The biggest culture shock of visiting the UK was paying to use toilets. Do you want people pissing against walls? Because that's how you get people pissing against walls.

It's more pronounced in Southern France, where every town and little mountain village will have fountains spouting a constant stream of what amounts to essentially Evian for anybody off the street to drink and fill bottles from.

Then they charge you to pee.

Create a problem. Charge for the solution. Genius.

I think that’s a London thing rather than a UK thing.

I recall the toilets at Birmingham New Street station being paid for, and also recall the chap getting off the train carrying a few cans (and having drank a few!), observing the fee required for a toilet, swearing and then urinating in the concourse area....

The toilets in my hometown (Warwick) were closed. There used to be some on the castle walls at the top of Smith Street (near the East Gate) but they were closed. Also I think the public toilets in the main square (by the Rose and Crown?? where Woolworths used to be) are shut too.

And I don't even know of any public toilets in the town I am living in now (perhaps because I always just go home)

"spend a penny" is an old British expression, I think toilet charging goes back a long way.

Yeah, it's pretty lame. I've been reduced to carrying a coin purse (!) in my day-to-day/commute backpack containing just 20p and 10p pieces so that I'm always able to use a public toilet if I need to. Nothing worse than really needing to go but not having any change on you.

Seems ripe for disruption...introducing PeeCoin a new altcoin to solve the most human needs of society one transaction at a time.

It wouldn't be so bad if you could use your Oyster/contactless card to get in

One time I had to jump a barrier because I was bursting to go and had no change. I understand that there's a need to offset the upkeep and maintenance but had I not been able to get in, I'd have had to piss on something - preferably something other than my pants.

The trend in the UK now is to just pay pubs and places like Macdonalds a small fee from the council to let the general public use their loos. It saves on having to have separate public loos.

That applies to Sweden and the major cities as well (Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Uppsala). All cities that used to have public toilets, regrettably no more though.

50p at Victoria station!

They need to improve them by using antimicrobial copper: http://antimicrobialcopper.org/

Weird, always assumed they weren't free. Seeing so many people "not seeking" for one late at night reinforced that idea.