you aren't some random spammer or flamer!) and you'll soon receive the email saying "Welcome to WSDC x group (ie whatever group you've joined.)" This means that you've finally been admitted to the engine room of World Schools Debating and your life will never be the same again!!!!!!

You can then send a post to the group saying who you are and where you are from and start receiving hundreds of posts from hundreds of debaters all over the world at hundreds of hours.

So are you up for the challenge? Say yes and subscribe to one or more of the following working groups:

**Adjudication Working Group (chairs: Hayah Eichler, Dick Wafer).
To subscribe to this group, click here or mail to
wsdc_adjudication-subscribe@topica.com


**Draw Working Group (chairs: Geetha Creffield, Karin Palo).
To subscribe to this group, click here or mail to
wsdc_admin-subscribe@topica.com


**Hosting Working Group (co-chairs: Beth James, Irene McGrath).
To subscribe to this group, click here or mail to
wsdc_hosting-subscribe@topica.com


**Language and New Countries Working Group (co-chairs: Sherria Ayuandini, Taimur Bandey).
To subscribe to this group, click here or mail to
wsdc_lang-subscribe@topica.com

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, just email me here

Have fun joining and working with our WSDC groups.


Kind regards,

Claire Ryan

Chairperson,

Executive Committee, WSDC Ltd

Administration and other boring matters......

Executive Committee 2009-2010
Claire Ryan (New Zealand) chairperson
Beth James (Wales) vice chairperson
Geetha Creffield (Singapore) secretary

6 committee members;
Sherria Ayuandini (Indonesia)
Taimur Bandey (Pakistan)
Hayah Eichler (Israel)
Irene McGrath (Scotland)
Karin Palo (Estonia)
Dick Wafer (Ireland)

The following working groups are led by committee members:
Adjudication - Hayah Eichler, Dick Wafer
Draw - Geetha Creffield, Karin Palo.
Hosting - Beth James, Irene McGrath
New Countries - Sherria Ayuandini, Taimur Bandey


Motions Committee
Sherria Ayuandini (Indonesia)
Taimur Bandey (Pakistan)
Russell Courts (Greece)
Chris Erskine (Australia)
Jim McElroy (Ireland)
Two more to be named by Qatar.

Complaints Committee
Roger Hatridge (Republic Korea)
Beth James (Wales)
Two more to be named by Qatar
and other members to be co-opted.



BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WSDC LTD
Andrea Coomber (chair)
Peejay Garcia
Andrew Goodman
Jamnes Probert
Yuri Romanenkov
Claire Ryan
Jimmy Soriano
Asher Weill

Speaker and team ranks

HERE they are at last, everyone....
the final team positions
breaking team ranks,
the top 50 individual speakers,
ESL team positions
top 20 ESL individual speakers
EFL team positions
top 20 EFL individual speakers.

Click here to see them.

The attached rankings are correct as of 5 April 2009, but differ slightly from those previously released after receipt of some further minor corrections from coaches and team managers.

Thanks to James Probert and his adjudication team and congratulations to all of the speakers.

EFL best speaker

DO HYEONG KWON from the Republic of Korea.

ESL best speaker

JANICE YOON from the Republic of Korea!

Top ESL team 2009

Reclaiming their 2008 title, TEAM GREECE!

Top EFL team 2009

THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA!

Dan the man

The top 10 speakers for WSDC 2009 are (hopefully accurate, as I hastily scribbled the names):

10. Melanie Pope (England)
9. Lee Jia Wei (Singapore)
8. Iqbal Kassam (Canada)
7. Ben Woolgar (England)
6. Jack Gamble (England)
5. Anish Hazra (Singapore)
4. Teoh Ren Jie (Singapore)
3. Christopher Bissett (Australia)
2. Maria English (New Zealand)
1. DANIEL KALISKI (South Africa)
(seen here just after receiving his award to a standing ovation)

Top 50 speaker tab, team tab and EFL/ESL awards coming soon...

And the winner is.........

NEW ZEALAND!!! 6-1

Whaia e koe ki te iti kahurangi; ki te tuohu koe, me maunga tetei
(Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.)

The final count down

Grand final resolution: THB that all illegal immigrants should receive amnesty.

New Zealand is proposing, England is opposing.

The debate begins in about 10 hours' time......

News just to hand.....

No, I haven't found my purse BUT here's some even BETTER news. We have our finalists.

The semi-final topic this afternoon was "THBT dictatorships should not receive international aid". England proposed against Greece. New Zealand proposed against Singapore. England won 4-1 and New Zealand won 3-2.

Ah yes, these two teams!! May the best one win. I have a little whakatauki (proverb) for each member of both teams:
toko reo, toku ohooho (my words, my awakening.)

Thank you for enlivening us with your words. May you realise always the good and the transformation you can achieve with them.

I look forward to the final and will bring everyone the result as always.

C

Close encounters of the word kind

A future Kiwi debater supporting the team in Athens.

Resolution: THW lower the voting age.

The teams are listed below, proposition first then opposition, with the number of judges obtained. From all accounts, the debaters were close encounters and hard fought. I witnessed the best debate I'd seen all tournament between Pakistan and England, a joust full of sophistication, wit and rhetoric and the best of debating.

Pakistan 1 v England 4
Australia 2 v Singapore 3
New Zealand 4 v Canada 1
Greece 4 v Scotland 1.

So England meets Greece in a semi final for the second consecutive year and New Zealand meets Singapore.

I'd like to watch but it appears that some %$#@ has stolen my purse and being without cash and credit cards in a foreign country is a nuisance to put it mildly so instead of enjoying the semi-finals I'll be trying to do the contact-NZ-at-midnight-and-cancel-the-cards thing. However, the semi-finals will be much more fun than my woes so I will bring you the results once I know them. And anyway, at least I've seen some outstanding debating.

Delphi verdicts....

Hi folks. Sorry about the delay in getting the results of the octo-finals to you. I wanted to blog from Delphi after the debates because the Wi Fi access there is clean and consistent. However, I was told I had to get on the bus imediately as the debate I watched (NZ v Wales) was the last debate to finish and we were late. As I waited on the bus for close to 12 minutes while various stragglers from the apparently earlier finishing debates climbed aboatrd the buses, I speculated as to how many blogs I could have posted in that time.

There was then the 3 hour bus trip back to Athens (including dinner and another stop) and after that, a 2.5 hour wait for internet connectivity here at the hotel. And it's just come free now.

So, results..


Philippines 1 v England 2
Australia 3 v Netherlands 0
New Zealand 3 v Wales 0
South Africa 0 v Scotland 3
Peru 0 v Greece 3
Canada 2 v Ireland 1
Slovenia 0 v Singapore 3
Korea Republic 1 v Pakistan 2

No oracle, just a few words, from Delphi

7 buses have taken over 300 people from Hotel Stanley, through the bustling Athens traffic, along cobbled streets in little villages high in the hills, past snow laden mountains, all the way to the world's navel, Delphi!

The octo-final resolution is:
This house would require people to work in return for welfare payments.

The teams, prop first, opp second are:

Philippines v England
Australia v Netherlands
New Zealand v Wales
South Africa v Scotland
Peru v Greece
Canada v Ireland
Slovenia v Singapore
Korea Republic v Pakistan