By the way, I see that your plans for a revolutionary uprising have been given a blow with a ban on the importing of Kalashnikovs from Russia! Pea shooters and spud guns to the rescue? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30404648 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30404648
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> wrote : Your disabilities people probably don't have any power in the UK like they do in the US. These would be called "wheelchair inaccessible". A wall won't take care of the smell and these are obviously more sanitary too. On 12/14/2014 04:30 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: These "open-view" urinals for men have just started appearing in London. I can't see why they don't just instruct the gentlemen to go and piss against a nearby wall. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <noozguru@...> mailto:noozguru@... wrote : San Francisco wanted to put in toilets downtown on the streets. A French company makes self cleaning units which were ideal. They could only accommodate one person at a time and so drug dealers couldn't use them which was a concern. Then the Disabilities People yelled and they had to get ones that were large enough for them. Which meant that drug dealers could use them. The French company doesn't make them like that and I think the ones they got aren't self cleaning. I think it would have been a better idea to pass a law requiring establishments to allow the disabled to use their facilities and leave the single user systems on the street. Of course that would have caused yet another kerfuffle. On 12/14/2014 03:38 PM, s3raphita@... mailto:s3raphita@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: For anyone thinking of visiting the UK be aware we have some of the most disgusting public toilets this side of a Third World hell-hole during a dysentery outbreak. I'm serious. Make sure you buy a "Radar Key" (£2:45 on Amazon) - which gets you access to toilets for the disabled. They're the only ones maintained to a decent standard apart from expensive facilities at tourist traps. Otherwise you'll have to stock up on disposable toilet seat covers, pocket tissue sachets, and you'll have to learn the art of sitting on the loo with one leg outstretched to keep the cubicle door shut as the lock is invariably broken. The best place for numerous, free and clean public toilets is Tokyo. That could be a better holiday destination. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <seerdope@...> mailto:seerdope@... wrote : Assessing civilization by it its number of toilets is a wonderful metric and embodies all that makes the United States (and Netherlands) the greatest countries in the world. Toilets are a grand testament to our technological savvy in designing billion dollar systems to rid ourselves of icky stuff. I mean its just organic crap like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and all that boring like chemistry stuff Good riddance. Far more sophisticated to use civilized chemical fertilizers. We get to to use all those magnificent big, high tech mining machines to transform the earth from mere dirt to huge craters. Ah the glories western civilization. We rock. And look at countries like india -- they produce only 10% as much CO2 per capital of the US (15% as much as the Dutch). What losers. Would you believe that I actually read "Small is Beautiful back the mid 70's. I have to laugh -- back in college I was so deluded. What a hoot. A totally looney-bin hippie manifesto. Schumaker probably hated toilets. and would have tooted graywater and growing fresh vegetables. As if !. I am glad men of the world like us see through such garbage. Came across a review the other day. I think the copious amounts of acid his mother must of taken never really left the writers brain. " Small is Beautiful was a radical challenge to the 20th century's intoxication with what Schumacher described as "gigantism". For several decades, mass production methods were producing more cheap goods than ever before; the mass media and mass culture opened up new opportunities to a wider audience than ever. It was creating bigger markets and bigger political entities. .. he believed such scale led to a dehumanisation of people and the economic systems that ordered their lives. One of the recurrent themes through the book is how modern organisations stripped the satisfaction out of work, making the worker no more than an anonymous cog in a huge machine. Craft skill was no longer important, nor was the quality of human relationship: human beings were expected to act like adjuncts to the machines of the production line. The economic system was similarly dehumanising, making decisions on the basis of profitability rather than human need... What Schumacher wanted was a people-centred economics because that would, in his view, enable environmental and human sustainability. It was a radical challenge which, like many of the ideas of the late 60s and early 70s (feminism is another example), were gradually adopted and distorted by the ongoing voracious expansion of consumer capitalism. ... a "small is beautiful" model of economic enterprise that put relationship, craft and environment at the heart of their way of working .. were later snaffled up by corporate giants. Small became cool but only as part of a branding strategy which masked the ongoing concentration of political and economic power. Gigantism has triumphed. The power of the global multinational and the financial institutions was beginning to become apparent in the early 70s, but it has grown exponentially since, unaccountable to national governments. Schumacher warned that a city's population should not rise above 500,000, but we are now living in an era of the megapolis and several cities around the world are heading towards 20m. Schumacher would be weeping over his herbal tea at the fate of his big idea. ... We yearn for economic systems within our control, within our comprehension and that once again provide space for human interaction – and yet we are constantly overwhelmed by finding ourselves trapped into vast global economic systems that are corrupting and corrupt. .
