MM wrote:

There is NO excuse. Parents happily teach their children to wash their
hands before meals and after using the toilet. They teach them to
cross the road safely, not to bolt their food, treat others politely
and so on. Yet when it comes to one of the most important aspects of
human life, they're too embarrassed to speak and instead come up with
daft explanations like the baby is in mummy's tummy. I think, however,
that this is peculiar to Anglo-Saxon countries -- maybe because we,
as I have said in uk.legal, are thick beyond measure. I'm sure that
one will find the opposition to sex education for children in schools
is mainly represented by the chav section of British society, as more
educated people will not have such inhibitions. The Scandinavians, the
Dutch, even the Germans are much more enlightened, and they are in the
main better educated than British people.

MM

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

On 8 May 2011 10:04:32 GMT, Huge wrote:

On 2011-05-08, MM wrote:


Actually, given the German consumption of pork, it was so you could check for
worms.

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 *******s, little wonder that infections and parasitic
infestations were endemic.

Derek G

On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

MM

On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Bernard Peek wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in the
1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the front of the
ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on the ledge. This
was apparently designed so that you could check for blood and
thereby pre-empt any serious medical condition. (The Germans
were/are extremely finickety about their health.) That design
seems to have vanished now, since all the German houses I
frequent nowadays have a "normal" UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in the
NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear samples of
poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation in the bin,
preferring not to know, and some of those statistically will die early
of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but only a
complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

On Sun, 8 May 2011 20:33:52 +0100, Mike Barnes
wrote:

Ret. :
MM wrote:

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in the
NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear samples of
poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation in the bin,
preferring not to know, and some of those statistically will die early
of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but only a
complete idiot would not participate in the test.

If you've ever discovered that a crown's come off your tooth, and the
only place it could have gone is down your throat, you'll know that
things can get less pleasant. (Yes, it's now back in my mouth :-).

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

On Sun, 08 May 2011 23:47:25 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Sun, 8 May 2011 20:33:52 +0100, Mike Barnes wrote:

If you've ever discovered that a crown's come off your tooth, and the
only place it could have gone is down your throat, you'll know that
things can get less pleasant. (Yes, it's now back in my mouth :-).

He he, I wonder how many people now have their keyboards in soak
after up chucking on 'em?

Not sure which is worse fertelling through your own poo or someone
elses. I've done the latter after the lad swallowed a 3/8" dia ball
bearing.

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

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

--
Adam

On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

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.

--
Kev

Jules Richardson wrote:
On Sat, 07 May 2011 23:40:14 -0700, David WE Roberts wrote:

Travelling in the USA at the moment and the toilets over here are
different from those in the UK but reasonably consistent.

Firstly they are a much shallower pan than the average UK bog, and
secondly they are generally viciously siphonic.

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 **** away enormous
quantities of water).

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:

http://www.allplumbingsupplies.co.uk.../prod_849.html

They produce a much more efficient flush than normal syphons.

--
Kev

Ret. wrote:
MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

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.

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:-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDoQFcQEpOQ

--
Adam

On 09/05/2011 09:43, MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

MM

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

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100, wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in the
1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the front of the
ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on the ledge. This
was apparently designed so that you could check for blood and
thereby pre-empt any serious medical condition. (The Germans
were/are extremely finickety about their health.) That design
seems to have vanished now, since all the German houses I
frequent nowadays have a "normal" UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in the
NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear samples of
poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation in the bin,
preferring not to know, and some of those statistically will die early
of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but only a
complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open about
such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking around the
house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes to my body, I am
far, far less prudish than my wife - who's parents did talk to her about
her body and sex (her mother was a midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me intense
itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my scrotum - I had
no problem at all stripping off in front of the female GP (and the four
female students that she had with her!) or the dermatologist that I was
referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals were
around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and crossed the
channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the toilets, but French
men continued to use them - so I just did the same.

SteveW

On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:01:53 +0100, Steve Walker wrote:

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.

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

--
Cheers
Dave.

On May 9, 2:16*pm, Jules Richardson
wrote:
On Sat, 07 May 2011 23:40:14 -0700, David WE Roberts wrote:
Travelling in the USA at the moment and the toilets over here are
different from those in the UK but reasonably consistent.

Firstly they are a much shallower pan than the average UK bog, and
secondly they are generally viciously siphonic.

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 **** 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

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.

On Mon, 9 May 2011 19:44:16 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

A young child has no idea what a 'womb' is.

So explain it, then! (Duh!) A young child has no idea, until it's
explained, what ANYthing is! That is why children the world over are
CONSTANTLY asking questions, questions, questions as soon as they can
string two words together.

The area between chest and
crotch is the 'Tummy'.

NO, IT ISN'T! What a RIDICULOUS statement!

Telling very young children that mummy has a baby in
her tummy (when the child can see the swelling) makes more sense to them.

