How can you ensure the success of a toilet? Maybe…call it a ‘Superloo‘?
Well maybe not.
In the news today is one such ‘super’ toilet which cost my hometown over half a million euro to install — plus €250,000 in subsequent maintenance fees — but which, according to official figures, made just €300 per year in revenue for the local council.
You might expect true quality-control excellence for this kind of expenditure. However, according to local newspapers, the lavatory had something of a ‘chequered past‘:
In its early years, the door swung open on a woman who was spending a penny inside.
Even worse,
…one occasion, [it destroyed] a woman’s clothes when its cleaning jets went off at the wrong time.
All told, the superloo even failed at being an actual toilet, becoming better known to locals as a convenient place for after-hours sex…
…despite the fact that there was supposed to be a sensor in place to prevent two people entering at the one time.
So now the city fathers want to pass this whole mess onto another town. Maybe the people there will have more regard for what a Superloo has to offer.
“You’re welcome to it . . . take it . . . we don’t want it . . . it’s all yours,” said Cllr Killilea.
Yes, this is the type of issue that, in Ireland, local politicians want to have their say on. The council debate even broke down on political party lines.
Councillors from Fianna Fáil — the republican nationalist party founded after the Irish civil war — wanted to move the toilet. Meanwhile, those from Fine Gael — the liberal-conservative Christian democratic party founded to represent the post-civil war pro-Treaty opposition — wanted to not even talk about it.
Gives a whole new perspective on ‘fumbling in a greasy till‘.
Brian Hughes is an academic psychologist and university professor in Galway, Ireland, specialising in stress, health, and the application of psychology to social issues. He writes widely on the psychology of empiricism and of empirically disputable claims, especially as they pertain to science, health, medicine, and politics.