Tuesday Turd

Your weekly round up of all the loo news you never knew you needed.

Governments commit to WASH

In a week that bodes well for WASH projects, Australian PM Julia Gillard has announced additional funding for the Civil Society Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Fund, providing $97million of funding to WASH initiatives around the world.

Also this week, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Passed the Water for the World Act. The Act has bipartisan support in both the house and the senate, yet I can't find much info on the ol' interwebs. US politics is not my strong point, but I gather that the Act now needs the support of the House to pass into legislation. The CEOs of prominent NGOs are urging congressfolk to support the bill.

Generation ZOMG! THaT's aLOT oF WaTER!

Do you know how much water that burger you ate for lunch yesterday really used? You might be surprised. Astonished, even. Possibly flabbergasted! I sure as hell was.
Every product has litres of hidden water, used in its manufacture, transport and packaging - and to help you find out just how much, the EU has launched Generation Awake - is it trying to scare you into sensibility? Maybe. But it's also a great resource to see how your everyday choices can have a far bigger impact than you realise.

It's a gorgeous looking site - maybe a bit naff, and I wonder what actual impact it will have. Still, an excellent website for teachers looking for resource-efficiency materials.

Toilet treasure

Conservators at an ancient communal toilet oustide Paris have uncovered a rare jewel - a hairpin of the Medici Queen Catherine. I once found someone's drivers license in a toilet in a pub... maybe not quite the same.


Sayonara for now, and I hope that you find something truly wonderful in your loo this week :)

News dump

When you are an international toilet woman of mystery, you get sent a lot of interesting toilet related links. Here's a few I received this week.

How much does your poo weigh?

This device was actually designed to show people how much weight they 'lose' after going to the toilet but a secondary and, I think, more interesting function is that it can tell you how much you evacuated. Anyone who has a set of scales in their bathroom has probably already conducted this experiement - it's very enlightening :-)

I particularly like the look of consternation in the first panel.




San Fransisco toilets ablaze

A person, or gang of persons, obviously finds portaloo toilets so offensive that they have launched a major offensive against them, setting fire to 18 toilets in two months. A Google news search turns up nothing like this happenning before, which is a surprise. They do seem an easy target and are unlikely to cause extensive damage to anything around them. Fortunately, no one has been hurt. You can watch a video here.


Inauguration a portaloo extravaganza

The inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama is set to be the biggest "temporary restroom event in the history of the United States" with 5,000 toilets to line National Mall. While the toilets will be regularly serviced, I would advise anyone attending to bring their own toilet paper.

The portaloos are not without controversy. Big Dog claims that providing VIPs with flushing, posh portaloos is elitist and says that "the ones the VIPs use should be no better than the ones the visitors will use". And John Banzhaf, Professor, is using the toilet coverage to promote 'potty parity' - women take longer to pee so dividing toilets exactly in half based on gender discriminates against women, forcing them to wait longer. (Potty parity was addressed in New York with the Restroom Equity Bill.)

Man shoots toilet... and self

Fortunately, or unfortunately, this man didn't quite meet the criteria to make it into the Darwin Awards. After dropping his gun in a public toilet, he shot his arm and the toilet. I love the story for this sentence:

The fall triggered the gun to go off and the shocked man was glad he was already in the toilet.

I'll bet the toilet had it coming.

Friday Flush 25/07/2008

Oooh, it's quite an international flush today, and a big one at that! So what we need is a massive toilet. A Yorkshire Water campaign to encourage people to 'do one thing differently' to conserve water is being fronted by giant toilets. I don't believe the toilets actually speak or anything, but it is a fun way to get people thinking about the fact that toilets account for one third of a household's water usage. By the way, I don't really believe that statistic. Maybe it's true in the UK, but I know that here in Australia, water saving cisterns have been standard for at least a decade. I couldn't be arsed researching this at the moment though. Would appreciate others' thoughts.

 

Another interesting statistic, is that Russians use 10 times less toilet paper than Americans and Western Europeans. Now, this statistic I do believe. The experts claim it all comes down to the old 'do ya scrunch or fold?' question. That is a poll for another time.

 

Still no bids on the infamous Seattle toilets which are up for sale on eBay at a starting price of $89,000, however Calgary and Fort Lauderdale might be interested in buying them. Not put off by Seattle's experience with the spaceship toilets, Toronto and Vancouver are moving ahead with plans to install more of the suckers. However, they might be better off buying their facilities from Vietnam where the toilets only cost $20,000 a piece - that's a massive saving!

