exnihilo wrote: Deary me, you are a pompous one, aren't you?
I'm sorry. I'm new round here, and was only trying to blend in. (I'm happy to accept Best Supporting Windbag, in deference to more bombastic fellow Sinners. Hey, do you think I could get Best Newcomer?) Most of the verbal flatulence is on your side of the argument and I thought I'd even it up just for the look of the thing. Bizarre Atheist, Andrew, Georgina: bah. They're too restrained, as far as I'm concerned. The three of them had better start living up to the title of Limp-Wristed Bleeding-Heart Fascist Liberal.
I am resigned to the fact that I sound like a bad barrister crossed with a drunken and doltish version of Professor Trefusis. Oh well. It's probably a subconscious (and solipsistic) attempt to amuse myself.
If you don't mind, I'll stay in character. exnihilo wrote:I know you delight in arguing against a point that wasn't made.
There is no greater pleasure in life.
theaveragestudent wrote:Andrew Mackenzie, you are an idiot...Georgina Rannard, likewise...
This is puerile and tiresome, it doesn't do much for your credibility etc etc this has been covered. I thought I should add, though, that if I had been attacked in this way, I doubt I would have shown the patience of Andrew and Georgina. They deserve medals for services to sanity. Andrew's relentless posting has been something to watch. I'd have given up.
Guest wrote: I find quite a bit of ironic hypocrisy in the way Georgina Rannard has been acting and behaving. She has come out in huge support of our Principal, however, during the Rectorial Drag...
This is a niche argument, isn't it? I know it came up a while back, but it's fascinating to me. As Rector's Assessor, Georgina was not acting as an elected official but as a student assistant to the Rector: it doesn't matter what her views are or were. You don't see Republican congressional aides lying down in front of President Obama's motorcade. It would have been a bit presumptuous, and probably puzzling to all concerned, if she had made some sort of quixotic protest. Anyway, I don't detect any hypocrisy in her position: it wasn't like she and the Rector were sporting "I heart the KKC" badges at the time, and Mr Dunion wasn't asking her to orchestrate a pep rally for the Club.
Let's delve into the world of "political intrigue and high strategy." (Wooooo.) Even if we were to suppose that Georgina wanted to make a protest, it's entirely possible that she decided throwing herself off the carriage wasn't the most constructive way to do it. Perhaps she thought, "hmmm, I'll lobby for this in the appropriate way, see if anything happens, and then participate in subsequent discussions justifying the Principal's decision if it does."
Hold on a minute...(looks around) that's eerily plausible, isn't it? Perhaps some people pick their battles carefully.
(Pauses for dramatic sip of water.)
Even if you want to discard all of the above, it's worth observing that people can, you know, change their minds. Let's all just take a minute to absorb that.
Enjoy that cognitive interlude? Brilliant. I did. George Reid, a former member of the Kate Kennedy Club, has publicly backed the Principal's decision. http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/educati ... 5163078.jp This isn't hypocrisy, is it? Arriving late at the party is better than not showing up at all, and sometimes converts make the best arguments. So, even if Georgina had been the World's Biggest Fan of the Kate Kennedy Club, she would still be allowed to express a creditable, and even worthwhile view. In fact, I imagine we'd be particularly interested to hear it.
The defence rests, m'lud.
exnihilo wrote:The KK, like it or not, has stability and resources which make organising two balls annually a great deal easier for them than for other societies. Sure, some other group can try to take over, or the SA could, but inevitably it'll cough itself out of existence before too many years. If it's another group, it's unusual for them to survive much beyond the tenure of the people who started them, and if they do they change radically.
What, in terms of organisational finesse, does the KKC have that other groups don't? Why is their "institutional memory" so much better? I don't think, for example, that the Charities campaign would achieve all that it does without a bit of Napoleonesque drive and planning. The same goes for the Lumsden Club, FS:0x and "Don't Walk." Anyway, there's a ball every other week in St Andrews: to arrange one doesn't require the organiser to have been steeped in the dark lore for many aeons, nor do they have to consult books in forbidden languages, or paint pentacles to summon the gods of beneficence. The idea that the Principal has staggered blindly down the alley of unreason, ignorant of the consequences of her decision, unaware of the idiosyncratic planning splendour of the KKC, is a bit hard to accept.
I'm not arguing that the Kate Kennedy Club should pack it all in, or that what they do is irrelevant or in any way easy. I imagine it's quite a challenge in fact, and they deserve a hell of a lot of praise for what they've achieved. My problem is with your argument that somehow, their superior expertise and excellence in planning and execution could NEVER be mirrored or matched by anyone else just because, well, "it's inevitable." Elaborate, if you will.
Hennessy wrote:Has anyone else been invited to this "debate" on the subject? Talk about jumping on the bandwagon. I was wrong to talk about just the principal using this controversy as the first establishing broadside against the KK as a name-maker. A whole set of newly ensconced student representatives have also seen fit to throw their hats into the ring, thereby making this an issue by which they can profit unduly, through their wholesale lack of dignity and reason.
'Ensconced' is a beautiful word. I had to get up from my seat and walk around savouring it. The register and style of this post is generally spectacular; when set against the kind of guff from other complainers it really stands out. I could imagine these words spoken by Churchill, one hand on the despatch box, another on his his braces, hectoring in the House of Commons. It's also evocative of Victorian oratory: the power and eloquence is reminiscent of a particularly winsome one-liner from Disraeli, who described Gladstone as
"a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity"
...which was, I think we can all agree, a bit rich coming from him. Gratias tibi ago, Hennessy!
I am puzzled as to why the word 'debate' was escorted by two burly-looking quotation marks, but oh well. So far as I remember there are two sides to every debate...it's pretty crappy when there's only one argument to be made, after all. Like right now: we're having fun, aren't we?
It isn't necessarily opportunistic to be debating current events. (Perhaps you'd have preferred majestic irrelevance.)
Do you reserve the same scorn for Question Time, when it picks up contemporary controversy? "Those BBC b*stards, getting people round a table talking about things," eh? The principle is the same, even if the scale is not.
In any case, formal, face-to-face public debates often work better than a symphony of embittered postings on an inhospitable and forsaken corner of the Internet.
Now, where's Paul? (And RedCelt, for that matter?)