Well, the child obviously *believes* what his or her parents say,
because (s)he trusts the parents, but lying to children to save having
to explain a fundamental part of humanity is fundamentally BAD
practice.

However, your response just shows how far Britain has to go to be in
the same league as most other countries in Europe.

MM

On Mon, 9 May 2011 19:55:07 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

Ret. wrote:
MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

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.

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:-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDoQFcQEpOQ

Try educating yourselves, for God's sake!

quote
When should sex education start?

Sex education that works starts early, before young people reach
puberty, and before they have developed established patterns of
behaviour. [refs in article] The precise age at which information
should be provided depends on the physical, emotional and intellectual
development of the young people as well as their level of
understanding. What is covered and also how, depends on who is
providing the sex education, when they are providing it, and in what
context, as well as what the individual young person wants to know
about. [ref in article]

It is important for sex education to begin at a young age and also
that it is sustained. Giving young people basic information from an
early age provides the foundation on which more complex knowledge is
built up over time. For example, when they are very young, children
can be informed about how people grow and change over time, and how
babies become children and then adults, and this provides the basis on
which they understand more detailed information about puberty provided
in the pre-teenage years. They can also when they are young, be
provided with information about viruses and germs that attack the
body. This provides the basis for talking to them later about
infections that can be caught through sexual contact.
Does sex education at an early age encourage young people to have sex?

Some people are concerned that providing information about sex and
sexuality arouses curiosity and can lead to sexual experimentation.
However, in a review of 48 studies of comprehensive sex and STD/HIV
education programmes in US schools, there was found to be strong
evidence that such programmes did not increase sexual activity. Some
of them reduced sexual activity, or increased rates of condom use or
other contraceptives, or both. [refs in article] It is important to
remember that young people can store up information provided at any
time, for a time when they need it later on.

When should parents start talking to young people about sex?

Sometimes it can be difficult for adults to know when to raise issues,
but the important thing is to maintain an open relationship with
children which provides them with opportunities to ask questions when
they have them. Parents and carers can also be proactive and engage
young people in discussions about sex, sexuality and relationships.
Naturally, many parents and their children feel embarrassed about
talking about some aspects of sex and sexuality. Viewing sex education
as an on-going conversation about values, attitudes and issues as well
as providing facts can be helpful. The best basis to proceed on is a
sound relationship in which a young person feels able to ask a
question or raise an issue if they feel they need to. It has been
shown that in countries like The Netherlands, where many families
regard it as an important responsibility to talk openly with children
about sex and sexuality, this contributes to greater cultural openness
about sex and sexuality and improved sexual health among young people.
[ref in article]

The role of many parents and carers as sex educators changes as young
people get older and are provided with more opportunities to receive
formal sex education through schools and community-settings. However,
it doesn't get any less important. Because sex education in school
tends to take place in blocks of time, it can't always address issues
relevant to young people at a particular time, and parents can fulfill
a particularly important role in providing information and
opportunities to discuss things as they arise. [ref in article]
/quote

http://www.avert.org/sex-education.htm

MM

On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:01:53 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:43, MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

MM

There's nothing wrong with telling lies to simplify things.

puke

MM

On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:43:37 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100, wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in the
1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the front of the
ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on the ledge. This
was apparently designed so that you could check for blood and
thereby pre-empt any serious medical condition. (The Germans
were/are extremely finickety about their health.) That design
seems to have vanished now, since all the German houses I
frequent nowadays have a "normal" UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in the
NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear samples of
poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation in the bin,
preferring not to know, and some of those statistically will die early
of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but only a
complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open about
such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking around the
house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes to my body, I am
far, far less prudish than my wife - who's parents did talk to her about
her body and sex (her mother was a midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me intense
itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my scrotum - I had
no problem at all stripping off in front of the female GP (and the four
female students that she had with her!) or the dermatologist that I was
referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals were
around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and crossed the
channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the toilets, but French
men continued to use them - so I just did the same.

SteveW

Well, then, you are one of the enlightened few. Try encouraging others
to behave likewise, although in Britain it will be an uphill struggle,
because we as a nation are completely f***ed up about sex. On the one
hand we consume vast quantities of sexual tittle-tattle in the
tabloids. We are voracious. Sex sells newspapers. But then we take
every possible precaution while changing on the beach to prevent any
stray ounce of flesh from appearing, otherwise we would be SO
embarrassed we'd rather die.

This is why I so often refer to Britain as a basket-case nation --
however, it only becomes apparent if and when one spends some
considerable time outside the UK, as one can then view this land from
afar and see just how f***ed up it is.

MM

MM wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:01:53 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:43, MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100,
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

MM

There's nothing wrong with telling lies to simplify things.

puke

The world revolves around telling lies. There was an interesting article in
yesterday's DM on the subject:

"We would be lying if we said we'd never done it: told an untruth to defend
or promote ourselves, to spare someone's feelings or to ease a difficult
situation.
We teach our children never to do it. Yet the strange thing about lying is
that, unlike stealing, sexual abuse or murder, this a moral crime we all
commit on a regular basis.

