Debating in a sad wasteland: This year the Cardiff IV again attracted over 100 debaters mainly from Great Britain, but also from the Netherlands (Utrecht, Erasmus) and Vienna to the Welsh capital. 30 teams (plus two swings) if counted correctly competed in four rounds with seven-minute speeches over the title of winning team, best speaker and best ESL speaker. Just like last year, the Cardiff Debating Society offered quite an experience, though less teams registered and the competition was one round shorter.

Cardiff itself does not have a lot to offer. Girls are wearing barely nothing on the streets despite cold weather, large amounts of alcohol are being consumed everywhere even before noon, good food is impossible to find after 9pm and the town’s large monotonous residential areas resemble a sad wasteland.

Large amounts of alcohol are also (though in a good way) a characteristic of the socials at the IV. The Friday night party started in a pub near the centre with the allocation of crash and getting together with old and new friends. The pub however was hard to find, being advertised only in Welsh (Tair Pluen) but known only by its English name, Three Feathers. The Cardiff IV is also famous for its notorious five pint debate, in which every contestant has to drink five pints of beer (or equivalent in spirits) before the debate is over. The result is quite a humorous stand up between offensive jokes and insider references.

Debates started on Saturday at 9, but it was quite quickly obvious that there was no way the tight schedule could have been maintained, another characteristic of British debate tournaments. Speaking time however was maintained at seven minutes, though cut in the final to five minutes. It still remains a mystery why it was so important to get out of the venue of the final 16 minutes earlier or later. The final however did not suffer too much from the short speeches, although the engagement in terms of points of information was far below average.

Quite engaging however was the whip speech by Sheraz Qureshi for the winning closing government, taking his shirt off under both applause and shock in a tribute to David Jones, who did the full Monty at last year’s five pint debate.

The IV attracted a great number of good adjudicators, providing us with four very fairly judged rounds. Though the motions were in part quite tough and appeared heavy on either of the sides most debates turned out to be balanced and the good set of motions managed to force even more experienced debaters to think into new dimensions, sparing us all long generic speeches on arguments we’ve heard a million times. Apparently the adjudicators also had their fun, with tabmaster Joe pre-assinging ranks and speaker points before the debates. They were matched by prefilled feedback forms on judges from which all luckily recovered quickly.

The Saturday night social was this year joint with a huge party of the Cardiff Union, which was in some sort of main election for the student body. Why all the candidates dressed as furry animals will remain a mystery for quite a time. However, we got kicked out of the venue at 2am sharp by suddenly turning the lights on and the music off, resembling a spontaneous evacuation that led to turbulence and chaos among the storming out naked and heavily drunk Welsh crowd. But as already mentioned that is usual business in Cardiff.

British IVs only offer crash, which usually requires sleeping bags which cheap Ryanair customers cannot bring. Besides building up a reputation for their society, British debating societies also use their IVs to fund their societies. External sponsors are rare and often scared away by naked (and winning) contestants in the non public finals that are watched by a crowd of drinking debaters. The reg fee of 40 British Pounds per team seems quite heavy for continental standards, especially since it only covers crash with the members and one dinner (which was extremely good and plentyful Indian food (three refills fuck yeah!). However, Cardiff was also able to give out plenty of free alcohol at the after party at a private house.

Also this writer is happy to report that international teams were exempt from the reg fee. Compared with what for example Belgrade has to offer as a city and what the society offered for a similar reg fee three weeks ago the question stands in the room why so many continental teams make the long journey to Great Britian almost every weekend. It must be that extreme dedication to debate, that hunger for new, progressive and innovative motions, great judges and fun people that is so attracting. In addition it needs to be said that since on the islands debating is something so fundamental for the British students, it is to be done every weekend rather than just once a month. And who needs travelling, right?

All motions:

• Round 1:  This house believes that inheritance should be taxed at 100%.
• Round 2: This house would allow individuals to sell their vote on the market.
• Round 3: This house believes that a technocratic state, not a democratic state, produces the best society.
• Round 4: This house believes that in a situation where the UK is able to intervene in order to prevent human rights abuses in only some of multiple cases its soldiers should vote to decide which.
• Final: This house would not participate in an industry that profits the mental problems of celebrities.

In the final of the Cardiff IV 2011 met the following teams: Utrecht (Opening Government, Adriaan Andringa and Arielle Dundas), Warwick (Opening Opposition, Andrew Forst and Gareth Williams), ULU (Closing Government, Sheraz Qureshi and Anser Aftab) from the University of London and Erasmus (Closing Opposition, Lars Duursma and Daniel Springer) from Rotterdam. Sheraz and Anser won. Best speaker of the tab was Anser, the Dutch Daniel was top of the ESL tab.

Leonhard Weese / apf