Friday, 07 March 2008

Bog post

A few years back I quoted from Paul Carter's book Repressed spaces -

“Residents don’t need signs, only foreigners do… In this sense, all signs are signs of not belonging, of coming from somewhere else."

To a lesser extent this applies to toilets, at least at the neighbourhood level. If you live there, you probably don't need to know where the bogs are. Nor do you want visitors pissing on your park shelter, cos it stinks. Good, I'm glad that's clear.

Now, here's the government coming up with a strategic guide on improving public access to better toilets, and quite rightly telling us that

the state of our public toilets should indeed be a mark of civic and community pride.

Good initiative, no doubt there will be lots of talk about floor targets, and worse jokes to come. I note that proposed measures include the new 'SatLav' schemes, whereby you can receive information on your nearest toilet and opening times by text on your mobile. 'In three metres, take the first urinal on the left.'

The press release tells us that 'Communities Minister Baroness Andrews will encourage councils to consider a range of innovative ideas and actions to boost the availability, and quality of, public toilets.'

How sweet is that? After 100 years of the Labour Party, mostly oriented to the interests of ordinary people, we have their policy on our slashpans announced by a baroness. And I don't even know what a baroness is.

7 Mar 2008 08:44:27 | Space and place

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Kevin Harris

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