 

Meanwhile, over in London, red Boris wants to offer free toilet facilities to all senior citizens. The idea is actually extraordinarily deceptive - it is a discriminatory Community Toilet Scheme. As Londonist points out, non-senior-people who pay £100 more for their monthly train tickets should reasonably object to being denied access to toilets because of their age.

 

 

To prove that everything strange in the world actually comes from Austria, and not the USA as many people believe, is this story about a man who was blasted off his toilet seat by hailstones. Oh. My. God. I can't even believe how much that would hurt.

 

And finally in Jamaica, a businessman has been accused of selling counterfeit toilet paper on the black market.

 

And that's the Friday flush for this week!

Ebay for spaceship toilets

I hate, loathe and despise spaceship toilets, and Seattle residents apparently feel the same way. They're getting rid of 5 of the expensive behemoths which have been in central city locations since 2004, but keeping the $2.59 tax which was introduced to pay for them.

 

The toilets, purchased from a German company, proved extremely unpopular with locals. The contract for the $6.6million toilets has been ended early after they became a magnet for drugs and prostitution. The self-cleaning machines, after a while, didn't. Instead of saving money on cleaning the facilities the Council had to employ cleaners. At the initial consultation, the toilets were supposed to be a cost-effective solution, but at $360 per toilet per day they are anything but.

 

As well as being expensive, space inefficient drug dungeons, I personally find these toilets terrifying. When they installed one in Newcastle (Australia) I would piss next to it rather than go in (much to the amusement of the bouncers at the Crown and Anchor). What if it started 'self-cleaning' while you were in it? *shudder* Nope, a squat by the wall it was. Hey, I'm a classy girl.

 

The Council is now hoping to sell the unsuccessful toilets on eBay. I'll post the link as soon as there is one.

 

Sulabh liberates 60,000 scavengers, tots up $32 mn revenue: UNDP

Sulabh International is the reason I became interested in all things
toilety. Its good work has been highlighted in a UN report this week.
the story below is from www.mangalorean.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
New Delhi, July 1 (IANS) Sulabh International, a 38-year-old movement
promoting low-cost safe sanitation in the country, has liberated over
60,000 scavengers, a report by the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) released Tuesday said.

The report, focusing on the various strategies adopted across the
world to engage the poor, additionally said Sulabh's revenues reached
$32 million in 2005, with approximately $5 million in surplus.

Sulabh maintains 6,500 public pay per-use toilets and by 2006, had
installed 1.4 million household toilets. An estimated 10 million
people used its facilities across the country, the report said.

"The public toilets run by Sulabh break even within eight to nine
months," it added. "Facilities in prominent places were highly
profitable."

There is ample scope for replication and even scaling up of the Sulabh
model that its founder Bindheshwar Pathak started in 1970, UNDP said.

"State governments that used to invite Sulabh into single-party
tenders have now started inviting competitive bids to build and run
public toilets," it noted.

The UNDP report noted that while it was officially said in 2003 that
India had 676,000 scavengers - people, mainly women, who eke out a
living lifting human excreta - unofficial estimates peg the figure at
1.2 million.

Of them, Sulabh had liberated 60,000 through various skill development
and adult literacy programmes; for instance, it trains women in food
processing and markets their products.

It has successfully used internal and external resources to start an
English medium school and a variety of business incubators targeted at
the erstwhile scavengers to get them accepted in mainstream society,
the report said.

Sulabh, which employs over 50,000 associates and presently operates in
26 states, also trained 19,000 masons who could build low-cost,
twin-pit toilets using locally available materials, UNDP said.

Focusing on the constraints Sulabh faced when it started off, the
report identified three key hurdles.

First, there was a lack of market information: businesses just did not
know whether poor people would pay to use toilets and related
facilities or install toilets.

Second, there existed an acute lack of widespread knowledge on
propagating low-cost hygiene solutions.

And finally, perhaps the most critical factor: the poor did not have
access to finance to provide for sanitation.

The report then highlights the strategies Sulabh adopted to overcome
these obstacles.

It first developed an initial pilot project and demonstrated the
popularity of pay-per-use toilet facilities in urban Bihar and
pioneered the low-cost toilet model to be installed in poor
residential areas.

Next, it constructed a museum and planned for a sanitation university,
took its own designs and trained other non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), and started policy dialogue with governments.

