Tom, Dick and Harry

As president of Napier Toastmasters, Craig kicked off the meeting in style, introducing the club to our guests this evening. Our guests were Ben, Jan, Chess, Diane and Nichola. Welcome and I hope you all enjoyed the meeting tonight.

Craig also congratulated James on winning the Division D Humorous Speech Contest. James "Can" as he is now known, will go on to compete at the District final in Palmerston North on the 8th to the 10th of November. It would be great if you can be there to support him.

Colin read out the mission statement, and as Toastmaster of the evening, James outlined the agenda and the roles of members for the benefit of our guests.

As General Evaluator, Craig discussed the importance of evaluations and the method of evaluating using a mixture of commendations and recommendations. 

Peter gave us a demonstration of the lights and talked about the importance of keeping to time.

Chris introduced the word of the night which was Euphonious – (of sound, especially speech) meaning pleasing to the ear.

Table Topics

Lana's table topics proved topical and everyone who was invited to speak had little trouble finding something to say. The topics certainly stirred up a bit of Napier/Hastings rivalry.

• Craig hoped to improve tourism in Napier by improving the standard of our beaches.
• Peter planned on staying home (in Wairoa) as a solution to making Napier safer for the young and the elderly. He also suggested that by charging everyone $5 to enter Napier, the more violent members of society would not be able to afford it.
• To boost employment, Wayne suggested collecting the unemployed youth in a bus and taking them to the apple orchards to pick up the fruit that was left on the trees after harvest.
• Dee's mission was to improve Napier's services with more recycling, and to survey the public to find out what problems they are experience with Napier's services.
• Sarah Hall covered the pros and cons of amalgamation, suggesting that Napier be shut down and all Napier residents move to Hastings, which would be renamed Hapier (or was it Happier).
• Netta wants to reduce youth unemployment by adopting Waynes idea of putting them on a bus and getting them to clean up the local beaches.
• After a slow entrance and a bit of encouragement by the audience, Colin was straight into his topic on renewable energy. His plan was to plant a wind garden in the wasteland called Hastings.

Table topics were evaluated by Sheryl and Dee with commendations and recommendations relating to, for example, speech structure and the use of hands.

Prepared Speeches

Tom's icebreaker speech was entitled "Tom Dick and Harry" and was named after the tunnels his grandfather and fellow POWs built and used in The Great Escape of 1944. Toms grandfather was a spitfire pilot in The Battle of Britain.

Amy's speech was called "Blue Eyes" and Amy told us about how you will never truly understand racism until you have experienced it. Amy introduced us to Jane Elliot's famous blue eye / brown eye studies, where, as an experiment amongst children, superiority and inferiority was encouraged based on a trait (eye colour) that the children had no control over.

Graeme wore a collared shirt tonight, and boy does he get hot under the collar when it comes to dishonest practices by those in authority. It was a persuasive speech called "Food for Thought" that focused on the expunging of minor crimes to save time and money, ignoring the results of a $9 m referendum, and amalgamation.

The speeches were introduced and evaluated respectively by Sarah Hall, Sarah Lee and Netta who all gave us an insight into the speakers lives before they started as well as outlining the speech objectives.

Business

As part of the business session, Sarah Lee inducted our new member Paul Ritchie. Welcome Paul!

General Evaluation

As General Evaluator, Craig congratulated James for his skilful running of the meeting, appropriate segways and explanation of roles. Peter told us all how long we took, and Chris reviewed the word of the day and it's usage.

Winners

Congratulations go to:

- Sarah Hall for Best Table Topic

- Amy Edwards for Best Speech

- Sarah Lee for Best Evaluation

- Lana for Best Contribution

Guests

James invited our guests to comment, and Nichola quickly announced that she throughly enjoyed the meeting. Chess was impressed with Jame's control of the meeting, the speeches which exhibited courage, recognition and honesty, and the quality of the evaluations. Ben commended the caterers, in particular, the raspberry slice went down a treat.

On that note, James closed the meeting, and what a great meeting it was. See you all next week.