UK gripped by fake poo crisis

  The UK's largest online retailer of joke items and costumes, SillyJokes, has revealed that there is a crisis of quality in the fake poo market that has led to a global shortage - and produced problems for international charities.

  Fake poo is a consistently high seller in the joke item retail industry and a global shortage of quality providers has led to a crisis that has affected more than just the comedy market.  Dog and cat homes across the UK use fake poo to help house train pets and make them more suitable for family homes.

  Fake poo is used to highlight serious messages by organisations such as international charity, WaterAid.  It was an integral part of WaterAid's campaigning work for World Toilet Day (19th November), which aimed to ensure policies are in place to enable the world's 2.6bn poorest people to have access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.

  WaterAid buys its fake poo from SillyJokes - which has noticed that a wave of inferior - unrealistic - fake poo, from China and Thailand, is now flooding the UK market.

  Jennean Alkadiri, WaterAid's campaigns manager, commented: "I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have a regular supplier of good quality fake poo.  The ever popular WaterAid game, the 'Poopla', raises awareness of how lucky we are in this country to have a toilet, while thousands of children die each day elsewhere in the world because of diseases that are spread from lack of toilets.  We need fake poo to change the world!

  “Let’s hope this fake poo crisis is just a flash in the pan.”

From www.responsesource.com.

Top of page

Stamps of approval

  Early in November, I wrote a cheque to the BMS for £32.  This is the money that I have raised through the sale of stamps that you have donated via my own philatelic societies (that’s stamp clubs to the uninitiated!).

  It could have been so much more if more people had collected the stamps off their daily post and put them in the box in the church foyer.  Sadly, several weeks can pass without anything new appearing in the box.

  At Christmas time, I expect to be inundated with stamps - mainly Christmas ones, which will be sold to the BMS in bulk.  Anything that’s a bit different I can sell separately.

  So here are a few tips to remind you and help you to recycle your stamps:

*  Cut your stamps off their envelopes on a daily basis, then bring them to church on Sunday and deposit them in the box in the foyer.

*  Stamps need to have a quarter of an inch (5mm) all the way around them.

*  Scrounge stamps off your friends and neighbours.

*  Check to see if anyone collects the stamps at your workplace.  If someone else doesn’t, ask if you can.

*  For UK stamps, the commemorative stamps obtainable from the Post Office - currently the British Army uniform and the Queen’s 60th Wedding Anniversary stamps - are much more saleable than ordinary definitive stamps or even the Christmas issue.  So, when buying stamps, ask for the current special stamps; use them and ask the people to whom you send them to collect the stamps and send them back to you!

*  Where foreign stamps are concerned, small value stamps are rarer in this country than bigger ones.  For example the 50c Australian stamp is much rarer - and therefore more valuable - than the $2 one.  So tell your friends to use lots of ‘little’ stamps when they are abroad.  You could even fill a post card with lower denomination stamps, post it to yourself and deliver it personally to the stamp collecting box at church!

  This is such a good way to get money for the BMS, it costs you nothing and is fully in line with the church’s desire to be eco-friendly. So, let’s see if, this time next year, I can report posting a cheque of much greater value to the BMS.  It will only be possible with your help.

By Dave Goulding.