Invisible People
February 15th, 2008 by Russell DaviesIf I told you this was a series about control rooms and surveillance systems you’d be forgiven for summoning up images of Big Brother, grim, anonymous security men and the oppressive boot of the state. But there’s hope for us all in the fact that most of these programmes revolve around a kettle and a packet of biscuits. Joe Kerr visits various control rooms - that of London buses, a Glasgow care line, the Ordnance Survey, the National Grid and an offender tagging system (sorry, not offenders, ’subjects’, some of them are just on bail) and talks to the people who operate them. This is more chatty radio than you normally get. Chatty boarding on flirty, and almost approaching HR violation at some points. Fantastic stuff. There are five of these fifteen minute gems. One is here. And here are two, three, four and five. I especially love the little bits of jargon you hear - G4S talk about people being ‘on the tag’, the National Grid think it’s a good night if ‘it hasn’t touched the sides’ and the bus control centre call the ambulance service ‘bandages’ and the fire service ‘Trumpton’.
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