Japanese Toilets, Wage Madness, Phone Addiction

 There is a new block of public conveniences at the park where my children play and apart from the most important detail of all there is nothing obviously unusual about them. The interior, like most Japanese lavatories, is clean and odourless. The latrine itself is the latest model of "Washlet": those high-tech lavatories, ubiquitous in Japan, that squirt a cleansing jet of water between your buttocks at the touch of a button, and give you a blow dry.

One thing distinguishes these conveniences from all the others though: their glass walls are transparent. From the outside, the basin, urinal, Washlet and anyone inside are visible for all to see. It is only when the lock is turned that the glass becomes opaque and privacy descends.

The convenience was designed by the prizewinning architect Kengo Kuma, one of 16 world-class designers commissioned to bring their creative genius to bear on the least glamorous public buildings in the world...

I have visited the laboratories at Toto, the company that invented the Washlet, whose scientists have more in common with Nasa scientists than plumbers. Early this year the company announced plans for an artificial intelligence latrine that could analyse deposited waste and perform the equivalent of a medical check-up. In future I can look forward to receiving emails from my own lavatory, warning me to visit a doctor if necessary or offering exercise and healthy eating recommendations...

(Richard LLoyd Parry, The Times, 2021)

Damn clever ideas!

Wage Madness

Raving Madness
Caius Gabriel Cibber (1630-1700)
Photo Credit: Bethlehem Museum of the Mind [CC BY-NC]

The billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Chris Hohn paid himself £343m last year after his Children's Investment (TCI) fund recorded a 66% jump in pre-tax profits to $695m

It is believed to be the highest annual amount ever paid to one person in Britain and equates to £940,000 a day. It is 9,000 times the average UK salary and 1,700 times the amount paid to the prime minister, Boris Johnson...

Hohn is one  of the UK's more generous philanthropists and gave away $386m through his personal charity, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation in 2019, according to the latest available accounts, and is the biggest single donor to Extinction Rebellion.

The High Pay Centre's Luke Hildyard, who campaigns against excessive executive pay, said: "Extreme payouts such as this demonstrate that there is scope for highly profitable companies to pay their staff more, and for the super-rich that either own or invest in hedge-funds to pay more tax, so that everyone can enjoy better public services and a fairer society.

(Rupert Neate, The Guardian, 2021)

How can one person be worth £940,000 a day? This man contributes hugely to the public good by his generous contributions to charity but it is beyond belief that he earns 1,700 times the amount paid to the prime minister.

CEO Pay

Unions have described firms that pay their chief executives huge multiples compared with the wages of average workers as obscene and have called on ministers and shareholders to end the "runaway train" of inequality.

A report by the High Pay Centre thinktank yesterday revealed that...Ocado's CEO, Tim Steiner, was paid £58.7m last year - that is 2,605 times the £22,500 paid to the firm's staff on average. It means Steiner was paid as much as the average Ocado worker's annual salary over one day of working.

In second place was JD Sports, which paid its chief executive, Peter Cowgill, £5.6m, but paid staff an average of £18,300. Cowgill's pay was 310 times the median average.

Tesco took third place for paying the CEO 305 times the median pay.

Lawrence Turner, head of research at the GMB union said:

"This shocking and important report provides a vivid snapshot of the staggering inequalities and exploitation... There is no business or moral justification for paying an executive an obscene ratio of more than 2,000 times the average worker. Action is needed, especially at a time when hundreds of thousands of jobs are under threat and households are struggling to make ends meet. Ministers, employers and shareholders must put an end to this runaway train."

The report showed that across the UK's 100 biggest stock market listed companies CEOs collected 73 times that paid to workers on average.

The High Pay Centre showed that the biggest pay gaps were in retail, where on average bosses were paid 140 times that of staff. The smallest gap was in financial services, with a ratio of 35:1.

(Rupert Neate, The Guardian, 2020)

(See CEO Pay, Oct 23, 2020 and Boardroom Pay, Jan 7, 2020)

Phone Addiction

Sleeping Beauty
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
Photo Credit:Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] 

Almost four in ten university students are addicted to their smartphones, and their habit plays havoc with their sleep, new research has found.

A study of 1,043 students at King's College, London found that 406 (38.9%) displayed symptoms of smartphone addiction, as defined by a clinical tool devised to diagnose the problem.

Addicts were highly likely to suffer from poor sleep; more than two-thirds of them had trouble sleeping...

