Shropshire Star

David Burrows: Time for Big Brother to turn a blind eye?

George Orwell knew it was coming, but everyone just went and ignored him anyway.

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Supporting image for story: David Burrows: Time for Big Brother to turn a blind eye?

He saw a time when we would always be at war. It just wouldn't be clear with whom. He saw a time when Government surveillance would be everywhere, monitoring our every move.

He was right.

But maybe the times, they are a-changing.

Not in any huge, life-altering way, you understand, but changing nonetheless.

Next week Shrewsbury Council will meet to discuss proposals to end the use of CCTV cameras to aid with the prosecution of car drivers who park illegally in the town. The new thinking is that this might just be a little heavy-handed.

The meeting comes after a Department for Transport paper looking at potential ways to change how local authorities enforce parking was published last month.

The ideas include stopping the use of CCTV cameras to enforce on-street parking and reviewing parking strategies related to residents.

The second part of that caught my eye. As regular readers of this column - or my friend Margaret, as she is known - will be aware, I've had a few parking tickets for leaving my car off the road outside my own home. Could that be about to change? I'm not holding my breath.

But it is the possible end to the use of CCTV that will interest more people. For years campaigners have argued against "Big Brother" tactics being employed for such seemingly minor indiscretions.

The DfT report said: "The Government is concerned that, specifically in relation to on-street parking, the use of CCTV cameras is no longer proportionate, and local councils over-employ them to deal with contraventions where it would be more appropriate, fairer and straightforward for a parking warden to deal with the contravention."

I couldn't agree more, but one has to wonder what this might mean for Shropshire Council's much highlighted plan to clamp down on bad parkers in Shrewsbury Town Centre.

In the summer the authority said it had had enough of people leaving their cars in disabled spots and loading bays at night and would be jolly well doing something about it.

Now they did say that officers would be patrolling the streets looking for offenders, but you have to wonder how much they relied on their little spy cams instead.

Does this new way of thinking from central Government mean that local government will have to splash more cash that it doesn't have on more wardens? Will there be Government help for that? Doubtful.

I'm all in favour of ending the use of the cameras. But it will be interesting to see what happens when they are gone.