Cambridge City Council in the UK has spent nearly £1 million on a new public toilet block that includes squat-style facilities explicitly preferred by some foreign visitors. To make matters worse, they’re asking anyone who chooses to squat and shit in a hole in the ground to pay £1 for the privilege.
This is not progress. It is regression dressed up as inclusivity. Britain invented the modern flushing toilet. Victorian engineers perfected sanitation systems that lifted entire populations out of filth and disease.
Now a Labour-run council in one of the country's most historic university cities has decided that the way forward is to install the very facilities associated with places that never made that leap—or chose not to keep it.
The new block on Silver Street, opposite Queens' College and near the Mathematical Bridge, replaced a flood-prone 1980s facility next to the River Cam. Alongside standard toilets, wheelchair-accessible facilities and baby-changing, the council installed three squat-style flushing toilets.
Cambridge City Council's own statement is clear: these are "preferred by some international visitors."
Council