See me? See CCTV? Let me put you in the picture

RAB MCNEILL ON AN EMBARRASSING DAY AT THE GYM – AND DOWN WITH POLITICIANS

IWAS never bothered by security cameras as I’m a law-abiding citizen who only rarely lets myself down in the street. Those frightened by cameras, to be candid, were ne’er-do-wells or liberals obsessed with freedom and such rot. Freedom isn’t just over-rated, it’s a licence to commit bawdiness and evil. You may excoriate such views but, thankfully, we live in a free society where I can express them.

If we’re being watched, we’re being cared for. That’s my motto. Much motivation for CCTV cameras involves litigation, notably as evidence in prosecutions and for the accumulation of wealth by councils forcing drivers into bus lanes then filming it and imposing fines.

All this I accepted. True, at a personal level, I remain camera-shy, a nightmare for photographers, who exhort me to stop staring at my feet and to try and raise the ends of my mouth without looking like I had toothache of the soul.

If I appeared in a crime video, witnesses would say: “That’s him. Face like an undertaker at an Ingmar Bergman film.”

The miserable face is the result of tribulations in an unbelievably unlucky life, culminating in my sitting here on a Saturday, trying to instil ethics and standards into you, The People, like some hirsute, smelly preacher on a soap-box addressing a tittering mob bearing assorted fruits well past their sell-by date.

It’s disgraceful. I’ll tell you what else is disgraceful: in Britain today, there are now five million cameras watching us. I’ll run that past you again: Britain … blah-blah … five million … blah-blah …watching … blah-blah. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Accordingly, on receiving this intelligence, I disown all the words, apart from “the”, “in” and “and”, published at the start of this article or sermon.

It isn’t street cameras I’m worried about, it’s indoor ones. What if they’re in public lavatories, where chaps of a certain age take in a cryptic crossword to do while making water? What if, in the smaller rooms, they also have audio?

My researchers assure me this isn’t the case and that I may be having a spiritual crisis. Fair enough. What about this one then: what if gyms have cameras in them? I’ve just Googled it and it seems most do. Hell’s Googles! This is grim news.

This week, I made the mistake of booking the weights room at our village gym. I don’t know why I bother, for I am not as other men. Incapable of growing muscle, d’you see?

Still, I wasn’t there for vanity, but because we’re meant to exercise with weights to strengthen the joints and mitigate the syphilis (beginning to wonder if my doctor is actually qualified). I shouldn’t tell you this but … I’m a one-man Laurel and Hardy. At DIY, I drop everything. I’m uncoordinated. No common sense.

On the weights bench, I had to keep removing plates off the barbell until I was pretty much just lifting the bar. But, removing one weight, I got into a terrible tangle.

The bar’s end was close to the wall and, instead of moving it, I kept trying to lift the weight over it to put it on the floor behind. Obviously, I couldn’t reach that far down but, like Homer Simpson, kept repeating the doomed exercise and saying “D’oh!”

It was then that I noticed … the spy in the ceiling. I’ve no proof it was a camera. But it was domed and had a wee round glass bit, which in my mind assumed the appearance of an eye in a portrait above the fireplace in a haunted house.

After that, I became increasingly self-conscious … with hilarious consequences. I couldn’t remove the wee awkward holders for the weights. I tripped over a dumbbell.

And, to cap it all, the top of the disinfectant spray came off, splashing the stuff all over the floor so that I had to ask for a mop.

I’m sure this is all going to appear in the gym’s Christmas video. It’s a disgraceful infringement of our liberty to make a complete klutz of ourselves. Down with the cameras! Leave us free to bungle exercise equipment and to micturate in the street when inebriated or simply in a sunny mood.

A free country

IT is as I have written. You may recall, and indeed probably committed to memory, my column exalting politicians and decrying their inferiors, The People.

I believe I also lambasted The People’s trusted representatives, the media, in pursuit of my point that, if politicians announced they were giving away free money, no conditions attached, it would be greeted with a chorus of moaning.

And, lo, it has come to pass.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement of a gratis £500 payment to NHS workers, and indeed also John Swinney’s announcement of free school meals for all bairns, have been greeted with horror, at least by the usual greeters.

But, hang on a minute, perhaps these curmudgeonly bellyachers have a point.

I’m neither an NHS worker nor a bairn and, according to the small print, I’m getting nothing.

Down with the politicians! We, the media, sorry The People, demand justice!