Public (in)conveniences!

In London's Spitalfields a former public toilet has gone on sale for £1,000,000! It had already been transformed from public toilet into night club but was closed a few years ago because of drug problems. How appropriate, considering how many public toilets have been closed on the grounds that drug pushers congregate there to do their trading! The million pound former toilet is, I have to say, a very ornate building and should probably be preserved but the price for 600 square feet of property is a little over the top. Apparently 600 square feet is round about the minimum size of a newly built one-bedroom flat in London. When the toilet was a night club it could only hold 60 customers. Now it's being marketed as an ideal venue for a bar or restaurant. 

In the Guardian, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett was bemoaning the lack of public conveniences in the UK. Not just the lack but the appalling state of some of those that remain. She also bemoans the fact that so often you have to pay to spend a penny these days. Of course, we talk about spending a penny (now 30 pence on Victoria Station and Piccadilly Station in Manchester) because that is what you had to put into the turnstile to get into the public toilets. This was back in the day when they employed someone to keep an eye on what was going on there as well. 

Those little jobs that have disappeared - the loo keepers and park keepers - actually kept the loos and parks open. Nowadays many parks lock their gates at the end of the afternoon to prevent them being taken over by gangs of hoodlums, drunks and drug sellers. What a sad world it is! I wonder if you still see the ladies who used to sit in the entrance to the public toilets in Paris - Ladies to one side, Gents to the other - collecting a small fee which you discreetly dropped into her saucer, barely acknowledging her presence. I wonder if they would be considered sufficient to prevent mis-use of the toilets nowadays. 

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett praised public loos in other countries. She clearly has not seen the ladies toilets in Vigo bus station. They are free but you really only ever want to use them if you are desperate. She also perpetuated the myth that you can pop into any cafe on the continent and use their toilets. I know of at least one small cafe bar in Vigo where the owner turns away people who just want to use the toilets. I also know people here in the UK who pop into cafes and pubs to use their facilities, without ordering anything. And in our particular neck of the woods the disappearance of public toilets (and the fact that the ones in the park in Uppermill are so frequently padlocked) is being countered by denominating certain pubs' toilets as available for use by folk who are out and about. I suspect that at least some of the walkers and shoppers who pop in for a pee also stay for a pint. Winners all round. 

Oh, another thing: Ms Cosslett wrote that the Spanish call public toilets "necesidades". Really? Who knew? Not this Spanish speaker anyway. I have yet to hear someone asking for the loo saying, "¿Hay necesidades por aquí?" It doesn't appear in phrase books, not to my knowledge anyway. I have yet to see a signpost with an arrow pointing to NECESIDADES. I should be interested to hear other people's views on this. However, a toilet bag is called "un neceser". 

Just the other day I ranted a little about the cost of public transport, another public inconvenience. Well, today I found an article by Own Jones in which he said this: 

 "Travel outside London, however, and Britain’s deregulated bus system reveals itself as the source of widespread, justified disgruntlement – an overpriced, inefficient, poor-quality mess. According to a report to be published this week, since deregulation in 1986 – unleashed with the promise that “more people would travel” – bus trips in big cities outside London have collapsed from 2bn to 1bn a year. In London, on the other hand, where everything from how much we pay to which routes exist is decided by the mayor and Transport for London, bus use since the 1980s has gone in the opposite direction: from around 1bn to more than 2bn trips a year. Britain’s bus privatisation disaster is a story of profit before need, and a discomfiting tale for those who believe the private sector automatically trumps the public realm." 

Here's a link to the whole article for those interested.

Further examples of the North-South divide and the swings and roundabouts aspect of that divide. All property, including former public toilets, is unbelievably more expensive in London but their public transport system is cheaper and all round better than in the North.