The Lower Bramsgrove Debating Society has voted to cancel all future motions, having established that its arguments about how debates should be conducted are more popular than anything it has debated in years.

The decision was taken at the society's meeting on Tuesday, following a motion on the village water supply that was abandoned after forty minutes of disagreement over whether the proposer had stood up at the correct time. The standing-room crowd that had gathered for the disagreement dispersed before the water supply was mentioned again.

"It was the best turnout we'd had since the dispute about the minutes," said the society's chairwoman, Mrs Elspeth Faraday-Holt. "People were hanging out of the windows. Nobody wants to hear about drainage. What they want is a ruling from the chair, and then an appeal against the ruling, and then a vote on whether the appeal was in order."

The complaint

Under the new arrangement, the society will meet as usual each week in the reading room, take attendance as usual, and then conduct no debate. Attendance is expected to hold.

The change was not unanimous. One member, Mr Douglas Pinn, argued that a debating society that does not debate has become "a chair, a minute-taker and a room". Mrs Faraday-Holt noted that this argument concerned procedure rather than a motion, that it was therefore permitted, and that it ran for over an hour.

A second member proposed that the society debate whether to reverse the decision. The proposal was ruled out of order, on the grounds that it was a motion. The ruling was appealed. The appeal drew a crowd larger than the original meeting, which several attendees described as the point.

What happens next

The society has scheduled a series of quarterly events under the title Points of Order, in which two members will be invited to disagree about whether a previous disagreement was conducted correctly. A refreshments rota has been drawn up.

A neighbouring society, in the village of Upper Marsh Hollow, has announced that it will continue to debate motions as before. Its secretary said the Upper Marsh approach retained "a certain purity" and that attendance figures were not the measure of an evening. He then asked that his remarks not be recorded, as he was saving them for a podcast he was starting.

The Lower Bramsgrove society's next meeting will consider one item: whether the refreshments rota was circulated in the correct font. Mrs Faraday-Holt said she expected a full room.