Just a quick update – shiffterÂŽ and ShiffterÂŽ are now protected as registered trade marks. This will guard against anyone falsely using the shiffter name.
In the UK alone the patent and these trade marks protect a market worth well over ÂŁ500 million and, importantly, the money that will be given to good causes such as sanitation projects and help for bowel conditions.
After being granted a patent for the shiffter, we’ve had a fair bit of media interest. That’s probably because people like the idea of a cleaning a toilet without a brush. We’ve appeared on the radio and on consumer and business websites. News coverage is always useful – the media wouldn’t be interested in covering something unless it was of value to its audience.
We haven’t linked to it all (below), as much of it has been in printed newspapers, but it did lead to more visits to the website and consequently more feedback. More on that soon. We’ll have much more publicity in the near future once we launch the product, but here are a few links (with logos, to look pretty). It’s great to get coverage for a product that doesn’t exist yet – that just reinforces the fact that there is a huge demand for brushless toilet cleaning!
If you like listening to the radio, it’s worth a listen to the interview below with BBC Radio Gloucestershire; it’s only a couple of minutes long. And don’t forget to check out the podcast interview with Pete from Get Flushed for a longer listen.
Here’s the interview with Radio Gloucestershire and a few more bits
An interview on the Mark Cummings show on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Drag the slider over to 1hr 54minutes for the interview, although they mention the shiffter throughout, in news bulletins.
The interview with the BBC took place following some coverage on local news website Stroud Times.
Local business magazine Punchline also covered us. They’ve been following the project from the start. Thanks Punchline!
Great to get some international interest – after all, cleaning a toilet without a brush is an international issue!
And a few more bits from the press release that was sent out…
Great to be interviewed by Pete from the Get Flushed podcast. We chatted about various aspects of the shiffter – how I came up with it, how it works and its wider benefits.
Great news – we’ve just been granted the UK patent for the shiffter. We’ve been working on the brushless alternative to the toilet brush for several years. It takes time (and money) to get a patent but this is a huge breakthrough. On top of that, we’ve had loads of positive feedback over the past year – all of that means that it should now be relatively easy to bring in the investment to go into production. A big ‘thank you’ to everyone who has taken the time to provide their feedback and also to the excellent patent attorneys at Wynne-Jones IP who made it happen. (If you have an idea and are looking to protect your intellectual property, I thoroughly recommend them!)
Here’s a quick rundown of where the shiffter is in January 2022. It’s a press release which gives a pretty good overview, but we’ll be expanding on the environmental benefits and charity giving elements in the near future. Anyway, here’s the release…
News: Patented toilet brush alternative could save tens of billions of litres of water
A new way of cleaning our toilets will help save the planet and revolutionise the way we do one of every householdâs most unpleasant but necessary tasks.
Entrepreneur Kam Mistry has been granted a UK patent for his replacement for the toilet brush – the Shiffter – a hand-held jet wash which allows householders to clean their toilets using a jet of water rather than a brush.
âToilet brushes have been around for decades and using them is universally regarded as an unpleasant experience,â said Kam, from Gloucestershire. âThe Shiffter changes all of that as you simply jet wash the bowl clean after you get up from the seat and the flush hasnât completely washed poo away – and it takes seconds. As itâs used straight after you go, it does away with need to put on the rubber gloves and scrub with a toilet brush for the weekly clean.â
Kam Mistry – hello shiffter, goodbye dignity!
Aside from helping to make toilet cleaning less unpleasant, the invention will also have huge benefits for the environment.
Why the shiffter means eco-friendly toilet cleaning
Most of us are familiar with repeat flushing, when the flush hasnât cleaned the toilet bowl properly. Sometimes you have to do this more than once and often itâs in vain. But if you can clean it using a small jet of water rather than repeat flushing with several litres it all adds up. In the UK there are 27.8 million households1 made up of an average of 2.4 people. With the average person flushing five times a day and toilet cisterns containing six litres of water2, that equates to 730 billion litres of drinking quality water used to flush UK toilets every year. For scale, Englandâs largest lake, Lake Windermere3, contains 300 billion litres of water and it is 10.5 miles long, one mile wide and 220 feet deep!
