Caganer
When they've finished they can sell the statue to the Catalans.
London gets huge Defecator Enthroned statue for World Toilet Week
A giant squatting man has been erected outside the offices of the London mayor in a bid to raise "awareness" of the toilet. The 5-metre high squatting figure next to London's Tower Bridge turns its head to look at passersby and on its face - comprising four large screens - the bending statue hosts photos of members of the …
-
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 07:04 GMT Esskay
Whilst I love the idea
Having a giant statue that appears to have been made as inoffensive as humanly possible in order to cater to the types of prudes to whom this type of awareness is targeting seems to be a bit pointless.
A more life-like figure with a straining expression and a good book in its hands would be much more appropriate.
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 11:34 GMT Peter Murphy
Re: Whilst I love the idea
Agree with you that the inoffensiveness makes the point - well, not pointless, but blunted. The concept behind the whole installation is that not everybody has access to clean toilets, and so faeces end up going where they shouldn't go: back into the mouth. This kills people by the diseases transmitted, and it's obviously a bad thing. Many can see how an abstract figure relates to the concept, but for most it's just a laff.
I agree with you about the straining, yes - but I don't know about the book. Reading books on the loo is mostly a first-world pastime, because people can keep their hands clean and the poo separate from the pages. You wouldn't do that in some dodgy WC in Calcutta shared by 30,000 other people as desperate as you. Not your favourite book, anyway. So what's my big idea to get the concept to the masses?
What I happen to notice is that the installation is made almost wholly out of white blocks. Let's just say that a brown block or five in judiciously chosen places would convey the idea of anal-to-oral disease transmission a lot, lot better. It's not nice and it's not pleasant, but then about two billion people have to live without such niceties and pleasantries. So let's not worry about offending people, shall we?
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 13:49 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Whilst I love the idea
"Reading books on the loo is mostly a first-world pastime,"...by blokes.
There, fixed it for ya.
Regarding the more serious point of this all, I think we all know that the third world has endemic problems of sanitation. And rather than spending (I guess) ten or twenty grand on a bizarre temporary statue, whoever paid for this would have achieved a whole lot more giving the money to WaterAid, the charity who actually do something about this type of problem.
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 12:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Poo facts
>Or do some of them still shit in ceramic pots as well?
The wash and blow dry part is actually only bolted on to the top of the toilet from what I can tell.. it's the same old bowl underneath. And if the .. counting.. 4 flats I've have in the land of the spraying toilet are anything to go by, no not everyone has them. Even with expensive apartments they aren't as standard. So your comment is spot on and whoever down voted you has poo on their face. The seat part seems to come in at several hundred quid at the local den-ki-ya-san. One thing the Japanese toilets all do seem to have as standard is a little sink that uses the flush water, so you can stand up, flush and wash your hands.
On another note; The bum washers might seem like a good idea.. but go and stay in a hotel and watch the spray jet as it comes out. The last time I thought about using the advanced features of those seats I got fed up of waiting for it to do it's thing, got up and saw the spray jet in all of its many many peoples shit caked glory.
-
Monday 26th November 2012 10:03 GMT crayon
Re: Poo facts
"One thing the Japanese toilets all do seem to have as standard is a little sink that uses the flush water, so you can stand up, flush and wash your hands."
I hope you mean "wash your hands, then flush using the water with which you just washed your hands with" because washing hands with water that had been used to flush a toilet would probably result in more than 10gm of feacal being consumed.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 14:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well, firstly, the traditional British shitter isn't the only flavour - several EU members still think a hole with a couple of foot pads counts as a toilet. More significantly, there's plenty of people in the world who don't have a nice safe bog, and have to shit in the gutter, behind the bushes or what have you, and I think that's what they want to highlight, rather than the toilet crimes of southern Europeans.
But I still don't see what they hope to achieve with telling me that it isn't just bears that shit in the woods.
-
Tuesday 20th November 2012 09:56 GMT Trygve
Meanwhile, on the other side of the river...
There is a tiny little memorial no-one knows about, to a man called Joseph Bazalgette who led the construction of London's sewer system, the very first modern one, saving countless lives by eliminating cholera and other diseases.while turning the Thames back into a river only brown from mud rather than human faeces.
But it would never do to promote the achievements of a white male engineer when there's FACEBOOK available.
-
Wednesday 21st November 2012 04:45 GMT johnwerneken
More folks with phones than toilets: sad but not surprising
Just shows the priorities of the rich and greedy, be they Obama's yuppies or Mitt's moneybag types: the stuff they like, that help them dominate and control, gets priority. Particularly when OTHER stuff is more important, both to them and to everybody, but the further distribution of THOSE things does not benefit THEM, as, so far, they have other means of avoiding any share of the troubles of those without toilets. But they lose a chance to profit, if people have no phone lol..
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
