Lancaster, this weekend, was fun - though with the MDU dominating the judging panel, any issues of judge clashes had to simply be ignored! Apparently, a couple of universities were disgruntled that they were being judged by Manchester judges so often. Had they complained directly to me, I would have explained in a non-sweet manner that if they have a problem with judging, the solution is to fix it next year and bring their own judges!
The motions were:
R1: THW issue indeterminate sentences to repeat offenders of petty crime.
R2: (The paraphrased version), THW send fat kids to fat camp
R3: THBT the West should withdraw all military funding to Pakistan unless Pakistan holds free, fair and constitutional elections
R4: (Analysis debate) THBT Britain's former colonies in Africa would be better off today had they remained under British rule.
Final: THBT all imports into the EU should be fair trade (TM).
There were info slides for rounds 1, 3 and 4.
Manchester teams did well, overall. Unfortunately, MDU teams didn't manage to break, but one team missed out only on speaker points and at least three others were in break rooms.
*Gray Matters*
1 hour ago
2 comments:
It's odd that 'fair trade' doesn't crop up more often in debating. I remember about last year the economuist did a good feature on it, had some good arguments as to its counter-productiveness. Isn't there some socialist rule within it that all african farms that produce FT goods must be coopratives?
PS: Never knew this blog existed before today. Al M
I think the co-op rule used to be there but I believe there are now exceptions for big businesses who are working as fair trade.
I think the article you are referring to is the "Starbucks v Oxfam" article
(http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_RTNJPRS)
I do seem to remember a bigger review though, I'll look it up.
Regarding not knowing about the blog, it is obviously fairly recent and still somewhat experimental. Do e-mail me if you have suggestions for topics. Many people have suggested economics so that will be coming when I have a load of work that I need to avoid....
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