And now the yang.

Hello adjudicators, chairperson and ladies and gentlemen. Today we are debating the topic of 'Cell phones are a good thing'. I am now affirming the moot. We have defined 'good' as favourable and beneficial.

I would firstly like to rebut the point made that most texts are from people giving bad news. While the first text I got today was, in fact, from someone saying they couldn't play netball tonight, I then got two texts from someone else suggesting an alternative player. That is a ratio of 2:1 in favour of helpful texts to annoying ones.

I like that on cell-phones you can give people nicknames. That's a good thing. For example, Sam is 'Sam the Eagle' and Cassie is 'Cassinova'. I like how Ange has saved Cassie as 'Cassie!' (with an exclamation mark). I do believe at least one person has me saved on their phone as 'Mango'. It makes me laugh to see these nicknames come up on my screen. Sometimes it is good to laugh, especially if your dog has just died.

Also, there are people in this world who are late. I am not one of them, but I have come into contact with such people. For them, the cell-phone is a good means of alerting their rendez-vous-people to their impending tardiness and giving a new ETA. It is a thoughtful and proactive use of the cell-phone. It allows the person sitting by themselves in the cafe, waiting, to animatedly respond to the text by rolling their eyes and mouthing 'He's just running late' to anyone who happens to be looking. This lets them avoid looking like a loner, which is a bad thing.

Cell phones also can have cool ring tones. My phone does not because it is cheap and oldish. It does not have what they call 'polyphonic ringtones'. I did, however, programme in the tune to 'The Gambler' one day when I was bored. It sounds vaguely like Kenny Rogers' version and sometimes cheers me up when I hear it because it is a happy song about winning money.

My third point is that cell-phones have calculators in them. Sometimes this is very useful. It is useful if you need to calculate a phone bill.

That is what I like about cell-phones. They are all good things about them.

Thank you and I hope that I have proved that cell-phones are a good thing.

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The above speech would gain a 7/10 in Year 9 English.

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The funniest thing was did at t-coll was maths-debate, eh Fish.

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I once acciedentally assigned both teams in a debate to the same side of the argument. I made them do the debate anyhow. It was farcical. One of the girls was also losing her voice, so could only manage a highpitched whispery squeeky noise. That is one of only two times that I actually have had uncontrollable laughter as a teacher. I got in trouble for it.

The other time was when a group of students were doing a scene from Macbeth where a messenger comes in. The messenger pre-empted their cue by bursting in three times before they were actually supposed to. I laughed by the third time.

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I coached a Year 9 debating team once. They didn't win a single debate. What I didn't realise as a young first year teacher was that you don't actually just sit back and let the students write their own speeches..... Novice mistake! I think I would have been a great debater if I'd taken it up as a sport. I might just start debating against myself more often. I think I have found an intellectual purpose for my blog!