CCTV

I am a rule-follower. I don’t know if it is nature or nurture that caused it, but that’s me. I recently was watching a film about football hooligans and one of the characters said to the other “we’re the most watched country in the world”. He was referring to the CCTV cameras everywhere in the UK. H had noticed the numerous cameras on our trip here in June and we even have them at work in our parking lot and can monitor them inside on a two different televisions. One morning over breakfast my housemate N said to me that because of the way I walk to work, I’m probably on the cameras the whole walk. This freaked me out a bit, even though I’m innocently just walking to work.

After thinking about this, I was sitting at the tube station in Chesham and someone was handing out flyers for a town meeting. I read the flyer and was about to just sit it on the bench when a voice in my head said “Don’t do it! CCTV will think you’re a litter bug!” I know there aren’t necessarily people watching the footage as it happens, but I have heard of people getting traffic tickets for answering their mobile phones while driving here thanks to the cameras. I also heard B playing cops with a friend in the house one day and he was suggesting that they rewind the tape from the CCTV cameras to check where the criminal had gone. It’s just a fact of life.