WHAT PRICE HUMANITY?

quote: "Success is a thought process", "Positive thoughts generate positive outcomes"

I arrived into the Paris-Nord station from Charles de gaulle airport, I was trying to catch a train to Germany from this station. You see, the Paris-Nord station links paris with many domestic and international cities. It has more than 20 platforms. There are cafés, boulangeries, Patiseries as well as brasséries and of course many nice pubs where you can get a nice cool beer (bière).

After a long wait for the next train, and a few beers, you would expect to need the rest room to relieve yourself, but wait.

There is Mc Clean. It’s a privately run Toilet company. It seems that Mc Clean has cleverly secured a monopoly, there is only 1 toilet in the entire place.

It cost exactly 1 Euro, (NO CHANGE will be given) to get in. If you have only NOTES and no coins, too bad. If you have deposited 60 Euro cents and decided that there is not enough loose change, tough luck. Just put another 1 Euro and only then will the door open.

Surely paying 1 Euro for Humanity is cheap, isn't it?

Now, where are all the machine that change notes to coins, I did not see any.

This is surely a public place I thought. And providing for the minimum in the form of Toilet facilities should be a given. Least we decriminalize urinating in the open public .

It is deplorable that the public service has out-sourced this basic facility in the name of profit. If you can see a trend of where this is heading, France is no longer socialist country, the livelihood of the people are no longer guaranteed. And the cost of living is really getting higher and higher.

I am appalled not by the One Euro I have to pay, but by the indignity that the public service put people through and to deny a basic service unless they are paid 1 Euro. Worse still, they have brought in the highest form of security, the doors will only open when you put the coin in, else you stay out. There is no human intervention.

I am of the opinion that basic service should not be outsourced. This is the responsibility of the government. Yes, I agree there is a cost to maintaining the toilets and someone should pay for it. Perhaps a more equitable way would be to ask the shop lessees to contribute a fraction of their rent to maintain the toilet.Least the government say that this is the decision of the railway stations, railway companies such as SNCF or Thalys. It is still the government's job to mandate a minimum of public service/facility. If not why should the French pay tax? Don't the French already pay too much tax?

I have nothing against Mc Clean, but if the government allows private enterprise to get involved in such businesses, these enterprise will surely maximise profit. If the government wants to privatize toilets, at the minimum, the government should avail a minimum of free toilets while letting private enterprise focus on premium toilets with lots of frills.

Perhaps Mc Clean is not affiliated to Mc Donalds, but when I went to a certain Mc Donalds, they have apparently learnt that they can also charge people for using their toilets. They have installed a lock that only opens upon a deposit of a 0.2 Euro coin.

On another note, actually, when you take the Metro (subway), it is very often that you will smell urine stenches along the pathway, tunnels and stairs. I hate to say that perhaps that is the way people have decided to voice their opinion of the situation.

All these are insidious moves against the people by slowly but surely taking away basic rights and depriving people of the services, while the tax stays the same.It can happen to any country's citizens.If you allow the government to get away with murder (methaphorically speaking), they will.

But for now, it is time the PEOPLE of FRANCE speak-up and stand-up to such tyranny.