Spend a penny, save a penny

A friend of mine took this picture at Freemantle railway station in Western Australia.

As you can see, the loo roll is securely padlocked. One has to assume that, in the absence of this precaution, the roll would be nicked, thereby creating a problem with which every Russian of my generation is familiar.

In the old days loo paper didn’t exist in public lavatories, and it was a rarity even in private ones. Hence, if you’ll pardon a malodorous detail, most of such facilities were tastefully decorated with brown streaks on the walls.

Some 25 years ago, in post-Soviet times, the problem had been only partly eradicated. At that time Penelope and I visited the seat of Russian Christianity, St Sergius Trinity monastery some 40 miles from Moscow.

Since the high spiritual value of that institution didn’t quite obviate some basic physical needs, we had the chance to sample the facility in question.

Sitting at the entrance was an unsmiling Cerberus-like woman holding a loo roll. She’d size up the entrants and dole out exactly three squares each, which gave Penelope the kind of ethnographic insights that guide books didn’t provide.

I’ve never been to Australia, though I have a few Australian acquaintances and quite a few Australian readers. This sample is too small to reach any sweeping conclusions about something as complex as national character. Thus I can’t speculate on the Aussies’ frugality or lack thereof.

Moreover, since I’ve never shopped for this product Down Under, I can’t attach any monetary value to it. However, on general principle, I suspect it can’t be any less available or more expensive than here in the metropolis. A cheap roll retails for about 30p in London, and there are no supply problems (apart from the short period at the start of the pandemic).

So an item worth perhaps 20p wholesale in our money is deemed valuable enough to rate a padlock. It also must be desirable enough to bring out the worst in human nature, specifically its larcenous aspect.

Applying the inductive method of investigation that Conan Doyle mistakenly called deductive, let’s see if we can build a hypothesis or two on the basis of this small detail.

First, Freemantle station is operated by Transperth, a state institution. Such institutions are known throughout the West for their inefficiency and promiscuous squandering of public funds.

Publicly owned railway stations also depend on government subsidies, which warms my cockles every time I board a train in France. Knowing that the government subsidises my journey gives me an irrational feeling of revenge exacted, although I’m not quite sure for what.

Assuming that Transperth is also subsidised, the loo roll in question was financed out of the public purse. Hence I doff my hat to Australia’s government for evidently imposing a strict fiscal discipline on its branches.

Another inductive inference is that labour must be cheaper Down Under than Up Over. After all, someone has to open and close the lock when replacing the roll every hour or so. If this practice is followed in all Transperth outlets, it must add a few man hours to the arduous task of loo maintenance.

If the company’s cost-benefit analysis showed that the extra labour cost is offset by the benefit of securing the roll, and if the cost of the roll is negligible, labour must be cheap. This raises unpleasant questions about Australia’s immigration and racial policies, but I’d rather not go there.

On the other hand, it’s conceivable that no cost-benefit analysis was ever carried out. If so, my faith in public institutions remains unshaken: they all seem to act in character everywhere.

Moving right along, one can’t help noticing that at comparable facilities in England loo rolls are at the mercy of petty thieves. This may be construed as saying a lot about the people and public institutions in both countries.

First, Englishmen may be less likely than Australians to want to steal a 30p loo roll. If so, I’m proud of my countrymen. For the temptation must be strong, whereas the likelihood of punishment low to nonexistent.

So, if Englishmen resist nicking loo rolls, they may be made of sturdier moral fibre – especially since the purchasing power of an average Englishman is 16 per cent lower than that of an average Aussie.

It’s also possible that HMG has calculated that the probability of a loo roll being stolen is too low to justify the cost of providing and operating a padlock. Alas, HMG isn’t exactly known for such pernickety attention to detail. It’s better known for referring to, say, a loo roll as a ‘sanitary cleansing system’ and citing its cost at hundreds of pounds.

Also… no, no more. Please stop me before I unroll the object in the photo into a paradigm of general moral and cultural decrepitude. Let’s face it, Sherlock Holmes I’m not.