Youth Speaks 2014

The heats for Exeter are now complete for the Juniors, Intermediate and Sen-iors, and the Exeter Finals will very soon be upon us.

Many of us have enjoyed two excellent evenings where young people have demonstrated their concerns and have spoken with passion, interest and good humour.

Alphington A, and Exeter Prep got through the heat for the Juniors. Holly Hoban from Alphington is an eleven year old who surely has a remarkable future. It is the second time she has appeared in this competition and she spoke of the Great War, and what it means for her generation, with extraordinary confi-dence, and has an audience hanging on every word. Bertie Hawkins of Exeter Prep tried to persuade his audience that the age for obtaining a driving license should be raised to eighteen. A perfectly good argument even if most Rotarians would prefer it raised to sixty!

St Lukes 2 and Isca 1 got through for the Intermediate. Leila Fleming, from Isca, at last brought some humour to the evening with her talk entitled ‘Brooklyn or Paris’ and Wiktoria Jaswinska from St Lukes made some of us feel both guilty and self conscious with her talk ‘Why are we getting fat?’

For the Seniors, Jonny House from Axe Vale, also brought real humour to the proceedings with his talk about society’s obsession with celebrity. His own love of an England Fly Half called Wilkinson made him change his name from Jona-thon. Joseph Mc Shane from Exeter College spoke with great authority on ‘Should welfare benefits be capped?’. Joseph will surely be recruited very short-ly by IDS and the DWP.

And so to the Exeter Finals . All six teams will appear again on March 4th at St Lukes to see who progresses to the District Final