The Debatable Land

That was the year that was 2007

Most Depressing Political Argument of the Year: Whether the United States should be in the business of torturing people or not.

Opera: Washington National Opera's superb production of Janacek's Jenufa was the operatic highlight of the year for me. Terrificly dark and pitiless and gloomy: just the sort of emotionally knackering experience you want from a night out.

Book of the Year: Well, the 144th edition of Wisden did not disappoint: 1664 pages of cricketing goodness and an annual treat to be cherished. Among other books published this year: John Robb's Brave New War was a disturbing highlight. Brian Doherty's history of the American libertarian movement, Radicals for Capitalism, is too long and gets bogged down in internecine minutiae at times but it's still packed with goodies and is a bracing, necessary reminder that there's more to life than the Elephant and the Donkey. 

Literary Discovery: 2007 was the year I first read anything by Philip K Dick.

Music: my favourite album this year was Tinawiren's Aman Iman: Water is Life. Who knew Tuareg blues could be so damned cool?

Best TV: I only got around to watching series 2 and 3 of The Wire this year. Best. Television. Drama. Ever.

Biggest TV disappointment: Friday Night Lights. The second series was awful. Also: why won't BBC America show the special episodes of The Thick of It?

Theatre: Gregory Burke's Black Watch proved it could travel to the United States and appeal to American audiences as well as British ones. A triumph.

Tedious Policy Madness: America's war on online gambling. Also, the "War on Drugs" continues.

Fraud of the Year: Mitt Romney, obviously.

Ridiculous Journalistic Brouhaha: the idea that Scott Beauchamp's stories demonstrated that The New Republic a) hates America and b) wats to see US troops in Iraq defeated.

Sport:  France 0 Scotland 1 in Paris, courtesy of James McFadden's wonder-strike was amazing. The highlights of the Rugby Word Cup were France's victory over New Zealand in the quarter-finals: a proper, bloody, bruising, old-fashioned scrap and, secondly, Argentina's entirely-deserved success. On the western side of the atlantic, Michigan 38 Notre Dame 0 is a scoreline that never grows old.

Sporting Regrets: I missed Raymond van Barneveld's epic triumph against Phil "The Power" Taylor in the final of the PDC World Darts Championship. Magic darts at their very best, by all accounts. Here's hoping for a rematch on January 1st 2008. Also: the mismanagement of Heart of Midlothian continues as the club hurtles towards disaster. A horror show.

Best film: Technically it came out in 2006, but Pan's Labyrinth was the best movie I saw in 2007. (Still haven't seen No Country for Old Men or There Will be Blood however).

Most Pleasing Political Development: the SNP's triumph in the Scottish parliamentary elections. At last interesting times return north of the border! Also the alternative was perpetual misrule by the intellectually-stagnant Scottish Labour Party and their pygmy pals in the Liberal Democrats.

Other Most Pleasing Political Development: the disaster that is Gordon Browns ministry. For a few weeks it looked as though he would confound my long-held and confident prediction that he'd be a terrible Prime Minister. Happily the sky did not in fact fall and normality returned as Brown limps into the new year stripped of his authority and credibility. Thank god for that.

Biggest Foreign Policy Development: The diminished likelihood of a US attack on Iran.

Oddest political development: Ron Paul, obviously.

Pleasing Election Results (non-Scotland edition): Nicolas Sarkozy wins and John Howard loses.

Most Surprising Realisation: Facebook is kinda cool. And useful!

Privileged Motion No 3, Mr Chairman...

Via Julian Sanchez, here's a documentary I hope reaches DC soon. Just the ticket: a movie about - drum roll please - debating. Like Julian, mind you, I'd rather it focused on proper debating  - by which i mean, naturally, British Parliamentary style - rather than the mad, mad, mad world of American Policy debating which is not, frankly, debating at all. If you don't believe me just watch the movie's trailer which, however unfairly, gives the impression that Policy Debating is an activity for autistic weirdos rather than an elegant - if disputatious - entertainment aimed at, you know, persuading* people of the validity of your case. Instead, the Policy format treats debating as though it were some tortuous never-ending lawsuit rather than a convivial after-dinner activity over port and cigars.

As best I can recall from my own debating days (some of them - well a couple - halcyon!), the American style is alternately baffling and dreary, prizing the ability to spit out facts and arguments as though one were a machine-gun wielding automaton with precious few points on offer for style or wit or the possession of a vaguely plausible manner...

Mind you, the American approach has, I think, infested proper debating too. The days of the amateur are long gone. In the good old days - by which I mean the period up to and including 1997 - a fellow could turn up and rely on little more than whatever he held in his cranium supplemented by a cursory glance at that day's newspaper. If you were really keen you might consult an old copy of The Economist found tucked beneath one of the Conversation Room sofas. Preparation was for people who, frankly, weren't very good at debating...

Changed days my friends. The Americans, aided and abetted by the Australians, spread the word that debating was about knowledge not persuasion. Professionalism arrived and changed everything. Suddenly folk were turning up to tournaments armed with ready made cases covering every damned issue of the day. These were people who prided themselves on knowledge of things called "carbon sinks" or who took a keen interest in obscure developmental and animal rights issues.

Even the ones who weren't from Durham University started carrying briefcases and one had the disconcerting impression that debating had ceased to be a lark and become some ghastly CV-enhancing exercise... The days of Et in Arcadio Ego were left behind long ago**. O tempora, o mores indeed...

*I'm minded, for instance, of an occasion in which a Glasgow University debater flummoxed his opponents by referring to the (admittedly oft-overlooked) Great West African paw-paw dispute that made Togo a mango no-go area. Though I grant that perhaps you needed to be there.

**On the other hand, some things have improved. The keen young chaps and chapesses now charged with the sacred task maintaining the immortal flame of the Dublin University Philosophical Society do a vastly, almost-immeasurably more impressive job of stewarding the Phil than we crusty fogies ever did back in the day. More power to their collective elbow. 

Would this be illegal in the USA?

Englishman wins $50,000 from bookmaker for living to 100. Placed $200 bet at 250/1 when he was 90 that he's live another decade. Attributes old age to "porridge for breakfast" and "remembering to keep breathing". Daily chess games may have helped too. Bookies now reducing odds for this kid of wager.

In which a tentative first step is taken...

People have told me I need to have a blog. Consider this a beginning, then. A minor one, to be sure. But acorns and oaks and all that.