CCTV has been a great help in the past few years to police tracking down criminals.

All kinds of vicious attacks and robberies have been solved after detectives pored over hours of CCTV film and spotted suspicious-looking people who were later proved to be offenders.

We have cameras on most of our streets, car parks and public buildings and they have proved so successful that a £7,000 plan has now been approved to erect them in an Accrington park which is plagued by yobs. And recording equipment is also to be sited near the play area to catch teenager troublemakers.

The scheme follows on the heels of a recent suggestion that such cameras should be placed in a frequently-vandalised East Lancashire graveyard!

These all-seeing eyes are an effective weapon in the crime war but at the same time a sad reflection on our society.

In the 1960s a TV series called The Prisoner about a man whose every move was monitored by just such cameras was considered a grim futuristic fantasy.

Now depressingly it is everyday reality and only an extreme optimist would think we will ever return to a time when such much of our everyday lives doesn't come under camera scrutiny.