SOME people will be aware (and others will not) that the speed limit on Peel Way, Bury has recently changed from 40 to 30mph.

So I'm sure we'll sleep safe and sound under out duvets once the newly (and I'm sure coincidentally) installed speed cameras there are working to the satisfaction of our guardians of road safety, the traffic police. Presumably, as this new form of taxation gathers pace nationally, this department will have to move in with the other collectors of taxes at the Inland Revenue.

If the police say they are not a new type of tax collector, why use cameras? And why have they been erected so soon after the reduced road speed was introduced?

Why not instead just festoon every lamp standard along Peel Way with 30mph signs warning motorists of the new lower limit. The cost of these signs, spread over a 10-to-15 year period, would be negligible, probably a lot cheaper than the two very costly cameras and would almost certainly achieve the desired aim. But they would not be very good at collecting the new "police speed tax"!

If the police are determined that this shall be their new role, does this mean that the limited time they now spend on catching real criminals, like burglars and muggers, will be even further reduced? Somewhere there has got to be a middle way that would see ordinary, law-abiding citizens maintaining respect for their police force, though I can only see it being eroded by this short-sighted approach.

ANDREW S. POMFRET,

Hillside Crescent,

Bury.