IDCI-WATCH
In today’s exciting IDCI-Watch, our intrepid fly on the wall camera crew are out on patrol with Identity Card Inspector Damien Horner, as he checks up on the safety of the people of Ashton-Under-Lynn.
Like other inspectors we have followed in the series so far, Damien has inspected the ID cards belonging to myself and the rest of the production crew several times in the course of filming, often more than once at each location.
We’re in Ashton now. It’s daylight. The market isn’t open and most people are in work. Damien is worried. He has a duty to check up to two hundred ID’s on any given shift. That partly explains why he checks so many people more often than once. He’s making up his quota.
He’s seen a man who is out shopping. Damien approaches him.
“Excuse me, Sir. May I see your ID Card please?”
Damien’s in uniform, but he still has to show his warrant card. He tells us later that some people have been known to misuse the uniforms and pretend to be ID Inspectors. He helped close down one fancy dress costume suppliers who sold and rented out ID Inspectorate outfits.
The young man he has approached has stopped dead in his tracks. He looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an approaching truck. Fear gives way to exasperation. He reaches into a pocket. The Inspector watches closely, cautious in case the man produces a weapon of some kind instead of a card. ID Inspectors are trained in Martial Arts. Some of them are seriously calling for the right to bear firearms. This man has not produced a weapon. It’s just his card. Oh, he’s dropped it. His fingers are shaking. He could barely hold it. He waits, hoping the Inspector will pick it up for him, but Damien watches in stoic silence until the man recovers it himself.
Finally, the card is in the inspection machine. It whirs into action. The green light comes on. It has read he card now. Damien asks the man for a retinal scan too. I tiny red laser beam is pointing out of the radar like devise spinning on top of the card reader. The man, or the mark-up, as inspectors refer to them, lets the beam touch his eye. He’s obviously done this before many times.
Oh, he’s spotted the camera. His apprehension to turns to elation. “Am I going to be on TV?”
Damien taps him on the shoulder. “Ignore them. It’s me you’re talking to. What’s the nature of your business?”
“I…I’m just getting the lottery tickets for the syndicate. There are eight of us sharing numbers. If we win, we’ll all be millionaires.”
Damien seems satisfied with the explanation. He’s let the young man go. I ask him who he was.
Damien asks the ID Card reader to remind him of the details. He reads the information to me.
“Terry Hirsk 7349076786785650 – He’s an employee at Meakerfield Bakeries. He often does the lottery ticket run. He’s supposed to go in his lunchtime but he sneaks out earlier, so he can still have time to get something to eat. I have to log that on his files. His bosses won’t be chuffed.”
We move on. “Christ, it’s fucking quiet.” Damien swears. It’s OK. I can bleep that out if we go on air before the nine o clock watershed.
Damien is excited about a notice he has seen attached to a lamppost.
“Look at this. Look at this.” He says, drawing our cameraman’s attention to it.
We look. It’s a simple request for information on a lost dog.
ROVER – Much loved family pet; missing for three days.
Half Labrador, half Retriever – four years old. If found, please contact Mrs.
Gennis 3675676866658786 Telephone Number 842-7421. Reward offered.
There is a cute picture of the dog that was obviously taken with a phone camera before the dog ran away or broke loose from its lead.
Damien keys the ID number onto his ID Card reader. “Fly posting and littering the streets without permission. Disgusting, and leaving a dog of some size running wild round the streets for so long. That could be negligence on the part of Mrs. Gennis. I’m logging this in.
It seems a petty consideration, even for an ID Inspector, but Damien looks worried. I ask him whether he can make his quota up or not.
“Oh, God yes. It just means I have to go indoors and check some people out. I wonder if Plimptons have had a fire drill lately or not.”
This is exciting. Plimptons are 1,000 strong machine parts manufacturers. We head round to the factory.
I reach the security gate first, as we want to film Damien approaching from inside. The gate guard has an ID Card reader. He asks to see our ID. I’m producing mine. So is my cameraman, but Damien flashes his warrant card to show that he outranks the man. He reluctantly co-operates. Damien looks as if he might check his ID for him, but he decides not to, for now. There’s a lot more people inside the factory.
We head in, and Damien gets us waved through quickly to the manager’s office. Damien immediately ID Checks Mr. Vincent Loden 6757643547545489, who reminds him how busy he, is right now. Damien keys the gesture of impatience onto the Loden file accordingly.