If we all flushed once less a day it would reduce water use by around 146 billion litres a year and in the USA it would save close to a trillion litres.
Help protect the environmentand raise money for good causes as well as making toilet cleaning less disgusting!
Giving back money to good causes
Now, armed with the patent, Kam is confident that heâll be able to raise investment to manufacture the product in the next few weeks, but how can he be so sure that there is a demand for the product?
He added: âOver the past twelve months there have been over 5,600 visits to the Shiffter website and 10 times as many searches from people putting terms such as âalternative to the toilet brushâ into Google – and thatâs for a product that does not yet exist! With hundreds of millions of households out there, many with more than one toilet, and businesses, hotels and B&Bs to add to the mix, the product has the potential to sell well. I donât need a solid gold house and am not looking to send billionaires into space. My aim is to give away a big chunk of the profits to help sanitation projects in developing countries and charities supporting people with issues we donât talk about such as Crohns, Colitis and IBS.â
TheShiffter is literally about cleaning up đŠ but it’s also a metaphor to look at other problems – hence the ‘Fix it‘ blog.
At the very top level, there have been some fundamental slip-ups.
As a former communications manager in the public sector, Iâm loathe to criticise the hard work of the professionals up and down the UK tasked with communicating throughout the Covid crisis – so I won’t! Many of them havenât had a break since the start of the pandemic as theyâve worked on the immediate issues and the fallout of the impact of the virus on their communities, in particular the vulnerable. Well done to them for their excellent work – good job đđž. However, at the very top level, there have been some fundamental mistakes in strategy.
They think itâs all over â but it isnât
With any major incident or emergency there are two main phases:
the emergency phase â when you deal with the immediate threats to minimise the danger to life and keep people and property safe, and
the recovery phase â which covers putting measures in place to return to normality (work on this phase can begin in the background during the emergency phase)
In March, the nation went into lockdown, a lockdown which incidentally was much stricter than the recent two. As it was so strict, it worked. The number of infections and hospital admissions went down.
While the lockdown had worked, the emergency was far from over, but sadly, this is where the government, and this isnât a political dig by the way, sent the wrong message. Restrictions were slowly lifted after the successful lockdown to try and get the country back to some form of normality, but critically, in June, the daily Downing Street press briefings came to a stop. Bad move.
I’ll just make sure it’s out..
By way of analogy, when the fire service attends an incident, the firefighters donât jump back into their appliances when the fire theyâre putting out is still smouldering. They stick around and make damned sure that the fire is out and has no chance of starting again. Unfortunately, stopping the daily press briefings did the opposite. When they were running, whatever you thought of them, their sheer existence highlighted that the nation was in a state of emergency. Stopping them signalled that we were no longer in a dangerous situation. Inevitably, this had a consequential impact on peopleâs behaviour leading to a predictable increase in cases. Letâs be clear, nobody wants to live in fear, but it was a bad move to effectively walk away from this incredibly important issue and give the impression that the emergency was over. Was there something more important to deal with?
Weâre currently in lockdown number three, and while vaccinations have begun at a great pace (and well done to everyone who has helped to achieve this) weâre far from being out of the woods yet. There are many unknowns, such as whether or not those who have been vaccinated can still spread the virus, so the government really needs to have a plan for the next six months or so, rather than pondering what their voters will think of them or pandering to the extremists in their party who deny the science and believe that strict measures are an overreaction. The briefings need to keep going and the messaging needs to improveâŚand we need to set realistic expectations about the months ahead, rather than raising hopes that weâll be back to normal in the Spring.
A YouGov poll showed that 20% wonât take the vaccine.