We lie by saying, 'I'm fine thanks' when we're feeling miserable; we lie by
saying, 'What a beautiful baby' while inwardly marvelling at its resemblance
to an alien - and everyone has faked enthusiasm for someone else's cooking.

Not only do we constantly make exceptions to the rule against lying;
sometimes we approve of it. If a doctor tells a bereaved husband that his
wife died instantly in a car crash, rather than the truth - that she spent
her last minutes suffering horrific pain - we applaud his compassion. We
call the lies we like 'white lies', but if we are asked to define precisely
what makes a lie white, we soon get lost in contradictions.

Read mo
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...#ixzz1Lvkywapk

--
Kev

MM wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:43:37 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100,
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in the
1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the front of
the ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on the ledge.
This was apparently designed so that you could check for
blood and thereby pre-empt any serious medical condition.
(The Germans were/are extremely finickety about their
health.) That design seems to have vanished now, since all
the German houses I frequent nowadays have a "normal"
UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in
the NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear
samples of poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation
in the bin, preferring not to know, and some of those
statistically will die early of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but
only a complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open about
such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking around the
house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes to my body, I
am far, far less prudish than my wife - who's parents did talk to
her about her body and sex (her mother was a midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me intense
itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my scrotum - I
had no problem at all stripping off in front of the female GP (and
the four female students that she had with her!) or the
dermatologist that I was referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals
were around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and
crossed the channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the
toilets, but French men continued to use them - so I just did the
same.

SteveW

Well, then, you are one of the enlightened few. Try encouraging others
to behave likewise, although in Britain it will be an uphill struggle,
because we as a nation are completely f***ed up about sex. On the one
hand we consume vast quantities of sexual tittle-tattle in the
tabloids. We are voracious. Sex sells newspapers. But then we take
every possible precaution while changing on the beach to prevent any
stray ounce of flesh from appearing, otherwise we would be SO
embarrassed we'd rather die.

Little to do with embarassment - everything to do with fear of being
arrested for indecent exposure!

I will struggle with a towel to get changed on a UK beach - but when my wife
and I went on one holiday to Fuerteventura, and found that the beach
adjacent to the hotel was a nudist beach, we both stripped off with the
rest.

--
Kev

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 19:44:16 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

A young child has no idea what a 'womb' is.

So explain it, then! (Duh!) A young child has no idea, until it's
explained, what ANYthing is! That is why children the world over are
CONSTANTLY asking questions, questions, questions as soon as they can
string two words together.

I wonder why we bother with nursery schools and primary schools. As very
young children are so capable of understanding adult themes we may just as
well take three year olds and start them off in sixth form college. They'll
be masters of quantum physics by the time they're five...


The area between chest and
crotch is the 'Tummy'.

NO, IT ISN'T! What a RIDICULOUS statement!

Of course it isn't to *us*- but to a very young child it most certainly is
because they are too young to understand and accept human biology.


Telling very young children that mummy has a baby in
her tummy (when the child can see the swelling) makes more sense to
them.

Well, the child obviously *believes* what his or her parents say,
because (s)he trusts the parents, but lying to children to save having
to explain a fundamental part of humanity is fundamentally BAD
practice.

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body is the
tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.


However, your response just shows how far Britain has to go to be in
the same league as most other countries in Europe.

I don't accept that European parents differ significantly in the way they
speak to very young children as they are developing.

--
Kev

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 19:44:16 +0100, "Ret." wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:00:47 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 08:15:41 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

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.

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:
http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm

Are you going to tell them Santa is a lie as well?

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.

A young child has no idea what a 'womb' is.

So explain it, then! (Duh!) A young child has no idea, until it's
explained, what ANYthing is! That is why children the world over are
CONSTANTLY asking questions, questions, questions as soon as they can
string two words together.

I wonder why we bother with nursery schools and primary schools. As very
young children are so capable of understanding adult themes we may just as
well take three year olds and start them off in sixth form college. They'll
be masters of quantum physics by the time they're five...


The area between chest and
crotch is the 'Tummy'.

NO, IT ISN'T! What a RIDICULOUS statement!

Of course it isn't to *us*- but to a very young child it most certainly is
because they are too young to understand and accept human biology.

"Where do babies come from?"

