Third Hand Hilarity

I have no idea what the etiquette regarding 'borrowing' amusing stories from other blogs who have already taken them from somewhere else is but there is no way I could fail to mention this story. Again, its a british article brought to my attention by an american blogger, cheers Dana. Maybe its time I started checking some proper websites as well as blogs, what difference can another half hour make when I already spend less than half my day actually working.

Birmingham City Council - Incompetant or Anti-Atheist?

There's a post up over at the hugely popular american evolution/aethist blog Pharyngula concerning this article on the BBC website about our council here in Brum blocking access to atheist websites while allowing access to religious sites. Most people at Pharyngula seem to be taking this as evidence of someone deliberately trying to impose their faith on council employees, but having probably had more contact with the council than any of the Americans posting there I feel pretty confident in saying this won't turn out to be the case. Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the whole of Europe and by all accounts is a bureucratic nightmare (as anyone who has had to sort out a problem with their council tax knows all too well) so I find it extremely unlikely that anyone went into any sort of detail in checking what was being blocked, and even if they had why would they block atheist sites? Religion just isn't an issue over here in the same way as it is in the US, the number of regular church-goers is completely dwarfed by the number of people who state they have no religion and considering that the company providing the blocking software is American it seems far more likely to have been a default setting which got overlooked. When it comes down to a council employee either being lazy/clueless or deliberately breaking the law to discriminate against atheists I know where my money is.

UPDATE: See, I told you they were fucking incompetant.