hard choices

It's ninety-nine days to go until the election.  I'm not sure that the BBC or the newspapers or the politicians themselves are going to be able to think of enough things to say about it for another ninety-nine days at the current rate, while by 7 May the entire electorate will probably fall down in hysterics shouting la-la-la-la-la we can't hear you, or collectively burst a blood vessel, if exposed to the phrases 'hard working families' or 'cost of living crisis' one more time.  Meanwhile, there are some hard choices to be made, but I expect the political parties will only come clean about those after the polls have closed.

In north east Essex the row is over public toilets.  A while back Colchester Borough Council announced that as part of necessary cost saving measures they would be closing various public conveniences around the borough.  The public backlash was predictable.  West Mersea Town Council blinked first, agreeing to take on the cost of running all four public loos on the island, after a three thousand signature petition against closure, and an undertaking by Colchester to pay £7,000 a year towards costs and refurbish one block before handing it over.  West Mersea has a sizeable tourist trade, what with the beach and the yacht moorings.  They don't want to lose that, and neither do they want desperate day trippers caught short or yachtsmen unable to face the drive back to London without a pee relieving themselves in the streets.

Dedham is fighting on.  They say that the toilet block is used 80 to 90 per cent by tourists, and it is unfair to ask the residents to pay for it when the businesses already pay business rates.  Which is true, although the car park is probably largely used by tourists as well, and there was a furious campaign against Colchester Borough starting to charge for that, which included repeatedly disabling the ticket machines by putting superglue in the slots.  It might be that parking revenue (mainly from tourists) would have made a useful contribution towards running the public loos (mainly for tourists).

Chat at the quiz night swung round briefly to the election, and one of my team mates opined that government was far too big, spent far too much money wastefully, and should be smaller.  I mentioned the proposed closures of the public loos.  That, he spluttered, was ridiculous, when we were all getting older, with prostate problems and pelvic floors not what they were.  There are going to be some hard choices after the election.