Squatters' rights

Carl

Well I just hope that the cosmopolitan folks of Manchester will go the whole way and take to using stones in place of bog paper.

Tiberius

As usual, English football fans have a riposte already in place for such a lunatic scheme, namely the plaintive chant "what a f**kin' sh**hole".

While I should like to think the new toilet facilities were the intended target of the chant, the wise birds who took the decision to instal them may subliminally have been looking to present the town in its true colours.

Oedipus Rex

Er..."in order to make the area’s Asian population feel more at home."

I never realised they came via rural France?

As for 'cosmopolitanism' I think most public toilets are anyway - I mean, when did you last see a so called white Brit 'indigene' cleaning a toilet?

DougS

The only place I've seen these contraptions is in Italy of all places. At Milan Central Station it's all they've got. I know, I checked out the whole place looking for a 'real' toilet - to no avail!

Using one was a traumatic experience so I won't go into details, suffice to say I try never to be caught short in Milano Centrale and I'm now adding Rochdale to that list.

DougS

Off topic Rod but that Brigstocke person attempted to disparage you on Andrew Marr's show this morning.

I assume (hope) that 'this means war'.

AndyinBrum

Sounds like quite a few places in France too

Frank P

Rod

"Nile pans??" There comes a time of life when such contraptions would become pile pans - particularly when the ham strings start to weaken.

Definitely not good for the Chalfonts!

E Hart

I regret to say that the male population of Britain showns no sign of being properly potty trained whatever their age or ethnicity. These places are stinking holes whichever way you look at it.

Fergus Pickering

Wen I was in Italy twenty-five years ago (Marina di Ravenna actually, a nice place) the cheap hotel had these things. It adverised a shower which I coud never find till I asked. 'Look u, Sir'. I looked up and there was indeed a shower above me, lending a new dimension to the expression 'a shower, a shit, and a shave.' You could have all three simultaneously, without moving an inch. I'm sure Italy's new immigrants will seek out place sof this nature, and good luck to them.

Noa

Nothing happens for a decade that two stories come along at once, well almost.

Rochdale, the town that ushered in the real demise of Brown, for belittling the immigration concerns of 'that bigoted woman', Mrs Gillian Duffy, proves that story was no flash in the pan by once again squatting firmly in the face of controversy.

How wrong those of us who thought that the place was just a dump were.

Mrs Mugabe

Who won the Spectator debate on whether or not to get the f@@k out of the UK, Rod?

PYRAMID

Were the plumbers who installed the Nile Pans paid a turd&half?

Baron

you insular, prejudiced, parochial indigenous Brits, you know not what’s good for you. Squatting actually helps to clear the bowels better than sitting, and often sitting on a filthy seat, too.

The hole is common in Japan, often one has the choice even in top hotels, and one would be hard put to find a cleaner country, and cleaner toilets free of flies than the Land of the Rising Sun.

Fran P @ 1.07: you would be free of your poorly functioning hamstring if you adopted the hole in the ground from youth.

Mycroft

Do the people whom these are supposedly provided for have them in their own homes? No? I thought not. From my experience of them in odd corners of the world, they have nothing to recommend them in any case. One might that this was the kind of thing that these people weree coming to Europe to escape.

Doppelganger

I too have used a bog like this before: major Spanish train station circa 1980. It was a nightmare to use. And full of diarrhoea before I used it.

Commondog

Latest development on this is that one of the holes in the ground has been stolen.

Detectives are looking into it.

Commondog

In a further incident in this spate of lavatorial crime in Rochdale, it's reported that the toilet bowl in the police station has disappeared.

In a statement to the press, a spokesman made an appeal for information, saying that as yet, they had nothing to go on.

Doppelganger

Baron
An interesting post. When I worked for a Japanese megacorp decades ago, and visted Japan (which included using bogs in a variety of setting (including houses, companies, bars, nightclubs), I never came across anything but a sit down bog. Indeed one of the pleasures of the day after a late night and an early start (when peace and quiet was at a premium) was to visit the top floor of our GB headquarters and use the Directors' sit down facilties.

DeeJay

Surely anything which reduces the chances of catching VD from toilet seats should be applauded...

Baron

Commondog:

Come on, come clean, you’ve made it up.

anne allan

Don't forget the stinking bin for used loo paper.
Or, keep it even more authentic and use your left hand.

Jsmill

My father attends two events at the same venue in New Zealand on a regular basis. One is the car fair, where a very cosmopolitan crowd attends and buy and sell cars at dirt cheap prices. The other is the English classic car show, attended almost exclusively by people of my father's demographic - elderly ex pat Englishmen. Despite age inflicting more difficulties in the internal plumbing for the latter, during the second event the toilets are immaculate throughout the day, whereas within minutes of the former event beginning the toilets are rendered absolutely disgusting.

This has not assisted in making my father a fan of multiculturalism.