"Parents can expect the 'dreaded' question about the origins of babies
around the age of three. The question stems from natural curiosity.
Parents should keep in mind that a three-year-old's level of
understanding is quite simplistic. The child is too young to
understand the concept of sexuality. The child will probably be
satisfied if the mother says that the baby grows in a special place in
her body called the uterus or womb and comes out after nine months.
The next question is probably going to be - 'How did the baby get in?'
The only way a child is aware of about how things get in is through
eating. Thus, a simple answer explaining that the baby grows from a
tiny seed implanted in the uterus should suffice. If children want to
know the father's role in the process, mothers can explain that the
father put the seed inside the mother. As for how the babies get out,
children can be told that once the baby has grown enough inside the
mother it comes out from a special opening called the vagina. It may
be a good idea to specify that this opening is different from those
for urination and defecation."
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/sex-e...-children.html


Telling very young children that mummy has a baby in
her tummy (when the child can see the swelling) makes more sense to
them.

Well, the child obviously *believes* what his or her parents say,
because (s)he trusts the parents, but lying to children to save having
to explain a fundamental part of humanity is fundamentally BAD
practice.

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body is the
tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter nonsense.


However, your response just shows how far Britain has to go to be in
the same league as most other countries in Europe.

I don't accept that European parents differ significantly in the way they
speak to very young children as they are developing.

Well, then, FIND OUT! Because I can assure you that NO European nation
is more repressed about sex and sex education than Britain.

MM

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:06:06 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:43:37 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100,
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in the
1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the front of
the ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on the ledge.
This was apparently designed so that you could check for
blood and thereby pre-empt any serious medical condition.
(The Germans were/are extremely finickety about their
health.) That design seems to have vanished now, since all
the German houses I frequent nowadays have a "normal"
UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in
the NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear
samples of poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation
in the bin, preferring not to know, and some of those
statistically will die early of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but
only a complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open about
such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking around the
house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes to my body, I
am far, far less prudish than my wife - who's parents did talk to
her about her body and sex (her mother was a midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me intense
itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my scrotum - I
had no problem at all stripping off in front of the female GP (and
the four female students that she had with her!) or the
dermatologist that I was referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals
were around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and
crossed the channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the
toilets, but French men continued to use them - so I just did the
same.

SteveW

Well, then, you are one of the enlightened few. Try encouraging others
to behave likewise, although in Britain it will be an uphill struggle,
because we as a nation are completely f***ed up about sex. On the one
hand we consume vast quantities of sexual tittle-tattle in the
tabloids. We are voracious. Sex sells newspapers. But then we take
every possible precaution while changing on the beach to prevent any
stray ounce of flesh from appearing, otherwise we would be SO
embarrassed we'd rather die.

Little to do with embarassment - everything to do with fear of being
arrested for indecent exposure!

More absolute nonsense! People have been changing thus on beaches
since long before the police could arrest anyone on a whim.

I will struggle with a towel to get changed on a UK beach - but when my wife
and I went on one holiday to Fuerteventura, and found that the beach
adjacent to the hotel was a nudist beach, we both stripped off with the
rest.

And I reckon you both felt really weird, didn't you? Talk about sheep!

MM

MM wrote:


And I reckon you both felt really weird, didn't you? Talk about sheep!

MM

Ditto in Latvia '97 and not, it wasn't weird.

--
Tim Watts

On May 8, 5:23*pm, harry wrote:
On May 8, 8:41*am, "Ret." wrote:









Ret. wrote:
Yes. I have used loos as you describe in the States. Being naturally
inquisitive, I lifted the cistern lid on one and was surprised to see
a round metal canister with domed ends in there - there was no
visible stored water. I presumed that mains water pressure refilled
the canister after a flush and that created a vacuum that was
released when the flush was operated. *As you say - the removal of
waste from the bowl was rapid and very noisy!

When I got home I did a bit of Googling to try and learn more. I
couldn't find anything at all - although I haven't looked recently.

Just done another Google and come across this:

http://www.theplumber.com/fhb.html

If old pipes are your problem, you may be interested in the power-assist
toilets that many toilet makers now offer. These are toilets that use
compressed air to force the waste down the trap.

Although a few power-assist toilets require compressors, most use the
pressure of the home's water supply to get the job done-with the help of a
pressure tank. The Sloan Valve Company's Flushmate Flushometer
(800-533-3450) is the industry leader in toilet pressure tanks. New on the
market is the PF/2 Energizer System (W/C Technology Corp.; 888-732-9282).

Both work similarly: Water from the supply line is forced into the
air-filled pressure tank at the house pressure of 60 psi or so, which
compresses the air and exerts force on the water in the tank. When the flush
button is pushed, the water jets into the bowl.

One benefit of a power-assist flush is that the water is contained inside
the pressure tank, which is inside the china toilet tank. That insulation
results in little or no tank sweating. Drawbacks include noise and price:
Power assist generally adds $ 100 or so to the cost of a toilet.

Water rushing from the pressurized tank can be quite loud and startling..
However, Bruce Martin, the engineer who developed both pressure-assist
systems (he sold the Flushmate technology to Sloan), said his new PF/2
Energizer is much quieter than the Flushmate. "It's as quiet as a gravity
toilet," he said.