A YouGov poll showed that 80% of people in the UK are likely to take the vaccine. Sounds positive until you consider that it means that 20%, ie one in five, wonât. Last week The Guardian reported on a SAGE survey which indicated that “72% of black people”are unlikely to take the vaccine. Both of these findings are pretty scary when you consider that weâre dealing with a highly infectious virus and that success relies on as many people taking up the vaccine as possible. Thankfully, efforts are being made to engage BAME communities and those nervous about taking the jab. Concerns are also being voiced about the number of people saying that theyâll ignore the current social distancing rules once theyâve been vaccinated, even though we donât know if they can still pass the virus on to others.
The latest UCL Covid-19 Social Study report (13 January 2021) showed that 62% of those surveyed, who had Covid-19, isolated for the required time – which means that 38% didn’t. It also highlighted that 57% of those who exhibited symptoms had never requested a test for the virus, despite the guidance. Humans, eh?
These issues were pretty easy to predict and highlight that we are a long way from the finish line (oooh look at me using a sporting metaphor), so now, more than ever, the government needs to be strong and clear in its messaging to show that the emergency is far from over – particularly when new, more infectious strains are emerging.
Time to be bold on messaging
One of the biggest frustrations Iâve had is the nature of the top-line messaging during the pandemic. From the very start, government messaging has praised people for their compliance. Consistently, it has failed to criticise those who donât do the right thing â until about a week ago, after the horse had already bolted months earlier.
In any communications, you tailor your messaging to specific audiences. Itâs known as segmentation. But there hasnât been much of that â unless you count the social media messages that frustrated members of the public have resorted to in response to those who donât do their bit.
Iâve used the phrase âthose who donât do their bitâ. It includes people who require education (see below), but moreover it includes people who are downright selfish and ignorant, and the idiots who believe that Covid-19 is just a conspiracy theory.
Anyway, back to the point. As mentioned, the top-level messaging has been focused on patting the public on the back for doing the right thing and not pointing the finger at those who have wilfully ignored the rules and guidance. Everyone I speak to is utterly frustrated by seeing people ignoring the basic social distancing rules, to the extent of exasperation. Why should they bother? Whatâs the point? I should add here that this isnât from what they have seen in the media; itâs from their personal experiences when they have ventured out of their homes. Stronger messaging is required which very clearly says, âDonât be a selfish jerk!â.
Ironically, one of the reasons that the government probably hasnât been critical of the so called âsmall minorityâ is that it doesnât want to lose their votes. However, the majority of people would prefer the government to be tougher, evidenced time and time again in surveys â so why are they alienating the bigger audience? Why would you not criticise the âtinyâ minority? Unless it is actually a pretty significant minority.
What type of messaging will influence compliance?
Behavioural psychologistsargue that we have to keep using positive, back patting messages and that the public wonât do the right thing if bad behaviour is highlighted. Far be it from me to disagree with professors in behavioural science, but I will and hereâs why:
Studies and researchers refer to âgoodâ compliance being something positive. But it isnât. When youâre faced with a highly infectious virus which spreads exponentially âgoodâ compliance isnât enough, you need âexcellentâ compliance;
Secondly, the argument that raising awareness of non-compliance will mean that others wonât comply may theoretically have some truth in it, but it is flawed. There has been a fundamental lack of âbehave yourselfâ messaging targeted at those who flout the rules, so there is nothing against which to qualify that assertion;
Publicity about illegal mass gatherings in the media has been highlighted as something which will make people feel less compliant as visuals of such dramatic rule breaking will stick in their minds. Iâm afraid I disagree. People are fed-up with the lack of compliance they see when they are forced to mix with others, such as on shopping trips. I see it myself every time I go out. OK, the majority of people are compliant, but a significant minority are not â and they will spread it to others they are in contact with who are doing their best to observe the rules. And once again, donât forget that the virus spreads exponentially;
Critics of criticising (if you know what I mean) say that if you tell someone not to do something, they are more inclined to do it. In an interview on the Today Programme last week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock concurred with this view citing the clichĂŠ that if you tell someone not to think of an elephant, they immediately think of an elephant. That seems to make sense then? No. This too is flawed. If I said to you, “Donât take all your clothes off and run down the street shouting âI love Dominic Cummings‘ââ, Iâm pretty sure you wouldnât.
