Should we get our privacy back?

8:29am Monday 12th May 2008

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So real life isn't like The Bill after all! In that TV programme (and several others, in fact) CCTV is an invaluable aid to catching the criminals. When something dastardly has occurred, one or other of the senior officers involved will cry "Let's have a look at any CCTV from the area" and off dashes a constable, to return shortly with pin-sharp images of the crime taking place.

After a quick facial scan, up from the police computer pops the felon's full name, last-known address, criminal record and shoe size. And thus has many a collar been felt in the world of fictional cops and robbers.

But it's a long way from the reality as presented to a conference in London by the snappily-titled head of Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Video) at New Scotland Yard. He reckons that despite Britain having more security cameras than any other country in Europe, only three per cent of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said that while billions of pounds had been spent on the equipment, "no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court."

He called for more training to be given to officers, who sometimes didn't bother to inquire beyond local councils to find out whether CCTV cameras monitored a particular incident in the street.

They ought to learn from watching The Bill, where every shop's CCTV is scooped up and miraculously viewed "back at the nick" within about a quarter of an hour of an incident taking place.

The public have reluctantly accepted the spread of CCTV and the loss of their own privacy it involves. And why? Because they were told, and believed, that it was a brilliant way of tackling crime and that those who had done nothing wrong had nothing to fear.

If it's failing to deliver the crime-fighting goods because it isn't being properly exploited by the police and the courts, then what good is it? If it isn't going to be used as promised, Bill-style, the public just might wonder if we'd be better off without it, and have our privacy back.

Come on, give us a clue

Plans to beef up the driving test in an attempt to reduce the number of dangerous young drivers on the roads are a small step in the right direction if it means that those who start to learn when they are 17 will be at least 18 when they pass and will have had more stringent training.

However, if the Government followed through properly (does it ever?) on its desire to reduce the road carnage caused by irresponsible young drivers, it could raise the age for acquiring a provisional licence to at least 25.

And while it's at it, it might do worse than introduce obligatory refresher courses for motorists of all ages on the use of direction indicators. A growing number seem to have forgotten what these are for - which is, of course, to let other road users and pedestrians know which way you're about to turn.

Gradually the use of the left-hand indicator has declined, which is bad enough. But now more and more drivers are also failing to warn the world that they intend to turn right, suddenly pulling over to the centre of the road and causing considerable alarm to those following them - to say nothing of those approaching them going in the opposite direction and pedestrians crossing the side road they're about to turn into.

It's a sort of Russian roulette road game, and I wish people would stop playing it.

No mercy deserved

The vile story of Josef Fritzl and his locked-away "second family" goes from bad to worse. Not only did he plan six years ahead to make his daughter Elisabeth his sex slave when she was 18, having been sexually abusing her since she was 11, but police now think it likely that he was similarly abusing his oldest grand-daughter Kerstin, 19, who has never seen daylight and is currently in a coma.

Fritzl claims he is ashamed, wants a psychiatrist to "look into his soul" and seems likely to plead insanity when his case comes to court. Well he would, wouldn't he, now he's been found out?

Why bother with the expense of a court case? He's admitted what he's done. He probably is mad, but that shouldn't be allowed to be used as an excuse for the evil acts he's carried out over so many years and the suffering he's inflicted on his daughter and grandchildren - the very people a father and grandfather should do everything in his power to protect.

He's beyond any redemption. This world would be a marginally less wicked place without him. A quick hearing should be enough to formalise things, and then get rid of him.

Are we next on the menu?

Bit worrying, all this talk about killer ravens. Apparently because they're a protected species they've bred so successfully that instead of living remotely on high hills in pairs they're getting together in large flocks and hunting for food. Lambs and calves are their meal of choice, but they've even been known to attack full-grown sheep and peck their eyes out. Farmers are losing scores of animals to them in some areas.

How long, I wonder, before they turn on humans? Unduly alarmist? Well possibly. But those of us who often walk alone in quiet parts of the countryside would do well to remember always to carry a stout stick, just in case.

Surely the obvious answer, if a protected species becomes too numerous and undergoes a dangerous change in behaviour, is to withdraw that protection for a while until numbers are reduced.

Farmers have enough problems with foxes, stray dogs and the occasional Exmoor Beast mauling their animals without having to keep their eyes on the sky for circling predators hunting mob-handed.