oh crap they’ve found the bodies

We’ve had another little sprinkling of snow. Though listening to the news or reading the papers you’d think we were battling 2m snowdrifts or something. The BBC had reporters strategically placed around the country in severe weather hotspots on tv this morning. None of them had anything to say other than “the motorways are clear and the trains are running”.

At work everyone has to go through a criminal record check. It’s something to do with banking clients not wanting to work with us if we employ criminals. It’s an inconvenience, but not a real problem. But the HR woman stopped me on the stairs yesterday, and with a rather serious face told me, “we have a little problem with your criminal background check”. So, I’m thinking, oh crap they’ve found the bodies or something. But actually it’s not that. It turns out that I shouldn’t have been so honest when I filled in the form. Apparently the fact that I told them I lived abroad is an issue because they need to get a check done in Taiwan, and they have no easy way of doing it. I’ll be back in Taiwan in April. Maybe I can arrange it while I am there.

Bideford Town Council have lost their fight to say prayers before official meetings. This case has been rolling on for a long time. The council has traditionally said prayers before meetings, but an action was brought against them by the National Secular Society on behalf of an atheist councillor Clive Bone. I think this is the right decision because I think the church and politics should be kept apart at all costs. However, the ruling seems to be based on the idea that councils are not specifically granted the right to hold prayers in the 1972 Local Government Act. I’m pretty sure that the act doesn’t grant specific powers to councils to serve orange juice at meetings either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not allowed to do it. So the ruling seems odd to me. Originally it was suggested that summoning councillors to a meeting where prayers formed part of the agenda was a breach of human rights. That argument sits far better with me.

Did I mention that I had a medical this week? It turns out my blood pressure is a little on the high side. I’m trying to cut down salt and caffeine this week. Next week I have another appointment to get it retested.