Richard of Moscow

Where will it all end? Are UK-based Australians going to demand traditional Aussie dunnies, with redback spiders under the seats and rent boys' phone numbers on the walls?

David Ossitt

DeeJay

“Surely anything which reduces the chances of catching VD from toilet seats should be applauded...”

Bless!

How old are you DeeJay?

Mummy told you about catching nasty VD from toilet seats to keep you out of such nasty places as the public loo's, you can and do meet the strangest of people in them and to scare you into keeping your pants on until you get home.

You acquire Venereal Diseases in the time honoured way of touching the sex organs of someone who is infected with your own private parts.

thomas

@Baron

You sir, are an Idiot.

The squat toilets are not nearly so popular in japan as wikipedia would have you believe. You will find not a single one in tokyo, kyoto, sapporo or yokohama.

The only place you will find them is at train stations in an extremely rural area. They are no longer built and so the only ones that still exist were the ones built 40 years ago that have fallen into disrepair. These are never cleaned and most do not even have a door, either to the the toilets collectivlely or to the stall of the individual toilets.

The urinals are positioned so that anybody, man or woman, walking past the toilets on the way to the train has a perfect view of any gentleman taking a piss and every man taking a piss has a perfect view of those who are taking a shit.

Also, neither toilet paper (you have to take your own cleenex) nor soap is provided.

Jono

When I read another article about these squat pans I wondered how some ideological war between religious groups and health and safety zealots would not break out.
Aside from the fact your closer to the floors of public toilets, the risk of slipping, potential health hazzard for those with back problems...cultural diversity? More like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

ex-Rochdalian

Rochdale always was a poor town but it used to have 'civic pride'(I'm not being sentimental, and I hate 'our Gracie'). Sadly the likes of Mrs Duffy are very much in the minority, replaced by a town hall devoted to multiculturalism, and, according to Private Eye, several corrupt councillors. I'm glad I don't live there any more
The Rochdale Pioneers must be turning in their graves.

Peter Crawford

The worlds biggest skidmark is out the back of the French Alpine Hut near Jebl Toubkal in Morocco.
It is a very multi-cultural skidmark. Men and women from many nations have contributed to its glory.
If you want to climb it in winter you will need axe and crampons. And gloves.

DeeJay

David Ossitt
Thank you; that's an interesting and modern insight on the transmission of sexual diseases but it doesn't explain why so many toilet seats have been violently removed or why many still go to extraordinary lengths to avoid physical contact with the furniture...
Perhaps Mummy and the burghers of Rochdale know better.

Dixon

As long as they are built to the same standard of percelein and plumbing as the seat variety (which they are in the urban areas of civilised Asian countries)I think this is definitely a superior type of toilet. Who in hells name would want to rub arses with hundreds of randomly selected strangers...which is in effect what happens if you sit on a WC! Just think about it! I did, so long ago in my formativ years that I cannot remember even once in my life performing such a disgusting act of mutuality. No, my entire life Ive been of a hover.

The Romans though, went to the other extreme. They had shared communal bench bogs with a shared sponge on a stick for "hygiene".

A bit like they do today in Iran. Where its a shared bucket and flannel.

Now that is indeed a truly alarming multi-cultural prospect.

But, come on The Liddler, admit it, not everything Western is superior. And do they in the Far East surround toilets with CARPET for hells bells, surely the origin of the expression "bog". Genuinely a disgusting aspect of English lifestyle.

Oedipus Rex

I've now decided that, like so many pressing issues, it should be put to a referendum.
Why?
Simply because all our local and national spokespeople will have to explain their 'positions' to the public!

Fergus Pickering

Well, I don't know about you, Dixon, but if I tried to shit in one of those things I should fall over. I knew a girl who always covered the toilet seat with a kind of swaddling of toilet paper. Perhaps you should try that. Also, how would you READ in an eastern hole in the ground toilet?

Stomes eh? And if he asks for bread, will you give him a stone? Aha!

I think that the explanation that you caught VD from a toilet seat is only accepted from ministers of religion

maddy1

Amazing, this must be untrue just as some
countries are trying to wean their natives off these.....so typical of Brown and his stuff!

poppy tupper

David Ossitt, you dunce. DeJay was making a joke. Sorry, I forgot, you need intelligence to recognise a joke.

itstrueekse

Down here in Mandelaland toilets have been much in the news lately. The city of Capetown provided a whole bunch of them to a local sqatter camp (informal settlement, to you), but required the residents to screen them. Needless to say, there is now a war between the city council and the ANC (governing party, but not in Capetown) because of the insult implicit in dirt poor (read black) people's obvious lack of any need for privacy when voiding.
There is a lesson here for all former colonial oppressors - do not, under any circumstances, get involved in the provision of such conveniences. Leave it to providers of other amenities as a by-product - London transport, for instance, who provide them and then promptly close them 'for your convenience'.

rod liddle

Dixon - no, indeed, I agree. Tell you the truth I'm not keen on lavatory paper, digusting business. But as I haven't defecated since 1972, the problem does not impinge directly.

