Big Brother?

Statistics indicate* that the UK has more CCTV cameras per head of population than anywhere else in the world and that the average person in the UK appears 300 times a day on a surveillance camera.

According to a survey conducted by the BBC's 'Newsnight' programme a couple of years ago, the Shetland Islands have more CCTV cameras than San Francisco, whilst the London Borough of Wandsworth has 1,113 CCTV cameras (roughly 4 per 1,000 people) which is more than the combined total of Boston (that's the one in Massachusetts not the one in Lincolnshire...), Johannesburg and Dublin. Don't you just love these comparisons?

Do they really make us any safer? Or do they actually make us more fearful?

*Although I always bear the old quote "lies, damned lies and statistics" in mind...