Hats Off

One of the problems with creeping compulsion and surveillance is that sooner or later, it filters down to the jobsworths. Those people at the bottom of the foodchain who, lacking initiative and imagination, will happily enforce regulation without giving much thought as to why they are doing what they are doing, or whether there is a good reason for doing it. “Them’s the rules. More’n my jobsworth, innit?”

So it is that with the ubiquitous CCTV watching and recording our lives (for our own good, of course) it is required that we show our faces to them, so that, should it be necessary, we can be recognised later on. Which is why Betty Wilbraham was asked to remove her hat when she went to The Hereward pub in Ely:

Retired teacher Betty Wilbraham was told by staff at The Hereward in Ely, Cambs, that its CCTV camera would not be able to see her face clearly enough.

See? I’m not making it up, honest. Well, you couldn’t, could you?

According to the landlord, Tony Love, it is:

…pub policy to always ask people to remove their hats.”It’s all to do with the CCTV. We have 13 cameras inside the pub and we cannot be seen to be discriminating between the youths and the elderly people.

“We always approach people politely and most of the elderly take their hats off anyway when they sit down. Mrs Wilbraham does not understand that the world is changing.”

Yeah, well, wouldn’t argue with him there – it is changing and not for the better. People like Mr Love have lost touch with common sense.

When walking about our capital, where CCTV follows me from the moment I step off the train, I am to be seen with my wide brimmed hat pulled low across my eyes. Who I am and where I go is my business and nothing to do with those blank, staring eyes behind the CCTV cameras. How long, I wonder, before a member of the Transport Police or one of their make-believe bobbies, the civilian community officers, requests that I remove it so that the CCTV can see my face?