It’s Time to Talk About the Shitting…

Open defecation is not a Western urban myth. WHO and UNICEF still count hundreds of millions of people doing it in fields, ditches and open ground. Nigeria sits near the top of the league table. India, despite a national toilet-building drive, still records tens of millions.

When you import the people at scale and refuse to enforce the most basic public standards, you import the habit. The footage is now so routine it has become a genre.

A children’s park is next. Nothing says community cohesion like a man treating a playground as an outdoor latrine and finishing the job by hand.

Truly, the contribution to British civic life is immeasurable.

Notting Hill Carnival has been doing this for years. A resident’s doorbell captured carnival-goers treating her property as a trench for shitting and pissing all day. Some even apologised to the camera. Sadiq Khan’s London treats the event as a celebration.

Susan Watts, 69, recorded dozens of people using the space by her front door after earlier carnivals and told the Daily Mail the stench left it “like being in a filthy toilet.” The council quoted her £75 to jet-wash a private area. Dignity, it turns out, has a surcharge.

Oxford Street is London’s main retail drag. When you have to put up signs telling adults not to defecate on it, the experiment has already failed.

Birmingham now has the same notices.

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Vancouver’s own figures are not a vibe. City data and CTV reporting put faeces removals in the first two months of 2025 at 1,870. 2023 saw 19,900 collections. 2024 still logged 17,670.

Business groups run “Poop Fairy” patrols because the municipal programme is too slow.

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