Friday Flush 14-06-2013

All the loo news you never knew you wanted!

Sit down, you brute!

The county council of Sormland, Sweden, is calling on men to sit down while they pee in order to reduce 'spills' and increase hygiene. Opponents to the proposal say that sitting down reduces men's ability to 'shake off' at the end of their wee.

Read more at Digital Journal

Squirrelshank Redemption

Of course, you don't really care about a man's right to pee standing up. What you really care about is a squirrel crawling out of your loo.

Winnipeg woman Angela Campbell rescued the animal using a pair of BBQ tongs and carefully washed it in the bath before releasing it in her backyard. You can watch a video of bathtime here.

Wee the People!

The winner of this week's most puntastic article goes to Wales Online for their story Wee shall not be moved!

Protesters in Cardiff are furious over council plans to close public toilets. The P is for People protesters say that loo closures affect older people, people with disabilities and parents with children. For many people, going out in public means planning beforehand to make sure there are enough toilet facilities available.

The toilets themselves are Grade II listed Victorian loos - my favourite kind! - and recently underwent renovations. But the cash-strapped council says it needs to make cuts somewhere, and the loos have to go.

Tenderloin Toilet Project

San Francisco is funding a prototype toilet design which the city hopes will reduce instances of public urination.

The eco-friendly design - called P Planters - diverts urine into dilution tanks which are then used to irrigate adjacent planters. Win win! The design was a result of San Fran's Master Toilet Plan, a hefty document which you can peruse here. 
 
Til next time folks, have a great WEEkend.

Friday Flush - 1 June 2012

Welcome back to the boglogger's Friday Flush! Catch up on the web's premier round up of global loo news!

To Pee or Not to Pee

First up, a debate in the UK about whether or not it is acceptable to urinate in public. You can read the full article here, but for me the real winner is in the comments.

There should be a national database of people who feel it is acceptable to urinate in public. They should then be banned from all public swimming pools.
~ mastutio

My favourite is from nblake42, who offers this very British tale:

One afternoon last year I walked up the road to my house to discover a man urinating on my driveway. Like a good, responsible, British citizen, I pretended it wasn't my house and walked on past.

There'll be no surprises that my personal view is quite liberal. If there aren't any facilities around (as there increasingly aren't) then you need to go no matter what the surroundings, or risk causing yourself an injury.

Quick off the mark

Which describes the feat, not my delayed reporting of it.

Earlier this month, Jolene Van Vugt motorised into the record books by beating the land speed record for a motorised toilet. I could elaborate on this story, but I think it really tells itself.

Prosaic advice from Toilet Man

Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, gives great advice to Israeli students about entrepreneurship.

If you can use other people’s money, other people’s power, other people’s distribution, other people’s media, and other people’s influence and connections, and you align them towards a common mission, then each of them will join the party willingly.

As Sim says, he couldn't have run anything as fringe as the World Toilet Summit if governments and media weren't very willing participants.

Need to take the world's largest dump?

Maybe you need the world's largest toilet. Designer Sou Fujimoto has created a toilet like no other in Ichihara City, Japan - a single cubicle encased in glass surrounded by 200 square metres of garden.

I think the concept is great and the execution is breathtaking. At the moment, without the landscaping, it looks remarkably like a cemetery, and I wonder if this is on purpose? When the landscaping is finalised I think it'll be a really beautiful statement. About what? About how the mundane, the everyday, the routine, the necessary can still be beautiful.

Tesco toilet update

Ah, so the reason that Tesco's meat processor Brown Brothers' shitty toilet practices have made it into the news (you might need to read that sentence a couple of times to make sense of it) is because the union has staged a protest at the Lanark Tesco. I probably should have read this before posting my Friday Flush.

Anyhoo, here's a quote that pretty well sums up the whole issue:

As part of a wider campaign to ensure the equal and fair treatment of meat workers, the union are urging Tesco to stop Brown Brothers from subjecting their workforce to a toilet break policy where workers are forced to clock off to visit the toilet.

The staff are also officially expected to provide medical evidence in order to be excused from the system.

A union spokesman said: “The policy means presumably that women in the early stages of pregnancy or simply having their period would have to get a doctor’s note to evidence the reason why they need to use the toilet more often than usual.”

Friday Flush 1.08.2008

Bringing you all the loo news you can handle, and some that you can't - just in time for the weekend!

 

Sheffield artist Jacqui Bellamy has been snapping photos of women in the toilets of nightclub Razor Stiletto "queuing, chatting, putting on make-up etc," and will be showing her series at The Forum Bar as part of its Wednesday night live programme. They look like an interesting lot, those Razor Stiletto people, so if you're in the area check it out.

 

 

You might remember the story of Pam Babcock, the woman who sat on a toilet for two years. Her boyfriend, Kory McFarren, was charged with mistreatment of a dependent adult. Last month he pleaded no contest to the charge, and this week he was sentenced to 6 months in jail, but was granted probation after Pam asked for leniency. Good on you, Pam. Clearly, both Pam and Kory have some social and mental problems that they need to work through, and I don't think jail will help ol' Kory at all.

 

 

This one's actually an old story, but it's popped back up in my news feed and it's quite awful. Brown Brothers meat processor, which supplies meat to Tesco in the UK, demands that employees clock off when they go to the toilet. This so obviously discriminates against women, particularly menstruating and pregnant women, that I'm agog! The restrictions are part of a pay deal that tries to streamline toilet break times - and look, I totally get it that it takes workers 20 minutes to go to the toilet because of all the gear they're wearing, but seriously! This is the 21st century! Can't we come up with a better solution? It's not the fault of the workers that they have to wear a spacesuit - why should they pay the price? And more importantly, why do women have to pay a higher price?

 

Not so much toilet news, as toilet humour - Dave TV has a list of the 10 oldest jokes in the whole world ever - and I have to say I don't think I find them particularly funny. Maybe I need to scrub up on my ancient history or something. Anyway, they're here. I do like this quote from Dr Paul McDonald, who wrote the report:

What they all share [...] is a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion. Modern puns, Essex girl jokes and toilet humour can all be traced back to the very earliest jokes identified in this research.

 

Unfortunately, Qantas is back in the news - this time because the pilot refused to allow passengers out of their seats during a delayed landing. One passenger was forced to pee in a sick bag. Look, people, the pilot is trying to look after you. And look, pilot, why not let people pee? Come on. Let's all start talking to one another, instead of just complaining.

 

 

 

A bus driver in Dublin has brought to light an interesting predicament for bus drivers everywhere - where do drivers go to the toilet on a long shift when there are no terminuses? I hadn't honestly thought about this; it's a similar problem to what the meat processors in Tesco are facing. People need to pee and shit, and their jobs don't always allow them to do this comfortably. Employees have the right to a clean private toilet with running water and soap - but not necessarily access to it when it suits them. This seems grossly inappropriate - why have a toilet if you can't bloody use it?

 

And lastly, in entertainment news, Kiefer Sutherland has revealed why you never see his character on "24", Jack Bauer, going to the toilet:

 

whenever they cut to the White House, Jack is taking a pee. And he’s also getting something to drink and eat.

 

And that's a wrap for this week... or a fold... or a scrunch...