Am I just moaning? No Iâm not. My message to the government is to get a backbone and face the facts. Be firm and youâll be thanked for it. Stop being overoptimistic â in your overoptimistic belief in the public and in the timescale for a return to normality.
But itâs not just about being tough; education is also importantâŚ
WTF does exponential mean? And how scary is the R number?
Another big frustration of mine has been the lack of creativity in the overall messaging. At a time when we have so many communications tools to hand, weâve relied on slogans including âHands. Face. Space.â and âStay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Livesâ, which in fairness are pretty good. Thereâs also been a great reliance on TV advertising, with traditional messaging which you tend to switch off to after a while.
There needs to be more creativity to get the message across and engage people. There could be much better use of animation from the start, by which I donât mean cartoons, rather animation which educates people on the risks. Animation is easy to put together, interactive, engaging and pretty cheap â and, of course, social media friendly. Here are few examples of how it could have been deployed:
a visual representation of a street with six or so homes â each with different numbers of occupants, eg from one to five. For a single person household, you can illustrate an infected occupant in a different colour or with a throbbing appearance and show how after a couple of weeks there is nowhere for the virus to go and it dies. Similarly, for the households with more than one person you can illustrate how, after a little longer, due to social isolation, there is nowhere to go for the virus and it will once again ultimately die out in that home;
you can also use it to show the opposite â ie people not complying and showing how it spreads and causes more infection and deaths and moves to other households;
again, you can use the same principle to demonstrate how distancing, for example in supermarkets, works.
Education is the key here. Itâs clear that one of the issues â and sadly it would appear to be at government level too â is that people donât understand what exponential means. It doesnât mean big. It means that it grows quicker and quicker the more it grows. To be fair, it isnât easy to explain in words; even the online definitions at Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com donât add much clarity. The Cambridge Dictionary probably offers the best definition:
“An exponential rate of increase becomes quicker and quicker as the thing that increases becomes larger.“
But itâs still a bit wishy washy as it doesnât quite get across the gravity when weâre discussing a lethal virus. This is another reason why graphical representation is important. At the aforementioned press briefings, the graphical representations taken straight from Microsoft Excel were a little complex and often, overly detailed.
Better visuals would have had more impact, however I imagine there wasnât enough time between the pre-press briefing briefing (if you know what I mean) and the actual briefings to put them together. The briefings, and other communications, often referred to the âR rateâ. The problem is it centred on a huge number, That number is âoneâ! Once again, it is difficult to get across how a figure of 1.1 is much scarier than 1 and how 1.3 is a disaster. It doesnât really get exponential across, does it? Why not create a better indicator, showing the predicted number of infections after a few weeks (extrapolated from the R number) as the barometer? Youâd then be in a position where youâre displaying the tiny R number as something legitimately scary in figures of tens of thousands. It would help get the severity of the situation across.
In a simple way, this short clip showing the impact of a drop of water is a clear, yet dramatic, illustration of how exponential looks. Even in slow-mo it shows how the impact of a tiny trigger spreads quickly.
Here endeth the lecture
So what am I saying? Put simply, we need more depth to Covid communications. Just using top line messages wears off. We need to educate people and be tougher on those who donât play ball (yet another sporting metaphor). Think about it. Itâs pretty simple. In a work environment with a colleague, or even with a child at home, if you explain why you want something done, theyâll do a better job. And at the same time, when the majority of people, whose votes politicians probably want, are keen on stronger action, itâs in their interest â theyâre pushing at an open door. And, of course, the daily briefings with questions from the media need to keep going. Maybe vary the content a little â but they definitely need to stay.
