Oxford blues (another debate lost)
Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 18:51 We lost last night's debate (see previous post) but only by two votes with one abstention.
Given the name of the society, Tainted Goods, I feared a rout. Instead I was told, "Everyone thought your arguments were compelling."
Not compelling enough to win, I hear you cry, but I've experienced worse results in student debates.
Oddly enough I think it helped that out of six speakers I was the only one who was not a 'competitive debater'.
They're a strange breed. Think University Challenge but more manic. It's not enough to know your stuff. For some it's also a performance.
Competitive debaters will propose or oppose almost any motion regardless of their own opinion which can be disconcerting if you're on the receiving end.
Many years ago I lost a debate at the English Speaking Union in London. I was partnered by the late Lord Harris who was chairman of Forest and an experienced public speaker.
Our opponents were a team of young world champion debaters. They were brilliant and we were thrashed. The motion in favour of smoking bans was passed by a large majority.
Afterwards, in the bar, they added insult to injury by revealing they were both smokers and were strongly against the measure!
Sometimes however competitive debaters can be a little bit too clever and the issue gets lost amid the florid language and theatrical delivery.
Last night one of my team gave a fast and often funny speech but for the most part I've no idea what he was talking about. I don't think the audience did either.
In contrast our opponents stuck to a well-argued brief that was perhaps a little too earnest.
Predictably they focussed on the behaviour of the tobacco industry half a century ago. Individuals who work for tobacco companies were dismissed as "cynical" and it was implied that tobacco companies can do whatever they want when they are in fact one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world.
No matter. I enjoyed my evening in Oxford. Unlike ASH (who chose not to take part) Forest doesn't run from public debate.
In fact this was the second time in less than a year that ASH has rejected an invitation to take part in a debate with Forest at Oxford. (See Has the tobacco industry been no platformed?)
Says it all, really.
Reader Comments (4)
Future leaders of industry, science, academia and politics Simon.
Gawd help us.
I don’t think that’s too bad a result, Simon, especially when compared to your previous result as described above. The fact that the motion – presumably expected to be as wildly popular with smokers and non-smokers alike and supported by 80% (or is it now 90%, or 100%? – it changes so often) of the public as the smoking ban is – was lost by a mere two votes speaks volumes. OK, so a bunch of university students aren’t exactly a very representative sample of the British public, and Oxford University probably less so than many other universities, but these are youngsters nonetheless who have, presumably, been raised on a diet of steady anti-smoking propaganda from the moment they could comprehend their first words and who have spent a large proportion of their teenage and young adult lives with no memory of the free-and-easy days before the ban when smoking was simply something that some people did and others didn’t and which added to the ambiance of any social occasion in the same way as a few beers or a couple of glasses of wine do.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned it on here before, but there does seem to have been something of a wind-change in the public’s mind since the smoking ban was brought in, and I think that the narrowness of the margin in this debate is indicative of that. Good – long may it continue. Softly, softly, catchee money and all that. And after all, all the most lasting changes to societal attitudes have always happened slowly, gradually and naturally; those forced onto the public, whether subconsciously by drip-fed relentless propaganda, enforced by Act of Parliament or imposed more drastically as a result of outright rebellion or regime change, are doomed to failure the moment those agencies orchestrating the “supervision” of those “attitudes” relax their grip for more than a moment (as they inevitably have to do, eventually) and people are able to make their minds up for themselves again.
I'm with Misty. this is a positive result and it's moving the right way. Keep chipping away and eventually people will begin to see that public health, along with its charity front groups, is a public industry with a stock in trade of scaremongering and these so called "experts" are nothing more than a minority of anti private industry political activists.
Yes, given that you were up against a competitive debating team, I think that losing by only two votes is very encouraging.