A website has shared a list of access codes online for those caught short in cafes and shops. But can the loo coup stop people weeing in the streets?
It is an act of the purest social altruism. Two citizens – or, as they are now known, toilet activists – have built a database of loo codes for cafes and shops across the capital. Are these two young people who need the loo a lot? Or are they tireless crusaders against an ever-more-marketised version of society, where human needs that were once accommodated as a shared responsibility have been outsourced to commerce? To put it simply: nobody any longer cares about whether you need a wee, unless you also need a cappuccino.
The privatisation of toilets is one of the least contested areas of the public realm. This is not, I think, because toilets are immune to politics – witness the agonies over the unisex loo, which this database explicitly references – but because the state of needing the loo is such a temporary one that it doesn’t register as a meaningful deprivation. Nor does it ignite our sense of pride in the commons. Really the only question it raises is: “Why didn’t you go before we came out?“
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