Toilet design - national preferences

[Dave Liquorice]

Just pointing out that France is not unique in using the squat loo.

Posh western style hotels I guess... I was travelling light and cheaply, less than =A310/day all in, food & drink, room (inc the optional heating) and bus/train fares.

Whimp. B-) I did decide that taking a shower in one place was pushing it a bit too far. It was a small shower cubicle next to the coal fired boiler, it was dark and there was no light, peering in using the distant ambient light, I couldn't decide if the walls and floor where black with coal dust or mould. Decided I'd probably come out muckier than I went in.

[MuddyMike]

f>loor where black with coal dust or mould. Decided I'd probably come

Ah but have you ever showered where you need to take half a pint of paraffin with you to fuel the burner on the wall that heats the water?

Mike

[Ret.]

I agree 100% with that. Allow children to have a childhood before pushing adult issues on to them. The way things are going, they will be wanting to teach sex education in pre-school nurseries next.

[Ret.]

[Andy Cap]

Whilst I don't fundamentally disagree, there is another apparent difference which I suspect changes the way such information is employed. Continental children seems to socialise in groups, choosing not to immediately form relationships, whereas too many UK kids seem to interpret it as encouragement to experiment. Delivered in isolation I suspect it's unhelpful, whereas as part of a whole package including personal and social responsibility, no doubt it's an essential element. My bottom line is, if you have children, it's *your* responsibility to pay for them and that message is just as important.

Andy C

[Derek G.]

Just in case anybody is having nightmares over it commercially produced pork won't give you worms. But in rural Germany / Poland they would keep 2 or 3 pigs and allow them to route around in the effluent from the khasi. Pigs will eat "Night Soil" see.

The dirty bastards, little wonder that infections and parasitic infestations were endemic.

Derek G

[MM]

Even at that age, PLEASE stop telling the kid that his/her sibling-to-be is "inside mummy's tummy". Say instead, the baby is growing in a special place inside mummy. Once you start lying to kids, that's when Philip Larkin's words come to mind:

[MM]

Huh, Britain is, then, full of complete idiots, because the review nurse I first went to see when they invited me for a colonoscopy was overjoyed at getting a new client. She said the majority of cards they sent out never came back.

Doesn't surprise me. In Britain we have doctors despairing at trying to find out what a patient is complaining of because said patient cannot describe body parts or functions (too embarrassed).

How many men simply cannot visit their GP with an STI! And then you get the programmes on TV where things have been allowed to get out of hand and the man's willy is practically unrecognisable as a willy. Same with girls' bits, too. Again, this is ALL because parents REFUSE to discuss these things with their children from a very early age and thus the fear of embarrassment is perpetuated from one generation to the next.

Is there anything more ridiculous than the way many British people change into their swimming costumes on the beach? Desperately using a large towel so that not a mm² of illegal flesh is displayed.

MM

[MM]

Again, why so squeamish? Think about an endescope being shoved up your arse or down your throat and then think of all the other arses and throats it's visited. (Actually, to be fair, they DO use a different type for each procedure!)

MM

[MM]

Couldn't you have used a magnet for that? Need a really powerful magnet? Dig out an old hard drive and dismantle it. The magnet in that is VERY strong! I've even used one to help tease out a tiny metal splinter from my thumb.

MM

[ARWadsworth]

[PeterC]

I've had both (not at the same time!). Also done the screening test - at least with that you get a couple of free lollipop sticks for future use.

[Jules Richardson]

Hmm, I take it you mean the ones typically found in public, rather than residential? All the residential ones I've found here just have a flap- valve in the bottom of the cistern and work by dumping the entire contents of the cirstern into the pan as quickly as possible (which is probably where they'd fall foul of UK regs, because when the flap valve wears or scales up they can piss away enormous quantities of water).

And yes, they are normally connected directly to the supply rather than a holding tank - although usually via a valve and narrow pipe, so their filling doesn't disturb other uses of the plumbing.

I think the common provision of plungers is just a cultural thing rather than anything to do with poor design. Same with the way that US [public] urinals all have motion-activated flush or a handle that you're supposed to use - it's a courtesy thing, where in the UK I remember very sporadic automatic flushes on urinals and toilets where people would make a mess and assume that some cleaner would just come along at the end of the day and sort it out.

cheers

Jules

[MM]

Fairy stories are okay, because, as you may or may not know, Santa is just pretend . But why invent a fairy story for the way babies are born? They are anything but just pretend.

MM

[Ret.]

A young child has no idea what a 'womb' is. The area between chest and crotch is the 'Tummy'. Telling very young children that mummy has a baby in her tummy (when the child can see the swelling) makes more sense to them.

[Ret.]

Flap valves are freely available on sale in the UK. I replaced the old-fashioned syphon on our last WC (since completely replaced) with one:

produce a much more efficient flush than normal syphons.

[ARWadsworth]

Unless the young child asks more questions then that is all they need to know for now. If they ask more questions then answer them.

Maybe not like this though:-)

[Steve Walker]

There's nothing wrong with telling lies to simplify things. If you've ever read the Science of Discworld books (they are really books about Earth science not Discworld at all) there is a repeated theme showing how we tell children things that they can understand rather than the truth, so that they can learn enough grounding to understand the more difficult concepts later. In this Teachers are referred to as having an honoured place in society as "Liars to Children," as at each stage they teach something that in later years is revealed to be a gross simplification (or even completely wrong) and that without that simplification, the children would not have been able to continue to a stage where they could understand the next level.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Yep, the first thing that my A Level Chemistry teacher said was "Forget what they taught you at O level, it's wrong".

[John MacLeod]

In my experience across North America the typical toilets fitted in domestic premises block very frequently and the flapper valves are notoriously poor.

What is superb is the typical American double-cuffed plunger. Never seen one in this country. Last time I was over I took one back with me -- the one I took back with me 33 years ago is forever being borrowed. Nothing to equal it, IMHO.