Translate

Saturday 10 December 2011

Where There's Muck There's Brass

There is a saying in the north of England "Where there's muck there's brass", meaning where there are dirty jobs to be done there is money to be made.
 
"All That Glitters" Isn't The Only Gold
"All That Glitters" Isn't The Only Gold 
 
Well there's nothing more mucky than dog poo, but even in that unlikely object there's apparently money to be made, well in Taiwan at least.
 
They have a reward system which hands out lottery tickets for bags of dog waste scooped from the streets of New Taipei City. The prizes for this social activity range from the top prize of a gold ingot worth $2,200 (£1,400), down through smaller gold ingots worth hundreds of dollars, to small household appliances.
 
This cunning scheme has been credited with halving the amount of dog mess on the city streets, but despite the scheme being extended, it can't go on forever, with many saying that the city simply cannot afford to keep exchanging dog poo for gold.

However I seem to recall that in the Terry Prachett 'Disc World' series of fantasy books, the reclamation czar of Ankh-Morpork Harry King (aka as 'Piss Harry' behind his back), the man sometimes called the 'King of the Golden River', had a soft spot for what he called 'White Gold' i.e. dried dog waste, because leather tanners would pay extra for it ...... maybe the councillors of New Taipei City are missing a source of revenue here?

No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....