This post is not about the stupid, mindnumbingly boring reality show on TV, but about the more serious matter of the ever growing number of CCTV cameras sprouting up everywhere in the public domain.

I always holiday in France where the food, climate and quality of life is so much better than England. The towns, villages and the countryside so much safer; so there is very little need for cameras on every street corner, but as soon as I drive off the ferry at Dover I am immediately struck by the number of CCTV cameras monitoring my every move until I drive out of the docks onto the main road, and even then there are cameras along the route. If I stop at a pub on my way home I am being watched on cctv. Practically every pub now have cameras in all the rooms watching what and how much you drink. OK, so they say they are for security and to watch for any anti-social behaviour, but what if the landlord sees on the monitor that you drank three pints of beer, and then phones the bobbies and tells them that you have just driven off the carpark?

Yet while CCTV cameras proliferate, now numbering 4.4m in the UK – that’s more than there are Welsh people – latest figures back show what everyone has long suspected – that the bloody things don’t actually stop crime!

Driving through our little town of Earl Shilton, from when you enter to when you leave you are never out of sight of a police camera. On every road into the town there are cameras that read your registration number and instantaneously check with the DVLA computers that your car is taxed, insured, your MOT certificate is up-to-date and that you are wearing your seatbelt (cameras using using high image lenses)!

There are cameras in Wood Street Park monitoring the childrens play area to watch out for child-molesters and paedophiles, of which the authorities seem to think that Earl Shilton is infested with. Fair enough, I suppose that is one place where cameras make sense.

One place where they don’t work is the Wood Street Carpark where a car was vandalised recently, and despite the fact that there are two cameras the vandals they were not seen. Since my post about that incident another car has been vandalised, but to date I don’t know if there were any arrests made.

Nearly all the local shops, Post Office and Supermarket are bristling with cameras. I never feel lonely when shopping in the town, knowing that numerous nameless people are looking out for me.

Private snoopers are being paid to monitor thousands of CCTV cameras from home via the Internet. Their job is to try to spot criminal behaviour on live feeds from cameras in stores and streets. If, for example, they see a shoplifter they send a text message warning the owner of the firm. It reminds me a bit of Nazi germany when the youngsters in the Hitler Youth movement were encouraged to report any anti-Nazi behaviour by their parents, friends and neighbours.

Finally: (and you couldn’t make this up!) Cameras are being turned on the people paid to watch CCTV streams, to note which bits of surveillance footage they didn’t see. The system developed in Turkey uses webcams to track a person’s eye movements and can then produce an edited reel of footage that they didn’t see at the end of their shift.