"Sulabh influenced the central government and over 100,000 public
toilets will be constructed in addition to local government's
provision of toilet-related loans and subsidies," the report said.

IANS

This News is featured in Mangalorean.com
www.Mangalorean.com

I'm baaack!

The BogLogger is moving countries - AGAIN - so I've been busy with finishing work and packing and arranging visas and all that sort of fun stuff. The good news is that I can now compare New Zealand toilets to Australian toilets and see which is better. Of course, the Aussies will say theirs are better and the Kiwis will say that the Aussies stole them.

*sigh*

I have 990 toilet related articles in Google Reader to read so I may not be posting a full story today. In the meantime, read about former Indian sanitation workers who are off to New York this month through the wonderful activities of my favourite organisation Sulabh International.

No relief on space station

Cosmonauts and astronauts aboard the International Space Station are heading for a potential hygiene hazard with the malfunction of the toilet system. The system has been experiencing problems for the past week with each repair failing.

Without the assistance of gravity, space toilets use "fan-driven airflow to transport human waste away from a crew member's body". Read the full article here.

Currently, the crew is using the toilet in the transport trip Soyuz, but it has only a few days capacity. Fox news reports that the toilet is due to be replaced in a few months by a system that will transform urine into drinkable water.

Being stranded out in space with no toilet facilities is simply awful. Cosmonauts and astronauts already suffer many privations, but this seems to me the worst! No doubt, though, they're clever folk and they'll find relief somehow.

Posh poos

There's an article on the Boston Herald website about the poshest sorts of toilets you can get for your own home including... a throne.

 

 

You can be proud owner of a sleek and sexy toilet - BostonHerald.com

 

The history of toilets in private homes is primarily a story of the rise and fall of ostentatious fittings.

 

In the early 19th century fittings and furnishings in bathrooms were needlessly ornate - people were making bathrooms out of rooms, and had to fill that space with a lot of filigree. By about 1855, cleanliness and simplicity ruled, before there was another shift towards putting all the expense of the house into the bathroom. And why not? You're pretty well guaranteed that your guests are going to see it. What a great place to show off!

 

Bathrooms remained an impressive size (for those who had bathrooms) until the revolution of 'bath-cells' in American hotels in the late 1800s, when bathrooms came down to a more reasonable size and utilitarian function. There seems to now be a shift again towards fabulous bathrooms, but the onus is on luxury rather than fussiness.

 

Toilets themselves, however, haven't changed all that much, so it's nice to see manufacturers doing something interesting, and even ludicrous, with the design.

Did you know?

The first bath was installed in the White House in 1851.

 

In 1895, no New York tenement had a bath.

 

The Lord Mayor of London was denied a request to install a shower-bath in the Mansion House in 1812.

Clean and Decent, Lawrence Wright

Oh, the humanity!

I might be a lefty leaning pinko greenie, etc, but surely I'm not alone in thinking that toilet paper is a basic human right? Well, not in Montgomery County, Maryland USA it's not.

United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) which represents about 8000 government employees has released a memo with cost-cutting measures and it suggests, among other things, restricting the amount of toilet paper issued to inmates of jails.

The county spends ‘‘hundreds of thousands of dollars” annually to repair plumbing because inmates use it [toilet paper] to clog their toilets.

Issuing a maximum of three rolls a week to each inmate would avoid some of those costs.

Read the full article here.

I can just imagine the black market in Montgomery County jails: smack, cigarettes and bog roll. They'll have to get their mules to smuggle it in one sheet at a time so as to avoid detection.

Why I love Malaysian newspapers

If I ever get cynical about the news, I just treat myself to a bit of Malaysian reporting. Where else can you get juicy leaders like this one:

 

"SOME homosexuals are alleged to be using public toilets in shopping centres in Kuala Lumpur to engage in unnatural sexual acts."

 

Unnatural sexual acts!! By homosexuals!!

 

 

"Guards would then carry out investigations before warning homosexual couples caught in the act."

 

Either those homosexuals are in the toilets for days, or the investigations are undertaken pretty quickly.

 

“We have our own ways to prove the offence besides having several security officers who are experts in handling these sort of cases.”

 

LMAO. Honestly, I can't even add anything to that.

 

A worker with a transportation company had admitted being caught in the act with another homosexual, who is a bank executive. The duo were caught by security guards at a staircase of a shopping complex in Jalan Pasar.

