Melissa Kite
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Now, I’m not sure I know what social exclusion is any more, never mind a toilet block aimed at relieving it. I feel socially excluded most of the time, on account of the aforementioned Judas friends — not that I’m bitter about it (may they roast in the fires of hell) — but even so, I’m pretty sure that being able to go to the loo in the park at night wouldn’t make me feel any better.
The Tooting Honey Toilets, as I am calling them, are the brainchild of local Labour and Green party activists who formed a steering committee and won Heritage Lottery Funding to turn a disused cricket pavilion on Tooting Common into …oh, goodness knows what.
I’ve read the 31-page proposal and as far as I can make out, the pavilion is to become a community centre with en suite micro-Eden Project that will somehow solve every social, environmental and economic problem in Britain. (Needless to say, we couldn’t just have a café.)
Specifically, it will include London’s first ever underprivileged toilet block, open until midnight and staffed by volunteers to help people who, er, don’t have a toilet and happen to be wandering through the unlit environs of Tooting Common carrying their proof of eligibility for benefits card on them.
But it doesn’t end there, because around this socially dynamic lavatorial opportunity will be sited a peace garden, a ‘multi-use grass area’ (I think that’s a field), a community ‘growing space’ and, last but not least, just what you always wanted outside a late-night toilet block in a park …No, not a police watchtower …Bee hives.
Yes, that’s right. But this is not totally unexpected. If you haven’t already noticed, the newly resurgent hard left has quite a thing for honey. In a recent interview, Jeremy Corbyn called for us to become a nation of beekeepers, with every new home built having a garden large enough for an apiary.
I think I understand this. The vegan left do not like reality. They despise the vile, murdering countryside. And so beekeeping encapsulates for them a town-based utopian ideal of food production. Why, the bees enjoy it!
The Tooting Honey Toilets will have honesty boxes, enhancing the Arcadian feel by ensuring there is no nasty commerce involved. Visitors will simply pay for their honey if they feel like it — even though, as any fool from the countryside could have told them, there are no flowers anywhere near and so nothing for the bees to make honey with.
My guess is that the bees will all be in a foul mood and sting the backside of any unsuspecting soul who stops there to have a socially excluded pee.
Meanwhile, the artist who currently lives in the pavilion and acts as a caretaker (which, it goes without saying, is a system that works perfectly) is going to be evicted. Presumably, once they have made him homeless and he is sleeping rough beneath the trees he will at least qualify to use the loo, if he can get past the angry bees.
It is a barmy glimpse into what Britain will look like if this lot ever get the chance to try to run anything on a wider scale. But, of course, most people will be too apathetic to mind.
Because you read about builder boyfriend
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