Currently, only about 5% of toilets sold contain any type of pressure tank.
Martin said the price of power-assist toilets will decrease, thanks in part
to competition and volume sales. For now, only specially designed toilets
can accept pressure-assist units. Martin is working on an adapter unit to
convert ordinary gravity toilets to pressure-assist.

-----------

So there we go - you learn something new every day!

--
Kev

The stand/squat and deliver toilets are very common in Asia. *But not
usually in tourist hotels.

Armitage Shanks made a syphonic toilet back in the 70's.

60s.

MBQ

On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter nonsense.

Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.

Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).

So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be sexually
repressed?

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language. So, yes, repressed with bells on. Oh, sure, you'll
excuse yourself by saying that this is "stuff a 4-year-old child
doesn't need to know yet" -- and yet the child will have been the
curious one asking questions!

MM

On 10/05/2011 17:29, MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100,
wrote:

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter nonsense.

Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.

Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).

So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be sexually
repressed?

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language. So, yes, repressed with bells on. Oh, sure, you'll
excuse yourself by saying that this is "stuff a 4-year-old child
doesn't need to know yet" -- and yet the child will have been the
curious one asking questions!

Um, you're confused. The tummy is just the stomach - it can refer to the
belly too, and as such "inside the tummy" is an entirely appropriate
description. Would "inside the belly" annoy you as much?

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:06:06 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:43:37 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100,
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in
the 1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the
front of the ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on
the ledge. This was apparently designed so that you could
check for blood and thereby pre-empt any serious medical
condition. (The Germans were/are extremely finickety about
their health.) That design seems to have vanished now,
since all the German houses I frequent nowadays have a
"normal" UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in
the NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear
samples of poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation
in the bin, preferring not to know, and some of those
statistically will die early of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but
only a complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open
about such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking
around the house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes
to my body, I am far, far less prudish than my wife - who's
parents did talk to her about her body and sex (her mother was a
midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me
intense itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my
scrotum - I had no problem at all stripping off in front of the
female GP (and the four female students that she had with her!) or
the dermatologist that I was referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals
were around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and
crossed the channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the
toilets, but French men continued to use them - so I just did the
same.

SteveW

Well, then, you are one of the enlightened few. Try encouraging
others to behave likewise, although in Britain it will be an uphill
struggle, because we as a nation are completely f***ed up about
sex. On the one hand we consume vast quantities of sexual
tittle-tattle in the tabloids. We are voracious. Sex sells
newspapers. But then we take every possible precaution while
changing on the beach to prevent any stray ounce of flesh from
appearing, otherwise we would be SO embarrassed we'd rather die.

Little to do with embarassment - everything to do with fear of being
arrested for indecent exposure!

More absolute nonsense! People have been changing thus on beaches
since long before the police could arrest anyone on a whim.

So, do I take it that whenever you are changing on a beach, wherever you
are, - you just strip off naked before putting on your cozzie - or do you
simply not even bother with a cozzie and regard all beaches as nudist
beaches?


I will struggle with a towel to get changed on a UK beach - but when
my wife and I went on one holiday to Fuerteventura, and found that
the beach adjacent to the hotel was a nudist beach, we both stripped
off with the rest.

And I reckon you both felt really weird, didn't you? Talk about sheep!

Actually no - it was quite 'liberating'.

--
Kev

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter
nonsense.

Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.

Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).

So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be
sexually repressed?

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language. So, yes, repressed with bells on.

I'll bear that one in mind as it comes from someone who "said sex was never
important" with regards to his own lifestyle.

Having knobbed my way through well over 300 women and now currently in a
relationship where we both enjoy group sex and wife swapping I doubt very
much that I am sexually repressed or embarrassed about answering a 4 year
olds questions.


Oh, sure, you'll
excuse yourself by saying that this is "stuff a 4-year-old child
doesn't need to know yet" - and yet the child will have been the
curious one asking questions!

Yes, a 4 year old does not need ALL the details - that is BECAUSE they will
not understand and there is something special about letting a child have
some innocenece. You answer the 4 year old in terms that they understand. I
can do that without getting embarrassed or having to give a biology essay.

My girlfriends 7 year old gets all the questions answered he asks about sex
but he is still far too young to have ALL the details. Does a 7 year old
NEED to know about oral, anal, group sex, STDs etc in detail? When he does
ask questions I answer without any embarrasment. He is not embassassed about
a naked body as he has seen me and the girlfriend naked on many occassions
and he is not afraid to ask questions when he wants to. When he asked about
circumcision I showed him my penis, explained what happened in the
circumcision and he then understood. There was no giggling or other childish
behaviour.

So what went wrong with your childhood sex education that made you give up
sex when you were an adult? And why do you want to hide behind a biology
book when it comes to a young child's sex education instead of treating them
like a child?

--
Adam

On May 10, 6:28*pm, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

Having knobbed my way through well over 300 women and now currently in a
relationship where we both enjoy group sex and wife swapping

When he asked about
circumcision I showed him my penis, explained what happened in the
circumcision and he then understood.