 

The 22-year-old suspect from Sungai Jelok, Kajang, said he did not realise his acts were captured on CCTV.

 

He said he started “becoming” a homosexual when he was 15, when he was studying in a residential school in Kajang

 

And so I think we can all learn something from this.

- don't use toilets in Kuala Lumpur

- don't go to a  residential school unless you want to 'become' a homosexual.

What's normal?

I received a bookmark in the post on Friday for the new Australian Government website dedicated to bladder and bowel health www.bladderbowel.gov.au.

 

The new website is part of the National Continence Management Strategy and builds on the success of the National Toilet map. I love the Toilet Map. There are a number of toilet map initiatives on the web, such as the Bathroom Diaries, and Public Toilets dot org, but the Toilet Map is the only government funded map of its kind. Because it has funding, it's very comprehensive (although the Find by Points of Interest section didn't recognise the Sydney Opera House as a location. Hmm....)

 

The Bladder Bowel website has a wonderful section about 'what is normal'. Did you know that your small bowel is 6 metres long?? I didn't even know I had a 'large' bowel and a 'small' bowel!

 

How your bowel works

The bowel is the lower part of your food digestive system. It connects your stomach to your back passage, where waste materials (called bowel motions or faeces) are passed out of your body. The job of the bowel is to finish digesting food by taking up water and nutrients.

Your bowel has three linked parts:

• Small bowel - mainly takes up goodness (nutrients) from broken-down food;
• Colon - mainly takes up water as digested food passes through;
• Rectum - stores waste material until it is passed through the back passage.

The small bowel is about 6 metres long. The large bowel, the name for the colon and rectum together, is a tube about 1.5 metres long. The small bowel is called 'small' because it is narrower than the large bowel even though it is longer.

Everybody has different bowel habits. Some of us empty our bowel 3 times a day. Others may empty their bowel 3 times a week. Normally each bowel movement should take a minute or so. At the end of a bowel movement you should feel empty.

 

I like that my bowel connects my stomach to my back passage. I like the idea of having a 'back passage'. It makes me sound like an Edwardian country house.

 

Thanks for sending through the bookmark, Stevie! I'll use it in "Clean and Decent" a book about the history of toilets and bathrooms that I'm currently reading. Review up here soon!

Pam update

Pam Babcock, who you may remember sat on a toilet for 2 years, remains in intensive care in Kansas, USA. Her aunt has said that she is still ''a very sick girl" referring to her physical wounds, but also suggests that Pam's mental well-being is anything but well.

 

Her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, who kept her victualled and watered during her seemingly self-imposed incarceration, has been charged for mistreatment of a dependent adult. He was also arrested last week on an unrelated charge, after exposing himself to his neighbour's teenage daughter!

Hundertwasser Toilets!

Last year The Bathroom Diaries Toilet of the Year went to the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa, New Zealand. I found this out shortly after I moved to New Zealand, and I wondered if I would ever get the opportunity to see them.

Well, I did, and here they are.

The view from across the street. Yes, that's a tree coming out of the roof.

The 'lobby'. And the trunk of the tree.

Most of these bottles are Jim Beam.

I was only able to take photos of the ladies toilet.

From the front door.

From the toilet seat.

The gate to the boys toilet. Forbidden territory!

I've read other blog posts that say 'meh' to the Hundertwasser toilets. I say, screw them. I think they're fab. And the fact that tour buses stop so that you can hop out and take a photo of the toilets is just brilliant. You couldn't make that up.

Tomb toilet users say no to roofless loo

A lot of news out of India this week about the use, misuse, abuse and disuse of toilets.

First up in Ainapur, an historic tomb is being used as a toilet by local residents, much to the fury of Raju S Vijapur. That reminds me of my trip to Pompeii back in 2000 - really, I'd never seen so much human excrement in a public space.

Over in Erode, The Hindu reports that an incomplete toilet has stood roofless for 2 years. There is a push on in the area to install private toilets in people's homes and so the building hasn't had the funding it needs to be completed. While locals say that the roofless structure can't be used for anything else, the story doesn't say if it's still suitable as a toilet - perhaps if the local government body renamed it the Pudur Panchayat Tomb locals would start using it.

In Hyderabad, the State government has responded to reports of poor hygiene in teaching hospitals by contracting Sulabh to maintain their toilets. Sulabh International is one of my favourite organisations; they provide user-pays toilets and hygiene facilities to Indian villages and use the profits to educate children who would otherwise be human waste collectors.

