A Wee Bit Irritated

Edinburgh: Inspiring capital by charging you to pee

And so, they've started charging 30p to use the ‘public’ 'conveniences' in Princes Street Gardens.

Edinburgh City Council are refurbishing seven city-centre public loos, which 'will see the facilities refurbished and a small charge introduced for their use'.

I'm all for a lick of paint and a spruce up, but none of the ones I’d used hitherto were ever really that bad.  And now they're doing the same down in Waverley Station too!  Thirty pence!  Why that sum?  Of course!  The convenient 30p coin that does not exist.  When you're bursting, having just come off the train from Airnefitchie (on which an apparently homeless man and his elderly Schnauzer are permanently installed in the loo), the last thing you want to do is have to root around for the correct change.

And now you have to pay to pee outside the station as well.  No, no, not in the form of police court fines; I mean that the Princes Mall also charges thirty pence for the privilege of letting you relieve yourself in their facilities.

Therefore, I am often left to brave Debenhams, Jenners or the M&S Food Hall – at rush hour – just to use their facilities, which thankfully are still free to anyone walking off the street.  Coffee shops are often no good these days either.  I do not wish to purchase a Starbucks coffee just for the sake of the right relieve myself, as moments after drinking said coffee I need relieve myself once again and find myself in the same predicament as before!

Have you ever heard of human rights?  You heard me.  Human rights are 'commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being'.  Yes, I know the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a non-binding resolution, but now that it has acquired the force of international customary law, which can be invoked, I rather think I have a case here.  Is urination not one of the most fundamental functions of a human being, and therefore of being human?  I rather imagine that asserting your basic need to pee was part of the 'recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family...the foundation of freedom, justice and pees in the world'. 

Sorry, ‘peace’.

Human rights violations occur when actions by state actors (e.g. Edinburgh City Council) abuse, ignore or deny basic human rights, and can occur when any state actor (see above) breaches any part of the aforementioned and above-quoted U.D.H.R.

Needing to pee and being charged to do so could be seen as a violation of my basic right to life (because I'm sure if I wasn't allowed to pee, I would shortly die); and my right to freedom from torture (have you ever needed to pee after getting off the sleeper train from Scotland to London – where all the toilets are currently occupied with other passengers – and arrived so early that you neither have the change for the station toilets nor are there any free public toilets even open and you've had to wait for the National Bloody Portrait Gallery to open just so you can use their facilities?); my right to freedom from slavery (I refuse to be a slave to whichever council body is in charge – they are making me a slave to their principles in thinking paying to use the facilities is the correct thing to do); and finally my right to a fair trial (at which I would argue why it is not necessary to pay for the toilets and that one simply never has the correct change to make the required thirty pence – they just assume that I will).

Why is it that this admittedly fairly small human rights abuse can go on under the very noses of those trying to uphold the very principles behind the philosophy of the human right, and yet who bow down to any miscreants who claim their human rights have been violated because we want to steer them out of the country because they violated the civil duties they are meant to adhere to whilst living in this country.  Or prisoners who successfully sue the state because their human rights have been violated due to being incarcerated for murder, or something.

What I want to know is, as a law-abiding (mostly) citizen of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and therefore a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (not personally but you know what I mean), a member of NATO, the Commonwealth of Nations, G7, G8, G9½, G20, the OECD, the WTO, the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the European Union:

Where is my human rights protection?

I need to pee and I don't have thirty pence, and how long before the department stores cotton on this wicked, wicked scam too?

I suppose I could always lift my leg on the Scott Monument.