Greens Eat Meat – Shock!

Mrs Weggis bakes exceedingly good Steak & Kidney Pies. Served with locally sourced seasonal vegetables for a BALANCED diet and washed down with …….. English Beer!

Busted Flush

Barkingside 21 posts on World Toilet Day, which is today.

The bit that caught my eye on the WTD site was this:

We need women's rights.
Studies show that women take longer to use restrooms than men. If there are three toilets for each gender, though, the women's room will have a far longer line. You've seen it happen in stadiums, theaters, and malls - that's because archaic building codes don't consider women's physiological needs.

That may be true but the inherent assumption in that statement is that there IS an equal number of toilets in the first place. Of course, judging by the language and spelling that site appears to be USA based so it may well be different over there.

Here’s what I wrote back in 2007, but the exercise started in 1992 and continues without any different result to date.

Ladies Toilets
Now why is a Grumpy old man blogging on this subject? Principally because he’s spent a good deal of his time waiting for Mrs Weggis to emerge from said facility. It’s not the girls fault, chaps, it’s ours.
It all started when Weggis was walking down the corridor with a female colleague deep in conversation, we turned right through a door and Weggis ended up in the ladies toilet. It covered exactly the same floor space as the gents on the alternate floors, it had two enclosed WCs the same as the Gents, but in place of the six urinals was a row of basins and mirrors. The girls had two outlets, the boys had eight. This is what the male architects think the girls want to do in the lav, fix their make-up and wash their hands. Wrong! They want to have a pee.
Weggis was not amused and tasked Mrs Weggis to describe the layout of every loo she entered. Sure enough, though the numbers varied, there were always more outlets in the Gents than in the Ladies.
OK, urinals don’t take up as much room as a WC, so allocate a bit more floor space to the ladies, it’s not difficult, boys, and it’s a lot less hassle.
So, next time you’re pacing up and down while the missus is in a queue for the ladies ponder on the lack of female architects, and the idiot male architects who are responsible for your situation.

Do Students Learn Anything?

I have been meaning to follow up this post on “Direct Action” for some time - it’s been floating around in the background processor part of my brain – but three events this week have now pushed it back into my real-time processor and spurred me into action.

First, I have been accused of “attacking” Caroline Lucas in that post. Strange isn’t it that when you voice a point of view that someone disagrees with, it is an “attack” as opposed to constructive criticism or questioning. But there again the language of such people is embedded in aggression and confrontation. They want to “smash” things they don’t like.

Second was the Student Fees demonstration on Wednesday, which got a little bit out of hand. Now, there has been much commentary on the blogosphere about this, so I’ll just say that opinions range from complete condemnation to a view that you have to do this sort of stuff to get noticed – “peaceful demos don’t work”. But then neither do violent ones. The Poll Tax was abandoned not because of the riots, but because of the realities of electoral politics – and the Miners lost.

Which brings me to what I want to say [third event to follow]

It was about the turn of the century that I realised that the Green Party and Greenpeace are two complimentary sides of the same coin. The Green Party is there for Political Action and Greenpeace for Direct Action. And never the twain shall meet.

The thing is that Greenpeace are really good at Direct Action and they have a lot of experience at it. The other thing is that they don’t break [smash] anything, at least as far as I know. They put their boat in between the Whaler and the Whales. They climb up buildings, Chimney stacks, Oil rigs etc and unfurl banners. OK they might have to take cutters to a fence to get in but that is about the sum of their criminal damage, unless anyone else knows better. And they get air time – they get noticed.

The Green Party supports “Non-Violent” Direct Action but I think they should be very, very careful about how they define what that means and put clear green water between themselves and those who use any excuse for wanton vandalism. For them the game is politics and they should stick to it.

And that third event:

The Rainbow Warrior is dying, it’s nearing the end of its life and needs to be replaced [wipes tear from cheek]. So, here’s a shameless plug for the appeal.

Quote of the Day

On the Big Society.

"I am quite happy to help my elderly neighbor with their shopping, but I'm not gonna wipe their arse."

- local Labour councillor who will be named when or if I get his/her permission.