Damien now uses the Card Reader’s sophisticated search facilities to search for ‘Fire-drills’. He sees that Mr. Loden last initiated a fire drill on his staff six months before.
Damien asks him how many new staff has joined the firm in the last six months. Mr. Loden tells him. “About two hundred. We use a lot of agency temps at busy production periods like this.”
Damien smiles triumphantly. “Then you are seriously overdue for a fire drill. Your staffs need to know what to do in the event of a real fire. “
Mr. Loden is extremely put out over this. “I must protest. I’m not obliged to have a drill more than once a year by law here.”
Damien waves his warrant card. “I’m afraid I have the authority to over-rue you on that. You must have a drill now, witnessed by me.”
“Loden is in tears. “You’ll screw up production. I’ve got a major order on this afternoon. I’ll have to inform the fire-department, stop the machines, evacuate the factory, ID Check everyone to keep a register of who got out, then ID Check them all back in… and warm up the conveyers again. It’s a mess…”
Damien is totally unmoved by the man’s pleas. He notes on the Loden file that the employer is proving reluctant to show concern for staff safety.
Disheartened, Loden makes the call to the fire department. He tells them that he is setting the alarms off for a drill-test, and that they needn’t send a tender out. Then he hits the fire alarm. There are collective groans and moans as the staffs hear the machines automatically switch off. They are connected to the alarm system. The staffs start moving down the fire escapes and stairways to head out to their fire-points. Mr Loden, Damien, and I move more slowly. Or cameraman tries to get as much action of the staff leaving the premises as possible.
Outside, it’s raining. No one looks happy except for Damien. Mr. Loden tries to get supervisors armed with their own ID Card Reading machines to start checking the staff back in. Damien also starts checking the staff off on his machine one by one. We see why he called for a fire drill. Inside the factory he would have had to wander around looking for everyone. Now he had them queuing up to come to him. He doesn’t challenge most of the staff, apart from a few who have lit cigarettes or opened sandwiches while they are effectively off-site. Damien feels that as they are strictly still on duty such behaviour should be frowned upon.
It’s cold, and the rain is falling heavily. As the fire alarms have triggered, no one has been able to collect coats or jumpers. The workers are freezing.
One man gets singled out for special attention from Damien. Albert Campbell 2356465957608905. Damien criticises him for being the very last man out of the building during the evacuation.
“I work on the 5th floor, right at the top. It takes longer to get down from there, especially as we don’t use the lifts in the event of a fire. I had to walk down the stairs.”
Damien has logged the man’s slow pace on his file, so has the man’s supervisor with his. Damien points out that other staff from the 5th floor got out more quickly.
“They’re not a year short of retirement, “ snaps Albert. Damien, and the supervisor duly note his insolence on his file.
Finally, it’s over, almost two and a half hours later, and a great deal of production time lost. The staff rushes in to get warm, and do what work they can before the supervisors on their way out test them again to go home.
We prepare to leave. We pass the security gate where we came in. The guard knows we are with an Inspector with rank now. He waves us through. Damien takes his ID as a receipt of the time his inspection ended.
As we walk back to Damien’s unmarked van, we see a young man running down the street with a bag of chips. It’s raining heavily, so he may be just trying to get home before his take-away food gets saturated. Damien calls to him to stop for a search, but as he does so, another uniformed ID Inspector has intercepted the man, and he is also preparing to take his ID.
Damien looks furious at the intrusion onto his patch. He has gone over to discuss the matter with his colleague. They talk heatedly, but conclude that the man is actually on the border of their separate beat areas. They decide that they have no choice but to both ID him. However, they are in for a shock. As they argued, the young man has slipped away and run off, out of sight. They both lost him. The inspectors blame each other and head away, in search of other marks.
Damien has actually finished for the day. He checks the ID’s of my production team, and myself and heads for home.
POST-SCRIPT – Since this episode was aired, a number of people in Ashton phoned the ID Inspectors to report that they recognised the young man who ran away with his chips, in effect, refusing to have his ID Checked by two different inspectors. The man’s name is Don Weaver 4545434676453439. He has since been arrested. The people who reported him have earned a special card that protects them from most ID Inspections for three calendar months. Such Temporary Protection Permits (TPP’s) are available to anyone reporting information of benefit to the IDCI divisions.
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
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