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Crisis Bellwether Stock: The 75 mm f/1.4 Leica Bummilux

The new 75mm f/1.4 Leica Bummilux special edition in white, with cushioned filigree engraving on the barrel. Designed by Peter Krappe, this new edition to the Leica range costs £11,250. but is exempt from VAT because of its utilitarian pretensions.
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By Mike Evans

What is it about toilet rolls that they become the “bellwether stock” of any upset or crisis? In reality, this item of homeware is perhaps the least necessary and the one most readily improvised. I’d sooner put my money into a can of Heinz tomato soup.

The new 75mm f/1.4 Leica Bummilux special edition in white, with cushioned filigree engraving on the barrel. Designed by Peter Krappe, this new edition to the Leica range costs £11,250. but is exempt from VAT because of its utilitarian pretensions.
The new 75mm f/1.4 Leica Bummilux special edition in white, with cushioned filigree engraving on the barrel. Designed by Peter Krappe, this new addition to the Leica range costs £11,250. It is exempt from VAT because of its utilitarian pretensions.

Even ten years ago, here on Macfilos, I was fretting over future toilet roll supplies as the burgeoning digital news outlets threatened to obliterate newsprint and toilet rolls along with them:

“Declining newspaper sales will lead to a shortage of toilet paper according to Seventh Generation, a marketer of green consumer products. “The decline of print newspapers and magazines is a source of concern for journalists, but it also has an impact on the worldwide paper market”, says Martin Wolf, a director of the company. “After coming to depend on readers to dutifully recycle their old periodicals, paper manufacturers are now finding that supplies of high-quality paper for recycling are becoming scarce.”

Sir Clive Sinclair would have been proud

My solution back in 2010 was to get someone like Sir Clive Sinclair (who?) to design an electronic device to replace the humble toilet roll. Strange to relate, this has happened in the form of bidet-equipped sanitary ware – for instance, the Geberit Aquaclean. If you happen to have the odd £2,000-£5,000 lying around, that is.

Yet still, humble the toilet paper is forever on a roll. And, as we learned over the past two months, it remains the bellwether product for the world’s crises, big or small. Nor have newspapers disappeared, as I predicted in 2010, so supplies of the precious white wipers are assured, it seems.

If you want to guard against future crises, maybe the 75mm Leica Bummilux is the ideal investment. Enjoy it for its optical excellence and build quality, but use it sparingly when the next crisis comes along.

Read the full article from Macfilos 2010 here.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. I think I’ve mentioned before our trip to Japan in ..er, November 2013, was it?

    Highlight? (..Apart from the 2nd-hand camera shops in Tokyo?..) ..Japanese toilets. No paper needed. They wash you, they dry you, they play you sweet music. With warm water. And a built-in blow-dryer. And why the run on toilet rolls anyway? ..The current illness gives you pneumonia, not diarrhoea (..although all the anxiety-inducing ‘news’ currently in the papers could easily give you that).

    I just don’t get it. We stocked up on Lindt ‘Orange Intense’ chocolate and After Eights!

    • I have to say I was tempted by one of those Geberit Japanese-style thingies. That was until I saw the price. And, worse, it wouldn’t fit in my bathroom. But its probably the shape of things to come and by the time of the next toilet-roll shortage, we could all be enjoying the cooling streams and sweet music.

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