I've seen it all now

I never thought it would happen, but here it is. Over the Summer holidays CCTV has been installed in schools for kids age 8 to 16. The reason given is "to enhance our school security". From now on our kids will be filmed everywhere but in the loo. I might sound a little whingeing, but there's a big issue here. We have Big Brother all over the place now, in the streets, on trains, in public buildings. Walk around town and watch the cameras following you. Now, this is for our own protection we are told. But it doesn't prevent crime, and I'm not so sure it helps in catching criminals either. Most of them disguise themselves knowing they're being watched. They'll do their deeds whether there's a camera or not.

My daughter actually equated 'being naughty' to why they have cameras in her school. "There are lots of naughty kids in our school" she said when she mentioned the cameras and saw the shock on my face.

The message being put out by the media and government is that the world isn't safe, that we need protecting, we could be burgled, stabbed, shot at any time. I don't want that fear put on my children. And it is a total fabrication. It is no more a dangerous world than it was in the past. If anything bad happens it just gets broadcasted quicker and further. And often, as one famous News Editor said, most of what is in the papers is made up.

And CCTV cameras in schools (when they haven't been there for hundreds of years) is just another example, and a seriously expensive example too. Still, what else would they spend Taxpayers' money on?