A Bear

I'd rather sh*t in the woods.

adrian drummond

Sorry to raise the spectre of 'Health & Safety' but i know my father would have problems using such a facility. He's 84 and unsteady on his legs. How are the elderly meant to use the squat method without finding themselves in the shit?

DougS

A Bear
July 19th, 2010 10:53am

"I'd rather sh*t in the woods"

Brilliant, but who are you really, before you quickly registered the name 'A Bear'?

Dixon

"rod liddle
July 19th, 2010 10:21am
Dixon - no, indeed, I agree. Tell you the truth I'm not keen on lavatory paper, digusting business. But as I haven't defecated since 1972, the problem does not impinge directly."

I take it then that you stopped after reading "Diary of a Genius" by Sslvador Dali (published in or about that year). I briefly considered his adive but suybsequent events seem to have confirmed that I was right to discard it. And most people thought he was on a nasal tube because he was too ill to eat!

A Bear

DougS I usually blog on ursine matters: it is rare that Mr Liddle's blog strays into my field of activity.

rod liddle

A Bear: apologies, I've been remiss about bears recently.

A Bear

I'm back off to the woods now. I feel a dump coming on.

Noa paper

Ah Rod

Farcus Pigscock will now be saying to all and sundry that you're full of it.

Wily Seatrout Cole

Noa
Marcus B looks pretty full of it himself, with that big fat posterior. Give him an enema, he'd be three feet tall.

DougS

A Bear: Stop you're cracking me up!

Or should that be 'crapping me up'?

Noa Motionless

Wily Seatrout cole
With 'Spare the'Rod as his enema, he'll be a lot less than three feet tall..

Oedipus 'Poetry in Motion' Rex

I can't bear all this asinine humour.

As for Prigstock, he's the enema of the people.

Baron

Thomas @ 8.08:

the idiot had lived in Japan for years and left just as the century was coming to an end. Unless you are living there now, the idiot sticks to his observation whatever you or Wiki may say.

A Bear:

where the hell you find the woods to defecate in, in this country, ha?

Fritz Krauthammer

What about the Germans? They need their "shelf" pans. Want to know why?

JS Mill

A Bear - I'd watch it. In certain other countries, bears are still treated appallingly and there's every chance of some Borat character turning up here, doing the same to you, and claiming multiculturalism as a defence if any of the animal rights lot cause trouble.

On the other hand, you might be better off overseas, since the animal rights lot rarely accept cruel practices on the ground of local culture, whereas a lot of so-called human rights advocates (Amnesty International among them) are quite happy to turn a blind eye to any abuse of humans overseas if it falls within the description of "cultural practices".

But depending on what type of bear you are, you might not have to worry so much. The Californian pit fights of the C19 during the gold rush there showed unequivocally that the Grizzly is top of the tree as far as mammilian predators go anyway - able to kill even Spanish bulls and African lions in seconds.

ginger

So, Rod, are you saying you are anal retentive?

A Bear

JS Mill
My good friends, and snacks, the squirrels have recently established their right not to be treated cruelly in this country. So, apparently, you can't drown me. You could put me in a paper bag and bash me over the head with a shovel, I understand, but you will have to find a pretty big paper bag first. And, of course, catch me.
Baron: when I can't find a wood, I use a garden. There is often the added convenience of a cat: first scoop out the insides for a tasty nibble; then use the pelt for a handy toilet tissue.

Osred

1st time I used these things I got the shock of my life. Stuff goes down, giant cockroaches jump out. Kept the queues down I suppose.

Hope they dont catch on. I've just got my 3 year old potty trained and they ain't toddler friendly.

The Dog

A Bear -10:31am

So that's where the cat went.

Thanks.

I'll bet he was furr-ious!

woof woof!

JSMill

A Bear

It's true that the fox hunting ban and this latest bit about squirrels might lead creatures such as yourself to assume you are above us humans in the pecking order, but you've missed the distinction in my previous post - those who hunted foxes or top squirrels are seen as English toffs (the former particularly, but the latter too since they are rich enough to own gardens). Therefore, as long as it is the same sort harassing you, you should be ok.

But not if Borat and his chums chain you up and force you to dance, since they will then happily rest on the defence of "[minority] cultural" practice, and the Guardianistas won't touch them. Which is why we still have halal and kosher meat and swans had better watch it.

As far as other countries are concerned, however, strangely, the opposite applies. There are endless campaigns for improving animal husbandry (??) in the 3rd world, that often have louder voices than human rights groups. Eg Paul MacCartney likes to complain about animal rights in China, though there are a few Tibetans who probably wish he'd spare them a thought or two.