And another thing…
Nothing to do with Covid-19. The letter âHâ. It is pronounced âaitchâ, not âhaitchâ. I know that language evolves over time, but thereâs a difference between evolution and degradation.
Attention media outlets â fine your correspondents when they say âhaitchâ as theyâre helping to spread the sloppiness. You need to set an example! đ
Hello. Iâm Kam Mistry. Iâm not one for self-promotion, however, somewhat reluctantly, Iâve decided to put my head above the parapet (whatever one of those is) and start blogging. Why? Because I believe that we, by which I mean all of us, need to change our thinkingâŚ
My dating app profile photo. Not sure why I’m not getting much interestâŚ
Do we really know right from wrong?
We live in a world of right vs left rather than right vs wrong. People bang on about their rights, but few want to hear about their responsibilities. We talk about problems, but rarely make the effort to fix them â properly. Politics, dogma, short-termism, misplaced diplomacy, stupidity and populism often get in the way. Like most of us, Iâm exposed to the usual public and media figures on TV and radio, and the predictable guff on social media. Most of the time you just hear opinion and critique â nothing constructive – and contributors are often called ‘commentators’, which pretty much says it all. Not very inspiring is it?
Iâm more interested in actions rather than words (which is a little ironic for a guy whose background is communications) so I thought Iâd have a go to see if I can make a difference. Itâs probably futile but hey, I have a little time so Iâll give it a go.
Think I may give myself the moniker of the Fully Clothed Pessimist – the whole ‘Naked’ branding is a little trite isn’t it? (Damn, I shouldnât have said that as some bugger will now go on and register that domain name so that I have to buy it off them for a fortune.) I’ll start work on my 2022 calendar with me wearing several layers shortly.
What’s better, optimism or pessimism?
I refer to pessimism, but what I really mean is constructive pessimism, or maybe even realismâŚalthough weâre starting to drift into optimism, so letâs stop there. Rather than just being optimistic, we need to make the effort to recognise problems and actually fix them rather than just talk about them. Whether thatâs at home, work or for society, take this approach and you can then have optimism for a genuinely better, long term future.
So what am I going to cover/moan about? Well, Iâll look at ideas and things that can improve peopleâs lives, a look at how things are covered in the media and, inevitably, also look at Covid-19 issues. Oddly enough Covid is an interesting one â science has been the weapon to overcoming it. Whether itâs looking at measures to stop the spread, or to develop a vaccine, itâs a great example of fixing a very serious problem using science, facts, objectivity and logic. And we need more of that.
The start of 2021 has already shown that the world is pretty messed up. Not great – although on the flipside it does potentially provide me with material!
By the way, if youâre wondering why the blog is hosted on this website, itâs because the Shiffteris about cleaning up mess, literally. The blog extends it as a metaphor to look at cleaning up other messes in the world, and maybe we can prevent things going down the toiletâŚ
Anyway, this was just an introduction and itâs time for me to shut up. Iâll put some more meat on the bones over the next few weeks.
Thanks for visiting. Hereâs the latest update on the Shiffter. I started the project a few years ago as a genuine replacement for the toilet brush but had to put it on hold to focus on the day job to pay the mortgage. Letâs face it, most of us need to do that.
Coming soon!
Iâve had some great feedback on the product so the next thing to do is to raise the finances to go into production. As you can imagine, it takes a fair bit of money to get an invention off the ground and it isnât easy. Over the next few weeks, Iâll be increasing the visibility of the website so that I can get valuable research on whether people think it is a good product and one which they are likely to buy.
Iâll also post a video on a âmake-shifftâ shiffter so that you can improvise and achieve the same results in the absence of the genuine productâŚand it wonât cost you anything.
Thatâs all at the moment really, but if this is the first page youâve come to, please do look at the rest of the site.
Thanks for taking a look and do share this page to spread the word.
Have just set the blog up and will start blogging and moaning in the next few days. The image is of no significance whatsoever. Just trying to make this empty page look less… empty.