If you live in or around London you may well have seen an advert like this. They form the Disability Rights Commission's new advertising campaign and they're all over the underground for starters. Personally I take a little umbrage at them, since they seem to imply that every able-bodied individual is somehow at fault for discrimination against those with disabilities, a patent manipulation of the truth. But today I found out more about an issue affecting everyone and especially those with mobility problems.

This morning saw London's lamentable lavatories lambasted in a report by the London Assembly, wittily entitled 'An Urgent Need'. Despite the report's moniker it's a serious issue - London's lost 40% of its public loos since the year 2000, the total figure now standing at 419, or just one public toilet for every 18,000 residents, and that's not even counting the 28,000,000 tourists arriving in the capital each year. Imagine the stink, actual and political, when Olympic year rolls round.

In essence, the London Assembly want the government to force local authorities to give us more loos by law. But it's not that simple. Technically the authorities are already bound by the Disability Discrimination Act to make sure the loos they provide are readily accessible for disabled people, which you'd think would mean nice, clean, well-attended toilet facilities for all as a by-product. Alas, no. What that legislation failed to do was close a minor loophole whereby the authorities can just close down offending toilets instead and get away with it at no cost. If you're a local authority faced with either shelling out thousands to renovate an 'illegal' loo, or close the thing down for nothing and save on maintenance costs, what would you do? Precisely. So all London's loos are disappearing under a tide of bureaucratic indifference.

The reason I know so much about this is I was covering it as a story all day. It took me ages to get someone from a disability organisation to talk to me about it, not through any great reluctance but more because they all knew I was, fundamentally, broadcasting to nobody and therefore unimportant. Eventually the very kind Alison Rose of the Disability Rights Commission had a chat to me, and she said it was 'inexcusable' for local authorities to hide behind the legislation as a reason for closing loos altogether. Moreover, she made the very good point that the population as a whole - London and the rest of the UK - is getting older. That means many more older and disabled people needing to use public toilets which just aren't there at the moment. With the Olympics six years away and new disability discrimination legislation due at the end of this year, it seems like now is the time to loosen up on our elusive loos.

And in case you think this is all bollocks and you've never needed a public loo in the last X many years, just sit back and have a think. If you're getting on a bit, soon your bladder's probably not going to be what it was and you'll have to make more stops than you ever previously thought necessary, so shopping might just become a nightmare. If you're young, soon you might have kids, so think about where you'll take them if they really need the loo (and they will, you mark my word) in the middle of town on a Saturday. Are you going to have to rely on the one crappy - quite literally - toilet in a local supermarket? Let's not forget a poor eleven year old girl was raped in one, a story all over the news today. Clean, safe, plentiful public toilets are a hallmark of a civilized nation, and the onus is on our local authorities to stop putting budget sheets before toilet seats.