Circumcised, or is it just wearing out?

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:39:38 +0100, Clive George
wrote:

Um, you're confused.

Don't be stupid. I know exactly where and what the tummy is, thanks
very much. To try and pretend that's where babies grow is foolish
beyond measure.

The tummy is just the stomach - it can refer to the
belly too, and as such "inside the tummy" is an entirely appropriate
description. Would "inside the belly" annoy you as much?

"Your stomach is a short-term food-storage facility. This allows you
to consume a large meal quickly and then digest it over an extended
period of time. When full, your stomach can hold around one litre of
chewed up food."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo.../stomach.shtml

Still want to lie to your kids?

MM

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:58:40 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
Clive George wrote:

On 10/05/2011 17:29, MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language. So, yes, repressed with bells on. Oh, sure, you'll
excuse yourself by saying that this is "stuff a 4-year-old child
doesn't need to know yet" -- and yet the child will have been the
curious one asking questions!

Um, you're confused. The tummy is just the stomach - it can refer to the
belly too, and as such "inside the tummy" is an entirely appropriate
description. Would "inside the belly" annoy you as much?

To a small child, the whole of the lower part of the torso is just the
tummy.

That's because stupid, repressed, embarrassed parents cannot bring
themselves to explain what the body consists of -- like eyes, nose,
mouth, ears, brain, throat, tummy, willy, arms, hands, fingers, legs,
feet, toes, ....and in mummy's case, a vagina and a W-O-M-B ! There!
You've managed to get that awful word out! Wasn't so bad, was it? Dab
cold water on your face if it is still bright red with shame.

Explaining in greater detail will just confuse the poor kid.

Yeah, like confusing him or her with toilet training, not eating with
grubby fingers, watching out for traffic, and so on.

Just as I was confused when, after an operation, I asked the surgeon
what he'd done. He pompously explained in what I have no doubt was quite
an accurate and true manner, but couched entirely in incomprehensible
medical terms, so I ended up being none the wiser, and felt put off
asking doctors for explanations for some time.

Never heard of books, have you?

M&M obviously has no concept of how a small child, given an explanation
it can't understand, will feel intimidated and therefore end up
repressed.

Oh, sure! Look at the vast armies of repressed and intimidated
children out there who have correctly had explained to them where
babies grow. I really don't know how primary school teachers cope with
all the terrible repression and intimidation. It is simply shocking
that it's allowed to go on.

MM

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:43:28 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter nonsense.

Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.

Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).

So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be sexually
repressed?

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language.

And just how do you know it's due to embarrassment? Or do you have a
habit of making things up as you go along? And why are you so fixated
about this issue?

Me, making things up? Yet you're part of the stupid crowd that wants
to tell their child that babies grow inside mummy's tummy!

I'm "fixated", as you put it, because I get so angry when faced with
such utterly obtuse flat-earth mentality as evidenced in this thread.

MM

MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:39:38 +0100, Clive George
wrote:

Um, you're confused.

Don't be stupid. I know exactly where and what the tummy is, thanks
very much. To try and pretend that's where babies grow is foolish
beyond measure.

The tummy is just the stomach - it can refer to the
belly too, and as such "inside the tummy" is an entirely appropriate
description. Would "inside the belly" annoy you as much?

"Your stomach is a short-term food-storage facility. This allows you
to consume a large meal quickly and then digest it over an extended
period of time. When full, your stomach can hold around one litre of
chewed up food."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo.../stomach.shtml

Still want to lie to your kids?

MM

Oh FFS stop being a ****.

He already said tummy = belly too, and you proceed to give him a definition
of stomach.

I agree with Clive BTW.

--
Tim Watts

On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:28:40 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.

I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter
nonsense.

Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.

Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).

So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be
sexually repressed?

You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language. So, yes, repressed with bells on.

I'll bear that one in mind as it comes from someone who "said sex was never
important" with regards to his own lifestyle.

Having knobbed my way through well over 300 women and now currently in a
relationship where we both enjoy group sex and wife swapping I doubt very
much that I am sexually repressed or embarrassed about answering a 4 year
olds questions.

Thanks for sharing that fascinating information about how much of a
stud you are! (Bit of a show-off, really...)

....until it comes to explaining to children where babies come from,
that is.

Oh, sure, you'll
excuse yourself by saying that this is "stuff a 4-year-old child
doesn't need to know yet" - and yet the child will have been the
curious one asking questions!

Yes, a 4 year old does not need ALL the details - that is BECAUSE they will
not understand and there is something special about letting a child have
some innocenece.

What has innocence got to do with knowing where babies come from? Do
you protect a child's innocence by letting him run into the road, or
do you explain, several times if need be, that he has to take care?
What about potty training and protecting the child's innocence?

