Open-air urinals installed on Place de la République in Paris and criticism of Anne Hidalgo
I would like to send a retching emoji, but I am genuinely impressed by the creative potential of Anne Hidalgo, tireless disfigurer of the French capital. Open-air urinals have been installed on the Place de la République, which prompts the thought that it might be renamed La Répu de l’urine.
It must be an indescribable sensation to contemplate the statue of the Republic, surrounded by the figures of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity with their torches and banners, to the accompaniment of trickling streams and the aroma of urine warmed by the sun.
The point is not the millions sunk fruitlessly into the reconstruction of this grubby district. The question is Hidalgo's obsession with open urinals: whom are they for? Have Parisians unlearned how to heed the call of the bladder? Or is the aim a new type of townsman, of a different cultural level, and predominantly male, for whom elementary hygiene is still a mystery? How do we manage in Moscow without such things, when our population is at least six times larger?
Finally, how can city officials be so utterly devoid of taste, and why has Hidalgo, with her privies, still not been swept away?
