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Points of information are, if you ask
me, the thing that makes the British parliamentary debate
interesting.
But let me start at the start.
A point of information (POI) is a
question or a statement, that is raised while a speaker of the
opposing team is speaking. You are allowed to raise a POI at any time
in the speech, but not during the protected time. Protected are the
first and the last minute of the speech. You will hear a bang on the
table (or a similar sound) after the first minute of a speech and
before the last minute of the speech. Now its the time to raise your
POI.
So you stand up and say “Point of
information” or “On this point”. This is almost everything that
you are allowed to say, when raising a POI (stating what your point
is going to be about is not allowed and you will get penalised for a
point like “On the poit of China”). Now you wait. The speaker has
to decide if she is taking your point or not. If yes, the speaker is
going to allow you to state your point. If not, she is going to say
“no”, “no thanks” or similar, and you will see that some
speakers will just sit you down with a hand motion. If you got an OK,
now you have 15 seconds, not more, to raise one point. So think about
what you are going to say. And with that I mean that you have to know
what exactly you are going to say even before you stand up. If you
dont, it is very possible that you will mess it up. The point is
going to be too long or you will not be clear. When I say that you
are allowed to make one point, I mean one point, that means that you
are not allowed to speak about two problems that they have, even if
you believe that they are both equal important.
When to raise a point? Well there are
different tactics. But if you would like to make your point, than you
need to stand up, when the speaker makes a break. That means, before
he/she is going to start to speak about a new argument, or a new
issue. Otherwise you are likely not to get the point. But you also
need to stand up if the speaker is in the middle of something, but
you would like to make something obvious to the judges. That means,
that if the speaker is saying something really weird, you stand up
immediately, even if you know that she is not going to take the
point. You will make it obvious to the judges that you know that the
point that the speaker made, is not a valid one. Some speakers stand
up at the last 10-5 seconds because they know that they are not going
to be taken, but they have offered one more point. Most judges are
going to record how many points you are going to offer.
You should offer at least 5 points in
every speech of the opposing side, so that the judges see, that you
are involved in the debate even if you are not speaking. This is even
more important if you are one of the first speakers, because there
will be almost an hour of the debate, but you will not speak any
more. But don't make too many points. That means that you should not
be standing up and sitting down all the time, because you are going
to disturb the speaker and the judges can penalise you for that.
I can also advise you, to try to make a
point about the argument, that you are going to make. That means if
you are the first speaker of the second government, you should make a
POI about the argument that is going to be your extension, so that
the argument gets into the debate early, and that way you can make it
more important.
A good idea is, that you have a paper
on the table on witch you write down the points that you would like
to make and with that you share your points with your debate partner,
and with that your debate partner is going to get an idea about what
you think and about what things you are going to use in your speech.
At the end, let me say this. Use your
points wisely. Be funny but on the point. Short but kill their
argument with the point.
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