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SAY
IT LOUD
-With Benn Ackah |
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There is the Big Brother TV show, and there is the
other one, Celebrity Big Brother, where politicians turn into purring
cats, cross-dressers boasts about wearing chimpanzee’s skin and a non-entity
gets more stellar than a heavily tattooed American basketball player who
smoked cigar like a chimney.
There is even Big Brother’s Little Brother show but it seems some of us will
forever be spectators, you might think.
Anyway, if you have ever romanced with the idea of being into a Big Brother house
and baring it all like Makosi worry no more. For there is a bigger show of
its likeness and we are all contestants in it. We live it. We live in it but only
a few people actually view it. The rest of us are simply oblivious to
its intricacies and intrigues.
This show is by far interesting and assuring and irritating at the same time
than the one we see on our TV sets at home.
The paradox of this show’s concept is that it is also unashamedly protective
and welcoming but can manage to be offensively restrictive and abusing at the same time.
Now my dear readers, we all know that Britain is zoomed in and surrounded by a
halo of CCTVs (meaning closed circuit televisions and not Clapham Common
train vandals) systems just like a modern version of Jeremy Bentham’s (1748-1832)Panopticon prison idea.
Britain has not only become the biggest nanny-state in the world, as some would like
to tag it, but it is fast becoming an unparalleled and the biggest Big
Brother freak show ever. Whether this is good or bad depends on how you see it –either a glass of water is half empty or half full.
Asa result it is arguable to say that our lives in Britain are no more our
own businesses. Well, it has never been anyway.
From the moment you shut your front door behind you and walk unto the streets
of Britain you step into the spotlight of a flurry of CCTV camera
activities everywhere you go.
On the pavements, in the streets, on buses, trams, taxis and trains, in
the subways and alleyways, in banks, shops and supermarkets you cannot escape
being captured on one of the country’s busy CCTV cameras.
You could be excused to believe that your home alone is the safest place but
wait until something happens and that frail old lady who pushes her trolley
shopping bag like a toddlers walker and who always almost seems to be half asleep
can describe to the police every minute detail of your life to the last cooking
you did. I call them CCTV human extension and responsive systems (CCTV HEARS).
They too could be very vital to our lives.
Oh!And if you think you are safe in your own car then you are credulous
in believing that pigs can really fly. For the Councils’ speed and
so-called parking restriction or enforcement cameras can churn out clear, distinctive
and clever photographs at a shutter speed that no paparazzi could ever match.
These are real money making machines. They seldom catch clear and open muggings
but they have very sharp feelers for when your rear wheels get on double
yellow lines. I hate them!
Well, for those of you who live in or travel to London daily bear in mind that by
the time you settle down to sleep today you would have appeared on CCTVs as many as300 times.
Currently, London has over four million cameras in use. This works out as more than
one camera for every fourteen people in the capital alone. This news might be
grim for seedy people but assuring for vulnerable men and women to know that
for someone going through Central London you could appear on CCTVs every 30seconds. This means that you are constantly in Big Brother’s watch.
As a matter of fact, New Labour wants us to rejoice for being in this BB’s
house because the presence of CCTVs have helped to reduce crime rates
considerably. And if you have ever heard the sound bite “Tough on crime, tough on the
causes of crime”, CCTVs are some of the means to achieve that.
However, the Tories will warn you not to believe anything that Tony “flip-flopping”Blair and his people tell you because their figures always don’t add up.
Whether it's on crime or on education or on the economy, or on CCTVs the
Tory leadership choral response is always, “The figures do not add up” with
the usual “hearrrrrrr hear” from their ‘claque’.
Then there are also the real bulwarks of human rights groups who will argue
from civil liberty standpoints.
Whatever the argument is this Big Brother freak show will not end.
Following the 9/11 atrocities in New York and our own 7/7 bombings the importance of
video surveillance systems has never been more accepted. The most popular
argument for putting every bit of our lives under scrutiny is that of
security. Prevention, detection, and conviction of criminals are all cited to bolster
the argument to make Makosies and Gallaways of us.
However, on the negative side, too much of them infringe on our civil liberties,
human rights campaigners have argued. They say too many cameras invade our
privacies and restrict movements. In fact, these people want to see some cameras
torn down by the producers of this enforced national Big Brother show.
Whatever the arguments are, both for and against, they do make sense. And one thing for sure is that there are not
going to evections or winners yet. The show goes on and it is interesting to know
how we all fare in this madness.
Having been privileged enough to be in some CCTV control rooms, I’ll like to share
one or two with you but if you do not want to be offended take my advice to
watch your steps and stop reading on.
Hmmm!On the very first day that I watched live images from CCTV cameras from
a control room I felt very, very ‘un-coffee-table’ as my Zimbabwean friend
would say.
This African woman goes round a bend on a busy street, looked left and right,
pulled down her tights, stooped liked a praying mantis, sprawled, her legs apart in
an uneven way and zzzzzzzzzzzz! Just before she could finish one of the
operators in the room started singing Renault’s ad tune, “I see you baby …” and as if
by chorography when he ended with, “shake you’re a..e”, she did jerk her bum,
spit into her substance and shop shut, off she went like a liberated prisoner.
She did cause some civil offense and also offended this other guy in the room
but just as she left you see on the monitors someone walking her dog into
the yellow stream she had created. Poor dogs, they walk over everything and take
it home.
Menare the worse culprits for this sort of offense. It’s interesting watching
them do their version. Almost all of them, you see them find a spot, could be
by someone's car. To be frank they appear on camera not to care too much
where they do it. As you see them unzip they push their bottom back in order to
scoop the old boy from beneath, do the p… while looking up in the sky or
directly into the mess. As the last droplets fall you can clearly see them shake it
and give the knob a flip to quicken the process and off he goes. This is also
an offence.
I saw people being mugged, bullied, beaten and steal. I have seen a man
and another man have sex on CCTV. It’s common to see a person just buying
anything from anybody who approaches him or her on the street. Hooded criminals are
very funny to look at because as much as many try to hide their faces there’s
always something that give away. I have seen people trying to wave or gesture at
the cameras. The commotion that is associated with our lives is unimaginable.
To be frank, if God and his angels are watching us from the heavens above,
we'll seem like crazy people to them.
Dear reader, take this show seriously. We are in deed being watched all the time
and our best behaviors can only ensure our survival in this national Big
Brother's freak show. Do no evil, walk no evil and please do not try to outsmart
Big Brother. Remember. He’s seen it all before.
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