New public toilets could douse people with water

[Fambo Number Mive]

Plans for the facilities in Porthcawl's Griffin Park include weight-sensitive floors to ensure one user at a time.

Violent movement would activate a water jet to soak users, automatically open the doors and sound an alarm.

Responsibility for Porthcawl's public toilets has been transferred from Bridgend council to the town council.

Plans say people would be able to use the cubicles for a set time to deter rough sleepers, dousing equipment would be installed to prevent smoking and drug-taking and walls and floors would be graffiti-resistant.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49372069

What happens if someone is constipated and needs to use the loo for a long time? If the council are concerned about rough sleepers using the toilets perhaps they need to do more to help rough sleepers. What happens if someone falls over in the toilets? Will that count as a "violent movement?"

Is anyone from Porthcawl on here?

[greenman]

I'm guessing the town council is Tory whilst the district of Bridgend is Labour.

[Gulftastic]

Is anyone from Porthcawl on here?

Whilst staying in Bridgend (we were there for some Rugby League hame or other), we had 'that Porthcawl' recommended to us as a good place to go for a pub crawl.

Welsh people are liars.

[Ambient Sheep]

Plans for the facilities in Porthcawl's Griffin Park include weight-sensitive floors to ensure one user at a time.

Well that'd be me fucked.

I have enough trouble as it is not setting off those fucking photocell flush sensors and getting my bits washed if I accidentally lean back too far while having a dump.

[Twed]

We really have reached the point where society considers it acceptable to physically hurt people for being needy in any way that affects profitability. There's no going back, is there? Your average fucker is going to defend this.

[fit bird]

Sheer stupidity, violent movements are what toilets are made for.

[Johnny Yesno]

Of course, no one would think of actually employing wardens to look after these facilities.

I wonder how long the time limit is. Or what the weight limit is. A large person in an electric wheelchair might get doused. I can see accessibility issues here which might get the council sued.

[Birdie]

Prevent smoking and drug taking my eye. Too coy to write shagging.

[imitationleather]

Prevent smoking and drug taking my eye. Too coy to write shagging.

Apparently the lift in Motherwell station has a mechanical shoe that shoots out and boots you up the backside if it detects you're in there with your sister now.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

*mechanical penis

[phes]

I give it about a month before the council are being sued by someone with Epilepsy, Parkinson's or Huntingdon's for being subjected to a range of violent and degrading punishments for not sitting still while shitting

What a fucking insane idea

[Twit 2]

You can tell their main wish is just to kick rough sleepers into a mass grave, but they know that won't  fly (yet) so this is the next best thing.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I give it about a month before the council are being sued by someone with Epilepsy, Parkinson's or Huntingdon's for being subjected to a range of violent and degrading punishments.

What a fucking insane idea

Hey, we all thought devolving power to local level would be great.*

*I didn't but I am a filthy top-down left winger

[imitationleather]

someone with Epilepsy, Parkinson's or Huntingdon's for being subjected to a range of violent and degrading punishments

There's already a show on Channel 4 that does it.

[bgmnts]

They're all doused by the time...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

There's already a show on Channel 4 that does it.

Gogglebox passed its diversity audit with flying coloureds

[Replies From View]

I'm personally very excited about toilet cleaning staff needing to constantly attend to flooded floors.  Seems a really good use of resources.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Violent cottaging is the best kind of cottaging.

[phes]

It's like when Homer Simpson's brother gave him free reign to design a motor car, but also... horrible. In fact it wouldn't have gotten any weirder if it had gone on to say there was also an everything is ok alarm and the ladies had a make up gun installed

[Zetetic]

Hey, we all thought devolving power to local level would be great.*

*I didn't but I am a filthy top-down left winger

For context, the previous, higher authority (Bridgend CC) simply shut the toilets. I imagine we could reserve toilet powers to the Westminster government but I think would have mostly meant that they'd never been built at all.

The actual cause here, if you're not an insane imperialist, are about how central government in Westminster has so aggressively targetted local government funding (with knock-on effects in the devolved administrations) to the point where fussing about toilet funding, responsibility and maintenance seems like a good use of time.

