It's supposed to be the future of shopping (or, if not, of our society), and is one of the tackiest places on God's earth -- a temple to all that is trivial and wrong in contemporary western society.
That's not just sour grapes, even though I was told off yesterday for taking those photographs -- photography, I was sternly admonished by a warder, is Not Permitted at Westfield. I rudely asked if that meant their own CCTV system was illegal, the place being crammed full of spying cameras.
We're supposed to just accept it, this continuous spying on us. CCTV cameras are all-pervasive in Britain's urban areas.
But these same places seem obsessed with preventing individuals from taking pictures -- these are images from some of the places where I've recently been told off (that was Broxbourne, above, where the staff did it in the nicest possible way, and this is Cannon Street, below, where I was shouted at from the opposite platform that I had to write to "HQ" for permission):
This is Harlow Town, where Big Brother-ish, station-wide bellowing from loudspeakers that "photography is Not Permitted" was the chosen mothod of communication:
Perversely, in other circumstances staff seem surprisingly unwilling to intervene. Here was a group of hungover but boisterous young people at West Brompton (note the shadow of the CCTV camera over their heads), blocking the platform and smoking:
In the twenty minutes I was there, with them loutishly dominating quite a busy platform and shouting about their various sexual encounters including with scat, no-one said anything.
Although there were worse examples on the same day -- like these three death-defying children who sat on the edge of a busy platform for at least a quarter of an hour.
At one point a member of staff was standing on the opposite platform, directly in front of them, for about ten minutes, but she was much too busy texting to say anything. There were CCTV cameras everywhere, but nothing was said.
Eventually a train came, they jumped out of the way, and carried on.
Interestingly, my selfish thinking was that if I approached them, the chances were I would be immediately arrested on suspicion of being a paedophile; so I calculated it was better to gamble with them losing their legs than me being tortured in some prison. Even taking a photo felt like I was pushing my luck...
Such is the caring society we have created for ourselves.
4 comments:
Love the blog - especially the railway/architecture musings. Thought it was about time that I said so! Re photography not allowed in station - how do train spotters get by?
J
Every time you move to a different blog - a behaviour strangely reminiscent of a man on the run who needs to keep moving - your blogging gets a notch better. And your rants a notch rantier. What would we do without you?
Anonymous J: Thanks for the nice comment. Trainspotters have a hard time -- I posted a great Steve Bell cartoon strip a few months ago about the way they're being targetted by our over-exuberant security forces.
albeo: Ah, you say the sweetest things. Although actually I thought I was being quite mild there!
It's a well know fact these days that "security" forces exist only to bully and attack either those who are too defenceless to attack back or those acting a little out of the norm. Since shouting, swearing, vomiting, urinating, happy-slapping, stabbing and graffiti-ing are all very much in the norm, thats anyone who isn't doing any or all of the above! You don't even need a camera. I got a telling off at Liv St. for just watching the trains. Seriously. I am thinking of emigrating. Probably best that you left those stupid kids alone. You wouldn't have been thanked.
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