You answer the 4 year old in terms that they understand. I
can do that without getting embarrassed or having to give a biology essay.

No-one has suggested that you need to "give" a biology essay.
Presumably you can say words like "leg", or "nose", so why not "womb"
and "vagina"? What is so very terrible about naming a part of the
female body where a baby grows? Why is this knowledge destroying a
child's innocence, but knowledge about other bodily functions isn't?

My girlfriends 7 year old gets all the questions answered he asks about sex
but he is still far too young to have ALL the details. Does a 7 year old
NEED to know about oral, anal, group sex

No, of course not! That has nothing to do with the question children
ask, namely where do babies come from. However, in this day and age, a
7-year-old may well come back from the playground with all kinds of
questions and if you're going to be a successful parent, you need to
know up front how you will answer him, not lie to him in order to
avoid YOUR embarrassment and pretend to yourself that you're doing
that to protect HIS innocence.

STDs etc in detail?

No, NOT in detail! No-one's saying you want the kid to become a doctor
by the age of ten! But you do presumably explain why we clean our
teeth, why we wash under our foreskins, why we don't let a wound get
dirty, but clean it, disinfect it, and put a plaster on? So why not
explain, even if only cursorily, but truthfully, what an STI is? Look
at the shocking statistics on chlamydia, for example, in older kids,
all too embarrassed to go to the doctor early on because of the bad
habits they learned from their stupid, repressed parents.

When he does
ask questions I answer without any embarrasment. He is not embassassed about
a naked body as he has seen me and the girlfriend naked on many occassions
and he is not afraid to ask questions when he wants to. When he asked about
circumcision I showed him my penis, explained what happened in the
circumcision and he then understood. There was no giggling or other childish
behaviour.

"There was no giggling or other childish behaviour." That sounds as if
you were expecting such a reaction. This is the typical British
reaction when we are voraciously consuming mountains of smut in the
tabloids and TV soaps. Anything sexual is made out to be funny, or
dirty, so that we can hide our embarrassment by giggling. And yes,
like moths to a flame, we can't help ourselves, can we? We just keep
on wanting more and more prurience to tickle our fancies. No wonder
the tabloids are so pleased that Max Mosley lost in the ECHR!

So what went wrong with your childhood sex education that made you give up
sex when you were an adult? And why do you want to hide behind a biology
book when it comes to a young child's sex education instead of treating them
like a child?

Eh? Where did all that come from? There are MANY biology books* for
kids! Like I said earlier, educate yourself! Don't try to fob off your
repressed attitudes on to others!

*Here's a good one: "What's Biology All About?" by Hazel Maskell
(Author), Adam Larkum (Illustrator)

MM

On Tue, 10 May 2011 18:25:10 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:06:06 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2011 21:43:37 +0100, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 09/05/2011 09:51, MM wrote:
On Sun, 8 May 2011 18:56:28 +0100,
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Sun, 08 May 2011 13:41:29 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In ,
Bernard wrote:

On 08/05/11 11:05, ARWadsworth wrote:

My strangest toilet was the one in my German apartment in
the 1970s. It had a ledge, with the water outlet at the
front of the ledge. So everything you "did" first landed on
the ledge. This was apparently designed so that you could
check for blood and thereby pre-empt any serious medical
condition. (The Germans were/are extremely finickety about
their health.) That design seems to have vanished now,
since all the German houses I frequent nowadays have a
"normal" UK-style toilet bowl.

One of these?

http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/q...020/img086.jpg

That's also a common design in the Netherlands.

Completely disgusting IMO.

Why? It's only a style of toilet! You sound typically British,
typically insular. Wait until you are invited to participate in
the NHS bowel cancel screening programme and you have to smear
samples of poo on a test card. Some people chuck the invitation
in the bin, preferring not to know, and some of those
statistically will die early of bowel cancer.

I've done two of those so far. Not particularly pleasant - but
only a complete idiot would not participate in the test.

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

I don't think it's that simple. My parents have never been open
about such things, but my kids are completely used to me walking
around the house naked first thing in the morning. When it comes
to my body, I am far, far less prudish than my wife - who's
parents did talk to her about her body and sex (her mother was a
midwife).

I have had a skin problem (autoimmune problem) that caused me
intense itchiness and rawness on my arms and legs and around my
scrotum - I had no problem at all stripping off in front of the
female GP (and the four female students that she had with her!) or
the dermatologist that I was referred to.

Similarly, I have stayed on camp sites in France, where the urinals
were around the *outside* of the toilet block, on view to all and
crossed the channel on ferries where women cleaners were in the
toilets, but French men continued to use them - so I just did the
same.

SteveW

Well, then, you are one of the enlightened few. Try encouraging
others to behave likewise, although in Britain it will be an uphill
struggle, because we as a nation are completely f***ed up about
sex. On the one hand we consume vast quantities of sexual
tittle-tattle in the tabloids. We are voracious. Sex sells
newspapers. But then we take every possible precaution while
changing on the beach to prevent any stray ounce of flesh from
appearing, otherwise we would be SO embarrassed we'd rather die.

