January 2010
→ Privy
(22nd January 2010)
The privy - named for privacy, of course, like the closed-doors Privy Council - apparently can add value to your house. Extraordinary (and a lovely line about the Muckies pub, for bin-men and dung-carriers). But only as long as there's a proper toilet inside too. My mother still talks about the catalogue pages hanging from a nail in her grandfather's privy. She also tells ...
(15th January 2010)
Poo cakes, poo power. Journalists love this stuff. The BBC discovers again that sludge can create energy. It also seems to think that Thames Water is the only one doing it. Take that, Anglian Water and United Utilities.
(6th January 2010)
I'll be speaking at a panel about manual scavenging on 19 January at a WaterAid/Channel 4 event. It's invitation-only so journalists should apply to WaterAid press office for an invite, if hearing about cleaning latrines with your bare hands just after breakfast is your thing. [click on title for the flyer...]
→ Tamiflu
(5th January 2010)
Japanese researchers decided to test sewage effluent and rivers for traces of Tamiflu. And guess what they found. Too much exposure to Tamiflu by humans and animals increases the risk of drug-resistant strains developing. Birds are a worry: "Wildlife – including waterfowl that can transmit the flu – are exposed to the low and continuous doses of OC during the flu season. This exposure ...
→ 2010
(3rd January 2010)
Happy new year. It is time to work on something as well as shit. But before I do, here is Aldous Huxley (quoted by Jamie Benidickson's excellent The Culture of Flushing):
"The art of living together without turning the city into a dunghill has to be repeatedly discovered."
And here is a quote, possibly apocryphal, from Henry Ford. Why? Because I like it.
"If I'd asked my ...