The young adults were judged to be addicts if they could not control how long they spent on their phone, felt distressed when they could not access their phone, or neglected other, more meaningful parts of their life because they were busy on their device...

Dr Bernadka Dubicka, the chair of the faculty of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "The negative impact of smartphone use on sleep is very concerning from a mental health perspective. Many younger people have struggled with their sleep and mental health during this pandemic and poor quality or insufficient sleep can be both a symptom and a cause of mental health problems...

(Denis Campbell, The Guardian, 2021)

*I've recently become aware of how much my social media use has crept up during the pandemic, and how what started as a need to connect with people has shifted into something anxiety-inducing.

Last spring, interacting with people online filled a gap that my friends and family couldn't because they were dealing with their own challenging home situations. So what if I was on my phone late at night, or if it was the first thing I checked in the morning? Or if I felt the need to tweet whether or not I'd be eating a jacket potato for dinner? I had no other social life dammit!..

Anxiety, Head of a Girl
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805]
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

Personally, I've noticed my anxiety levels creeping up over the last two months, whether that's noticing how agitated or unsettled I feel after seeing people arguing on social media, or feeling the effects of the negative energy and language on there. An uptick in trolling on my Instagram account made things worse because I felt I needed to be vigilant all the time in order to catch horrible comments or messages.

This created a deafening amount of noise in my head, especially before going to bed. One night I couldn't get to sleep because I'd been stressing about an exchange I'd seen on Twitter between two other people.

All the warning signs that I needed to radically manage my use of social media were there - worrying, interrupted sleep, apathy around communication with "real" people like my friends and family and feelings of discontent - but at the same time, I didn't feel like it was an option... I fooled myself into thinking that the increased anxiety was due to lockdown three, not being online every minute of the day.

Two things snapped me out of this false reality. The first was last week, when I checked my phone at 10.30am. I then got on with some work. After what felt like AGES I decided to check my phone again. It was 10.37

The second was when I paused a 30-minute yoga session to check my phone, 20 minutes in. I decided for the first time in years that I needed a small break. I decided that I wasn't allowed to check Instagram or Twitter - the two apps I use the most for 40 hours.

It wasn't easy and I panicked plenty of times and thought "what if someone trolls me and I'm not there to pick it up?!...

(Poorna Bell, The i, 2021)

Tweeting about jacket potatoes, checking your phone first thing in the morning, wanting to catch horrible comments or messages, being online every minute of the day, checking your phone every seven minutes. Is it any wonder that you feel anxious? The dangers of using too much social media are also outlined in the article below.

*Last week, two related news items appeared on the same day. First, that young people who are unhappy with their appearance are most likely to develop depression, and second, that 60 per cent of eight-year-olds use messaging apps that are meant for teenagers.

Neither came as a surprise to me. From the time I entered my all-girls secondary school, I've seen countless friends succumb to severe mental health challenges: from depression to bulimia. I don't think it's any coincidence that we came of age as social media boomed, lying about our age as we signed up to Facebook and spending our teenage years desperately updating our profile photo in an attempt to garner strokes of that hallowed "Like" button.

Worryingly the habit has persisted into our twenties. When I speak to friends who have mental health difficulties, they often scroll through Instagram as they chat about those same difficulties, comparing themselves to a filtered, one-sided version of someone else's life (or a size-zero influencer who gets paid more the less she eats). I know these things are harmful now but I didn't as a teenager: why would you know at an age when you think you'll die alone unless you have a boyfriend?

We need to be honest with ourselves that social media is largely unhelpful when you're young and have mental problems. It's fashionable to spout creative rationales of how social media allows for connection and inspiration, citing uplifting quotes on Instagram and body-positive feeds (which instead of featuring normal-sized women, are often just full of skinny girls pictured eating huge burgers).

Deanne Jade, head of the National Centre for Eating Disorders says that the first thing she asks patients to do is switch off their phones and computers so that they can reset the way they think. Why is this so hard for some children and their parents to understand? The first thing I do when I'm feeling low is log out of Instagram or, if I'm stressed close my LinkedIn tab. Social media is a fairground hall of mirrors and when you're too full of emotion to see it's a distorted version of reality, you'll go mad if you stay.

As we exit the pandemic this spring, and children can interact once more in normal social settings, we have to stop making excuses for staying on social media when it's unhelpful. The harsh truth is that parents whose children are suffering from poor mental health need to find a way to get them offline.

(Pravina Rudra, The Times, 2020)