A New Roll for Schools

I read recently that pupils at a primary school in the southern county of Cork, in Ireland, are being asked to bring their own toilet paper to school to help save money.  Now that’s a bit of lateral thinking, isn’t it?  Perhaps they should each bring a hand towel as well, so that the school doesn’t have to provide paper towels for hand washing. Then, of course, there is the soap.  I can imagine the little children arriving at school with their school bag full of books, their lunch box, and a “clean-up” bag containing their toilet paper, towel, and soap.

I can also imagine the toilet roll fights when the teacher steps out of the room momentarily.  Once kids have at their disposal a product so interesting and handy to use, their creative energies will know no limits.  You go, kids!

Dogs Will Do What Dogs Doo

In a related item, Taiwan is offering shopping vouchers to volunteers who collect dog waste in a bid to clean up a perennial problem caused by the large number of stray animals across the island.  They’re offering vouchers worth $3 per kg in most areas, and $3 per half kg in some areas of city. I don’t even want to think about what sort of arrangements they must have set up for aspiring shoppers to weigh and redeem  their bags of ‘dog waste’ for vouchers.     Dear me.

Burning bunnies helps keep people warm and cozy

“The city of Stockholm shoots thousands of wild rabbits spread across the green spaces of the Swedish capital and sends their bodies to be burned as heating fuel, a practice which has enraged animal rights groups.”

The company handling the operation, said the rabbits were ground up with the cadavers of other beasts, mainly farm animals such as cows which have been deemed unfit for human consumption, reduced to flammable form and incinerated. “Just as with us people … the bodies contain a lot of fat and fat has exactly the same energy content as normal heating oil for instance”
Reuters Wed Oct 14, 2009

Now that sounds eminently sensible to me.  We have a real rabbit problem here in Australia.  Why not make use of the fuel?  Of course, carried to its logical conclusion, things could get a bit out of hand, I suppose.  It brings to mind my favorite short story, by Ambrose Bierce, called Oil of Dog.  You can read it at   http://www.ambrosebierce.org/dog.htm

I’m thinking the City Fathers in Taiwan should be talking to the City Fathers in Stockholm.                   MM