Who Would Jesus Employ?
24 January 2010
The BBC News website is carrying an article entitled “Churches fear Equality Bill will conflict with faith“. I don’t know the degree of accuracy, but it alleges that bishops (it doesn’t say which bishops) are concerned that they might be forced to employ gay people, and are preparing for a fight in the House of Lords.
News travels fast, nonsense travels faster
24 January 2010
“RIP Johnny Depp” is currently a trending topic on Twitter. I’m pretty certain that, were he dead, the BBC would have picked up on it. I’ll be perfectly happy to admit I’m wrong if I am (after all, people do die unexpectedly), but I’m going to guess that somebody has produced some misinformation, and thousands of sheep have believed it without question and passed it on. People do that. But what’s interesting about it happening on the Twittervine is that news agencies are starting to rely on social networks to give them the heads up on what they should be reporting. People are going to start gaming this. It’ll be interesting to see what rumours get started in the election run-up.
I’m [NOT] blowing the airport sky high!!
23 January 2010
I haven’t travelled on a plane since 2004. I’m not really looking forward to the next time I have to fly. Security was already silly then. Now hysteria has taken over. If the authorities read this, I want to let them in on a secret.
Unresolved Issues
22 January 2010
This year, I didn’t make any New Year resolutions. I’ve done it some years, and I find it’s mostly a case of setting yourself up for a fall. With an arbitrary start point (Jan 1) and an arbitrary deadline (Dec 31) there is pressure from beginning to end. But over the midwinter period I had a bit of a think about my priorities and I have some ambitions for the coming months:
Four years old today
22 January 2010
Happy birthday Beth, you’re four today.
Waking up you want to play.
Singing songs you bounce about,
Excitedly you start to shout.
Cards and presents, candles too,
A day especially for you.
Happy Christmas! It’s all the same,
You know the rules to this fun game.
Laugh and smile, you’re totally mad.
Happy birthday, from mum and dad. x
The Perl of Prestatyn
17 January 2010
I’ve been thinking for a little while that I should try to give my brain some more appropriate exercise. All the thinking I’ve been doing for months has been survival stuff, or introspection. In the end, I’ve ended up with my head hurting but I’ve not developed. At this rate I’m going to end up 30 going on 70 by the end of the year. To get fully better I must get my head working again!
Why going back to church is hard
15 January 2010
It’s no secret that we’ve hardly been to church for the last year or so. There have been a whole succession of reasons for this, there’s no one single cause. For instance, our car has decided to object to the cold weather. But even if it didn’t, Sally seems to be working most Sundays and it can take both of us to deal with E at church sometimes. And this period of absence began with both of us suffering health problems, which are not yet resolved. When we have been able to join in worship, it’s not always been at our own church, which means that we’ve seen very little of our Christian family.
It made sense in 1933
13 January 2010
Found this little (amended) snippet that’s still on the statute:
If any person having responsibility for a child or young person who has attained the age of four years and is under the age of sixteen years, allows that child or young person to reside in or to frequent a brothel, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 2 on the standard scale, or alternatively or in addition thereto, to imprisonment for any term not exceeding six months.
Children and Young Persons Act 1933, §3(1)
Fortunately, those of you who allow your three year olds to frequent brothels have nothing to worry about.
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?activeTextDocId=1109288
Intentionally Selfish
11 January 2010
Today, and not for the first time, we have found somebody else’s waste outside our front door. We have a driveway. We have a front garden. This is not a case of somebody slinging things over our fence as they run past. They have made a deliberate effort to carry it up our drive and put it by our door. They can see our bins are full to overflowing already, as like so many others we didn’t have a refuse collection last week. They’ve made a decision that they are going to choose to exacerbate our problem rather than deal with their own. Read the rest of this entry »
