Taipei mayor Ko Wen-jie: ‘You only have one butt, why buy so much toilet paper?’
Some have joked that Ko might need the paper to wipe his own big mouth
Following reports of a massive toilet paper buying frenzy breaking out in Taiwan ahead of a price hike next month, the outspoken mayor of Taipei couldn’t help but wonder what people were planning to do with all that toilet paper they were hoarding.
“You only have one butt, what are you going to do with so much toilet paper? It’s very strange,” Ko Wen-jie mused yesterday when asked about his views on the TPocalypse which has seen stocks of toilet tissue wiped off shop shelves in Taiwan.
When a reporter pressed him about whether this panic reflects the public’s lack of trust in Taiwan’s government, which has urged people not to stockpile toilet paper, Ko again ruminated on what hoarders were going to do with so much paper before acknowledging that the government was carrying out investigations to ensure fairness, adding that his office would cooperate with these efforts.
The Great Toilet Paper Buying Panic of 2018 kicked off on Sunday in Taiwan following reports that the precious daily necessity was in for a sizable price hike in mid-March due to disruptions in Brazil and forest fires in Canada which had caused the global cost of short fiber pulp to rise.
Amid photos of empty shelves and videos of frenzied shoppers, government officials have reassured the public that supplies of toilet paper are stable and that prices will not rise until mid-March.
Some have joked that Ko might need some toilet paper to wipe his own big mouth. Since becoming the mayor of Taipei in 2014, Ko’s tongue has got him in a bit of trouble more than once.
In 2015, after being presented with a pocket watch by the British transport minister, he joked that he would either regift it or sell it as scrap metal. A few months later, he was criticized for seeming to praise colonization in an interview with Foreign Policy Magazine. Afterward, he promised to be “more precise” with his words from now on.
