Stockwell Toilet Watch

STOCKWELL urine-ologist WILL SELF apparently lives opposite an alleyway where menfolk sidle along to unbutton and let it all hang out - and not always solo. On occasion he apparently remonstrates with 'em - "Oi you I'm comin' where yous live to have a pee so how d'yah like that then eh?" or some such. Don't take my word for it you can click HERE to find his full-flow late January New Statesman outburst so stand well back. Somebody (himself he surprisingly concludes) has finally got to ask why "so many men piss in the street". Finally??? - this TOILET WATCH blogger has been bleating on about it re STOCKWELL where WILLY lives for over 4 years so he's not exactly an early starter.

Obviously WILLY S doesn't much rate what the above mentioned gentry get up to, and in reflective retrospect, he reveals that similarly he didn't much rate on-street yesteryear Parisian urinals - they stank etc., etc., etc., For myself given the acute predicament we have in Central Stockwell with no public on-street public toilet facilities at all for over 20 years I wouldn't mind a few old Parisian urinals about the manor even tho' they would in no way be adequate given that females especially the elderly also suffer acutely due to the lack of toilet facilities. Mind you WILLY does not make the worthwhile point that in Paris nowadays there are very very many 24/7 on-street free access automated toilets - or there were about 2 years ago and I presume that they are still in-situ. So whether old Parisian on-street urinals stank or not Paris is far more civilised in this matter than Blighty. WILLY doesn't acknowledge the acute problem re Central Stockwell and curiously our local STOCKWELL NEWS blogger altho' having been gently tipped off (nod nod wink wink) has in turn also failed to pick up on local WILLY's "caught short" efforts.

WILLY seems to have somewhat piddled in his "oh where have all the loo's gone pantaloons". He is of the mistaken impression that local loos have been getting shut down and got rid of etc., etc., because endless bars clubs pubs cafe's and such like have sprung up and that these jolly establishments have usurped the need for local authorities to continue to run and/or provide local toilet facilities. There may be the exceptional locality where that has been the reason for local authorities to cry off continued - or new - toilet provision. The alternative most usual reason why over many years - and especially so here in STOCKWELL (1988) - toilets have been closed is to make budget savings.

Some half a dozen Lambeth public toilet facilities were fingered for closure in 1988 and in not one of these instances was there any suggestion from any quarter that there was a surfeit of cafe's, bars, pubs or other local outlets that would adequately provide that which was going to be lost when the toilets in question got the chop. At that time the SOUTH LONDON PRESS conveniently ran an anti STOCKWELL loos item angling homosexual useage which was an inflammatory minimal issue (if true at all) and therefore codswallop so far as justifying closure was concerned - after all crimes get committed all the time but we don't get shot of the police. And furthermore CENTRAL STOCKWELL's public toilets did NOT get closed because a profusion of 1988 newly established bars, clubs, pubs or cafe's had sufficiently provided alternative toilet provision - absolutely and totally not so.

And what has much more recently happened in Central Stockwell? Detailed HERE is the story of the totally hopeless early 2009 attempt to recruit Central Stockwell outlets into the LAMBETH COUNCIL "COMMUNITY TOILETS SCHEME" (CTS). It is a curious coincidence that at the very time when this blog was detailing what a total failure for Central Stockwell the CTS has proven to be that WILLY was writing that public toilet facilities have closed because there would otherwise be a surfeit of provision - hence Council's have chosen to cry off and to abandon existing provision. No way - Council's are crying of provision if they want to budget cut - or simply if they don't want to make provision and if they can get away with it. And they ARE getting away with it wholesale. Though they came embarrassingly unstuck in EXETER just a week or so ago.

WILLY should scrutinise HERE the 2006 London Assembly report "AN URGENT NEED" for he would discover that toilet closures have gone on wholesale across virtually the whole of London for 20 years or more, and that closures were mostly driven by budget cutting considerations not surfeits of readily to hand eating and drinking establishments that have made Council run public toilets redundant. Local public toilets have been a soft touch budget cuttting item and, as calculated by local politicians, folk have just been left to suffer in silence.