The sad demise of the public convenience
The Independent, 2 January 2006
By Heather Brooke

So farewell then, public conveniences. It seems you are no longer convenient either to the general public in need of relief or local councils charged with your erection and maintenance. The Victorians made Britain the envy of the world for public toilets. Ever since, we’ve been sitting on our laurels.

This New Year I’ve become acutely aware of the lack of public toilets as I trawl department stores, supermarkets and high streets. It’s bad enough in London, but nationwide the situation is even worse. When John Prescott threatened councils with council tax cuts, Torbay and Shepway responded by shutting all their public toilets, to the outrage of their citizens.

A night out in London, and the abiding memory is of streets paved with golden showers. Yet even this is tame to what I’ve seen in some public parks and East London side streets. It can’t be long before this slide back to medieval hygiene culminates with us all throwing our waste out the window. Is this really acceptable in 21st century Britain?

The Greater London Authority has received so many complaints about the state of the capital’s public toilets it launched a study in October to assess the situation and makes its first report at a public meeting January 16th. The public is invited to submit comments, suggestions and complaints until January 31st. Comments on London’s public toilets can be sent to: Anna Malos, PP10, London Assembly, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA or email: [email protected]

This consultation comes not before time, yet there is no such initiative coming from central government. While the Chinese are busy spending £25 million installing 5-star toilets in Beijing, Britain’s interest in crap is confined solely to the scatological titles available in bookshops. Discussion of the real thing is strangely muted.

The last survey of public toilets done by the Audit Commission for 1999/2000 showed a dramatic decline in the nation’s public toilets. Instead of taking action on the Commission’s results, the government ended the official audits. Since then, the number of public loos has dropped a further 40 per cent, according to Richard Chisnell, director of the British Toilet Association and Loo of the Year award.

This decline is a direct result of the current trend for viewing public services as money-making ventures. True, in the short-term, toilets don’t make money and the costs (such as attendants and cleaners) can only be recovered by charging. Some councils are doing just that. Westminster now leases three of its public loos to private company Carlisile Cleansing who charge 50p to use their ‘superloos’.

But to view the usefulness of public services only in terms of cash flow is wrong. (more…)

We don’t need new terror laws
The Independent, 2 November 2005
By Heather Brooke

Politicians are stumbling around Parliament, giddy from binge lawmaking. Each week, another new law is introduced to give the police state more power, and the public even less. Today the House of Commons debates the Government’s new terror laws. But what is the point of creating new laws when old ones are not enforced? The rise of Islamic terrorism in Britain did not happen overnight nor did animal rights activists or binge-drinking yobs appear from out of the blue. In each case, there was a litany of illegal activity taking place and in every instance the phrases that spring from news reports are ‘case dropped’ or ‘no charges filed’.

Trustees at Stockwell mosque in south London have said they tried getting police help two years ago when an extremist group that included London bombing suspect Hussein Osman, tried to take over. The police did nothing.

The closure of a guinea pig farm in Newchurch came after years of sustained harassment. Between 2003 and 2004, more than 400 incidents including hoax bomb attacks were reported. The family who owned the farm received no police protection and no justice.

Many complain the police do too little too late, if they even show up at all. A damning report on police services by the think-tank Politeia released this week states that, given the ‘sheer difficulty of cutting through bureaucracy and getting the police quickly to the scene,’ many people have given up reporting crimes.

Politeia’s director Sheila Lawlor said: “Policing suffers from low-quality recruits, poor leadership and a structure of divided authority. Both training and employment lack direction, and even a sense of fundamental purpose, with confusion about what the police are employed to do and how well they do it. As a result, the system is failing.” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair would do well to tackle these problems before he demands further powers.

It must be said, however, that final responsibility for the decision to prosecute rests with the Crown Prosecution Service, and so it must be the CPS who shoulders blame for the general feeling that there has been a breakdown in justice, particularly from the victim’s viewpoint. It could even be argued that the CPS’ feather-soft approach to prosecution has led to the rise in direct action and violence in the UK, particularly among religious and protest groups whom prosecutors fear offending.
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