Little to do with embarassment - everything to do with fear of being
arrested for indecent exposure!

More absolute nonsense! People have been changing thus on beaches
since long before the police could arrest anyone on a whim.

So, do I take it that whenever you are changing on a beach, wherever you
are, - you just strip off naked before putting on your cozzie - or do you
simply not even bother with a cozzie and regard all beaches as nudist
beaches?

I never go to the seaside. I hate swimming. I don't like beaches. But
if I did, I'd wear my swimming trunks underneath, then simply strip
off my outer clothing. Afterwards, I'd sunbathe until my "cozzie"
(horrid, ozzie terminology) was dry, then I'd put my kilt back on.

I will struggle with a towel to get changed on a UK beach - but when
my wife and I went on one holiday to Fuerteventura, and found that
the beach adjacent to the hotel was a nudist beach, we both stripped
off with the rest.

And I reckon you both felt really weird, didn't you? Talk about sheep!

Actually no - it was quite 'liberating'.

But back in the UK your liberation turns back into repression, yes?

MM

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:43:28 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 13:47:19 +0100, "ARWadsworth"
wrote:

MM wrote:
On Tue, 10 May 2011 11:22:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 08:11:30 +0100, "Ret."
wrote:
No-one is 'lying'. The child believes that that area of the body
is the tummy. They baby is indeed inside that part of the body.
I cannot, simply cannot believe this garbage. No one is lying by
telling a child the baby is in mummy's tummy!! What utter nonsense.
Do stop talking twaddle, there's a good chap.
Ah, another repressed person, I see. I do hope you don't die of
embarrassment if and when you have to explain sex to your kid(s).
So if tell a 4 year old the baby is in mummy's tummy would I be sexually
repressed?
You are NOT telling the child the truth or even anything approximating
to the truth. The tummy is the ONE place you WOULD NOT want a baby.
And you won't tell the child the truth because you're too embarrassed
(opposite a 4-year-old, nota bene!) to explain the various bits in
simple language.
And just how do you know it's due to embarrassment? Or do you have a
habit of making things up as you go along? And why are you so fixated
about this issue?

Me, making things up? Yet you're part of the stupid crowd that wants
to tell their child that babies grow inside mummy's tummy!

I'm "fixated", as you put it, because I get so angry when faced with
such utterly obtuse flat-earth mentality as evidenced in this thread.

So, *you* will tell *your* toddler, who can just about understand that
there is going to be another member in the fmily shortly, that Mummy and
(Probably) Daddy had a fun time, and now there's a baby growing inside
mummy in a special place, not forgetting *all* the gruesome details
about how the baby's going to arrive? Oh, and by the way, that's how
*you* got here, too....

Or will you just tell the tot the simple version that they can
understand, and leave the details until they matter? Balancing the
knowledge you want to impart to a child's ability to understand is a skill.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On Wed, 11 May 2011 06:55:16 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:39:38 +0100, Clive George
wrote:

Um, you're confused.

Don't be stupid. I know exactly where and what the tummy is, thanks
very much. To try and pretend that's where babies grow is foolish
beyond measure.

The tummy is just the stomach - it can refer to the
belly too, and as such "inside the tummy" is an entirely appropriate
description. Would "inside the belly" annoy you as much?

"Your stomach is a short-term food-storage facility. This allows you
to consume a large meal quickly and then digest it over an extended
period of time. When full, your stomach can hold around one litre of
chewed up food."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbo.../stomach.shtml

Still want to lie to your kids?

MM

Oh FFS stop being a ****.

*I'm* a **** for telling people to stop lying to their kids?!!!

He already said tummy = belly too, and you proceed to give him a definition
of stomach.

Aarrrgghhh! That could because parents do NOT say baby is in mummy's
belly, they say it is in mummy's TUMMY!!

I agree with Clive BTW.

Well, that makes you just as much of a **** as he is.

MM

On Wed, 11 May 2011 09:00:16 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

In article ,
MM wrote:

On Tue, 10 May 2011 17:43:28 +0100, Tim Streater
wrote:

And just how do you know it's due to embarrassment? Or do you have a
habit of making things up as you go along? And why are you so fixated
about this issue?

Me, making things up? Yet you're part of the stupid crowd that wants
to tell their child that babies grow inside mummy's tummy!

I'm "fixated", as you put it, because I get so angry when faced with
such utterly obtuse flat-earth mentality as evidenced in this thread.

You should go to your doctor about it and get it seen to. Obsessions are
not healthy.

I'll see you there, then, since you seem to be re-visiting this thread
a lot. Determined to get the last word, are you? I'd call that
obsessive behaviour. You should go to your doctor about it and get it
seen to. Obsessions are not healthy.

MM