But I think the most interesting bog news today is a short story out of the US. A 13 year old boy has allegedly used his teacher's lunchbox to urinate in, when she wouldn't let him go to the toilet.

I hope he did so to make a statement about the ridiculousness of placing constraints on our bladders. I've been in meetings where I've been too embarrassed to get up and go to the loo, the expectation being that one should wait until the end of the meeting. I'm all for strengthening pelvic floor muscles, but don't tell me to hold onto a full bladder for three quarters of an hour and expect me to pay attention! There's an assumption that as adults we should 'know better', plan our toilet breaks appropriately and not interrupt public or social events with toilet calls, but I think that's unrealistic. Most of us simply aren't thinking about our bladders all the time. I still find myself saying, many, many years after being toilet trained, "But I didn't need to go earlier!"

And the really fab news is that when you do need to go in Japan you can use Microsoft Vista toilet paper. Honestly, you couldn't make that up.

The Thinker

Often, when the world seems a bit much, I'll go to the toilet, sit down and have a long hard think. The toilet is a great place to have a 2 minute power nap at work, or a cry, or just a quiet sit down.

Kansas woman Pam Babcock sat down on her boyfriend's toilet for a quiet think two years ago, and was removed this week when her boyfriend finally called the police. New reports indicate that she may not have been sitting on the toilet the entire time, but may have actually managed to get up and bathe herself occasionally. Her boyfriend claimed that

his girlfriend moved around the bathroom, bathed and changed into fresh clothes he brought her. He claimed they had conversations and a normal relationship - except it all took place in the bathroom. (Telegraph)

After the initial report of "woman spends two years on toilet" the excitement around this story has died down and the coverage has been anything but journalistic. A satirical columnist at The Times brands Pam as the world's first "half woman, half toilet". Commenting on a woman's apparent prerogative to be irrational he asserts that "it is every woman’s very real right to become a woman-toilet hybrid creature if she so wishes". (The Times) Clearly, a person doesn't just confine herself to the toilet because she is a woman; this is a case of mental illness or trauma.

It's still unclear at this stage if her boyfriend will be charged.

In the meantime, I really feel for Pam. When I've been especially hungover, I find the comforting allure of all that clean porcelain and soft tissue paper utterly irresistible. At my previous place of employment, a woman from the floor below would retire to the ladies toilet twice hourly to have a good sob (I found out afterwards that she'd just had a bad breakup), which was occasionally disconcerting if you were in the cubicle next door.

I don't (believe I) suffer from any sort of mental illness myself, but I can totally sympathise with someone finding very real refuge in a toilet. I only hope that she and her boyfriend get the care they obviously need.

Low income loo bonus

Low income residents in Seattle can look forward to making some real savings with the launch of a scheme by Seattle Public Utilities to provide free efficient toilets.

Read the story here

The toilets can save more than $100 a year in bills.

Back when I was a really poor student, my local council had a similar initiative. A very friendly man came around to my dodgy flat and gave me two free energy-efficient lightbulbs, changed my shower head to a water-efficient model and even checked to see how efficient my toilet was. It wasn't very, so he put some sort of brick in it to lessen the amount of water it used.

I don't know if I had any very noticeable reductions in my bills, but it was a great idea. The best thing was, it was free. I could never have afforded to make those sorts of money saving changes. It's the same old lament: you need money to save money.

Stirring the Pot

You'd have to have been hiding under your toilet to have missed the news out of the UK this week of a national government guideline on public toilets.

Communities Minister Baroness Andrews unveiled the guidelines today, admitting that "some people may find the whole idea of a strategic guide on public toilets funny".

The guidelines basically endorse the clever innovations of Westminster and Richmond upon Thames councils, including the SatLav and community toilet schemes.

The Conservatives half-heartedly attacked the report, claiming it endorses the closing of free public toilets, and leaves those already disadvantaged by loo loss even worse off. They also throw in a rather snarky jab about the Prime Minister's 'hypocrisy' in having the gents toilets in the "First Lord's Residence" refurbished at tax-payers expense. It seems reasonable to me that the state should expect to refurbish the Prime Minister's office loos on occasion; they are a work environment just as any other. But I can't blame them for succumbing to the temptation of making the comparison.

