Flushing away our future

Sheryl Crow made the headlines recently, but predictably enough it wasn't for her music. Rather, she has suggested that we could all contribute to reducing energy consumption by being a little more sparing in our use of the loo roll. One square per session would be her guide, "except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required."

This has provoked surprisingly strong reactions from American commentators, some dubbing her "The Toilet Taleban" as they assert their constitutional rights to use as many trees as possible when "drawing an ace" in the bathroom. For a country so squeamish of bodily functions as to eshew the use of the T-word altogether, this is commendable frankness, though with current average use of 8.6 squares per session by Americans (according to research by Charmin), Sheryl has quite a way to go before she realises her dream.

While doing some work with Kimberly-Clark a few years ago, I found out an important cultural difference between Europe and the USA over the use of loo roll. Apparently in Europe we tend to be "folders" whereas the Americans are "scrunchers". This has big implications for the types of paper manufactured on each side of the Atlantic, and, given that scrunching ought to be more wasteful, I would expect the US to be the most profligate country in this area. Surprisingly, the USA is only second in the list of biggest consumers of paper per head of population - heading the list is... Belgium. Clearly I am not the only person to have suffered the consequences of eating dodgy mussels in Bruges.

Blood Steyns

Mark Steyn has been offering his latest words of wisdom on the Virginia Tech campus shooting:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article

For those of you unfamiliar with his work, he used to be a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, until it became a bit left wing for him. So he seems to have moved the the USA from his native Canada, where he can find a larger audience for his famously perspicacious brand of right-wing mentalism.

Virginia Tech's great crime, according to Steyn, was to put signs up proclaiming the campus a "gun-free zone", which naturally lulled all the students into a false sense of security. One may argue about the benefits of placing public aspirational messages around a college campus - indeed you may even call it fatuous. But it scarcely makes you more vulnerable to complacency about mass murder, any more than seeing street preachers proclaim the end of the world makes me check the news for an apocalypse.

It turns out the real reason for the tragic loss of life at Virginia Tech (VT) was because there weren't enough guns. Had "the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT", he goes on "someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived."

Of course Cho Seung-hui would also have had to remember to wear his "would-be mass murderer" T-Shirt that day as well, just so the cops didn't add to the mayhem by shooting the wrong armed student and anyone caught in the crossfire.

Booty-ful

Two months after the importation of Bird Flu into the UK via a Bernard Matthews plant in Suffolk, we learn he's going to get his comeuppance. According to the BBC: "no specific proven source has been found but the reports says the most likely explanation is that the infection came from the importation of turkey meat from Hungary". Let's just clarify that for a moment - this is a Bernard Matthews farm in Hungary importing livestock to a Bernard Matthews farm in the UK - where the outbreak occurred.

So surely the government has come down like a ton of bricks on Bernard Matthews? Why of course: the company will get £589,000 compensation for the birds compulsorily slaughtered to prevent the spread of bird flu.

Clearly this is a tricky problem, and not a reflection on the bizarrely sacred position of agriculture as a business. After all, imagine if, say, a sausage company had been accused of producing sausages infected with e-coli. How much compensation do you think they would have been entitled to?

Onward Christian Soldiers

Reporting on yesterday's shooting at Virginia Tech University, this morning's first edition of the Metro described the shooter as carrying "an ungodly amount of ammunition". Presumably if he'd just been packing a couple of clips the Lord would have smiled sweetly upon his work.

Lookalike

A new TV show has started on CBeebies, the BBC's TV channel dedicated to the under-5s. It stars an eco-super hero called Tommy Zoom, and charts his battles with the villain Polluto. The first time I watched this programme, I was struck by a resemblance to a certain leading British politician. Maybe it's my overactive imagination, but this couldn't be some subtle indoctrination, could it? A way of getting back at the Government after the humiliating climbdown over the Andrew Gilligan affair?

Polluto and The Prime Minister - separated at birth?