What would be reasonable is to set public toilet standards at a national level as a check on local authorities behaviour. (I note that in Wales, local authorities are now required to produce a "local toilet strategy" - which is a very small step in the right direction at least, in terms of bringing these things into the light.)

[imitationleather]

It's okay because soon people won't have anywhere near as much food or drink to consume so they will need to use the toilet a lot less.

[H-O-W-L]

I can't wait for some poor bastard to have some kind of fainting episode and inevitably be found in a literal lake of tepid water and piss.

[Pijlstaart]

Reckon you could mechanize a tarring and feathering, and then hang them from a gibbet in the town center. That's all my fucking council tax money, I'd splutter, all my hard-earned money spent on giving you a place to shit and then you come along and shit in it, serves you right you horrible bastard. Maybe a wrought-iron sculpture of a skeletal hand could hold aloft a jug of their offending shit. Love it to be a little boy on his holiday, he's from bradford maybe, or tower hamlets, and I get to yank him out from under the stall by his legs and smother him with my brick-red old man gut.

[Mister Six]

I give it about a month before the council are being sued by someone with Epilepsy, Parkinson's or Huntingdon's for being subjected to a range of violent and degrading punishments for not sitting still while shitting

Or someone drowns while having an epileptic fit.

[Johnny Yesno]

Reckon you could mechanize a tarring and feathering, and then hang them from a gibbet in the town center. That's all my fucking council tax money, I'd splutter, all my hard-earned money spent on giving you a place to shit and then you come along and shit in it, serves you right you horrible bastard. Maybe a wrought-iron sculpture of a skeletal hand could hold aloft a jug of their offending shit. Love it to be a little boy on his holiday, he's from bradford maybe, or tower hamlets, and I get to yank him out from under the stall by his legs and smother him with my brick-red old man gut.

And even that's too good for 'em.

[idunnosomename]

little chance of a nice relaxing poo!

[petril]

either the mechanism or the whole toilet will be shut down after the first false positive

[touchingcloth]

Local mum SLAMS council after accidental STUMBLE in public lav when mechanism designed to DAMPEN TRAMPS leaves her SOAKED causing hundreds of pounds of DAMAGE to red dress and handbag saying "this is ridiculous anyone should KNOW I'm not a TRAMP"

[GMTV]

Need a new TOILET party so we can vote to sort this out.

Used toilet water is sent to a tank, which is where the dousing water is taken from, so at least its environmentally friendly.

[Alberon]

Council hastily backtracks after criticism

A council has said plans for public toilets in a seaside town – with design features to deter vandalism, rough sleeping and sexual activity – were submitted in "error".

Plans for the toilets in Porthcawl's Griffin Park included weight-sensitive floors that would ensure only one user could be in a cubicle at a time to safeguard against "inappropriate sexual activity and vandalism". Any such behaviour would trigger alarms and water jets.

The design and access statement submitted to Bridgend county borough council also set cubical use time to deter rough sleeping and proposed graffiti-resistant walls and floors.

However, Porthcawl town council has since said the plans were misinterpreted and the toilets will be of "traditional construction". In a statement, the authority said: "We are aware that a number of security features have been listed in the design and access statement as part of the planning application. Unfortunately, the town council's enthusiasm and intentions have been misinterpreted.

Enthusiasm to attack users? They sounded more like the suicide booths from Futurama than toilets.

"The town council are committed to providing new toilets that will be good quality and of traditional construction. The various features listed in the design statement will not be included in the construction.

"The town council has never had any intention of installing any floor or other movement sensors, any restricted time entry, there will not be water sprays, or self-opening doors, no weight-sensitive floor and no dousing equipment as described in the statement. Appropriate amendments will be made to the design and access statement as necessary."

Don't you hate it when people-attacking devices spontaneously appear in your public toilet plans. Always happens but no one is to blame.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/20/plans-for-anti-sex-toilets-in-seaside-town-submitted-in-error