I think the community toilet scheme is a great idea, because it's so human. I tend to dislike other solutions, such as spaceship toilets, because they attempt to mechanise an animal action, which I think makes the whole thing seem dirty. However, there are fundamental flaws with the community toilet scheme. The key is in the word 'community' - the scheme relies on people to work together in a social way. There are great publicans who realise that 'very normal people' get caught out when they're out. But there are plenty who follow the 'it will lead to trouble' line, and who rant about the 'young people' who will abuse the system. From the Whitehaven News:

The landlady of The Anchor Vaults, Janice Burns, agrees that opening the toilets to non-customers would be an opportunity for youths to misuse and vandalise the toilets. Consequently, she would not go ahead with the idea, even if offered government money.

The main people advocating the community toilet scheme are from groups concerned with bladder conditions, old people and people with small children; I couldn't care less about any of those people. I feel that 'community' schemes like this fail because they ignore the needs of young people and public drunks, who are, apparently unfortunately, part of the community. Well, young people and public drunks need to piss too, and I suspect that if you make them feel unwelcome in 'community' toilets they very well may start vandalising them.

(I'm reminded of a time I was told I couldn't use the public toilet in a KFC in Sydney - I walked round to the staff carpark at the back and pissed on the nicest car there. And I'd only had a few beers.)

The SatLav, meanwhile, is very clever. I haven't investigated it yet, but I wonder if it's very useful at 2 in the morning?

All in all, I'm very impressed with the guidelines. 24dash is right when it says that it is the first of its kind. I've seen reports come out about the state of toilets in third world countries, but a national toilet strategy for a wealthy nation is unheard of. The only thing close is the Australian toilet map, which is government sponsored. I wonder if these 'guidelines' are a precursor to a more robust document?

Beijing becomes city with world's largest number of public toilets

Beijing becomes city with world's largest number of public toilets

Of course, it's not hard to beat New York in this pissing contest, as New York doesn't have ANY public toilets!

Loo Users Lose Out

This is just the sort of story I find so disappointing.

Bloody vandals have forced the closure of toilets.

Maybe it's worth paying $US30,000 a year to have vandal-free spaceship toilets.

Spaceships, Toilets & Tycoons

I was absolutely stoked to discover that there's a Toilet Tycoon. Well, not quite. Louis Herrera is a self-proclaimed toilet expert. He is also the president of Public Facilities and Services, a company looking to sell amazing self cleaning, polite, music playing toilet contraptions at amazing prices to less than cluey US city councils.

I have major problems with robotic restrooms. I tried using one once in Newcastle, NSW Australia, and found the experience so horrible I wouldn't try one again. Automated toilets are unnaturally cavernous rooms in which you feel like you are being watched. I was worried that when I flushed, the room would start its self clean mode while I was still in it. There's also the problem of locking. I simply don't trust a "lock" that is merely a button. I want to have some physical control over the locking mechanism of my toilet. And I certainly don't want my toilet to have the ability to override the lock and open the door after a designated time. The whole thing just isn't... civilised.

These automated public conveniences are turning up all over the US and are already in place in cities in Europe and Australia. At $US250,000 a pop, they're not cheap, which I could forgive if in being automatic they made cost efficiencies in yearly upkeep. But they're still about $US30,000 a year to maintain. Installing a 'normal' public toilet would cost about half this to install (and would have more cubicles)

In Portland Oregon, USA, City Hall opened its ground floor toilets at nighttime for the use of homeless people. The trial will cost about $US111,600 for one year, and while people might complain about the inordinate cost considering the number of users (the same amount of money could buy a "coffee and a bagel at Bentos Coffee and Cookies, across from City Hall, for 50 people a day") I think that this still represents a thoughtful community response. Spaceship toilets are simply unappealing, and they turn the act of relieving oneself into an awkward sanitised experience.

One opponent of the City Hall toilet scheme, Commissioner Randy Leonard, (who opposes it based on its location) has another idea: he'll be building some of those spaceship toilets for himself. He also found the $US250,000 price tag just a little too coarse to swallow. His plan is to build the toilets at a reduced cost, even getting down to "ten grand a pop". That's such a remarkable difference from the price the Herrera mob are quoting that I wonder if its feasible. However, if there's anything I've learned about local government it's that anything is possible. And Leonard thinks that if they perfect their "ten grand a pop" toilets, they'll be able to sell them on to other councils. I surely hope so; you're not quite a tycoon if the local council has more power than you.