Big Brother? Hardly. The CCTV cameras don’t work – and actually make crime even worse, by Ross Clar

“The revelation that only three per cent of London street robberies are solved by CCTV cameras comes as no surprise to me. A year ago this week I was standing in the rain on Southend Pier, waving at a CCTV camera, at the end of a modern- day challenge: to see whether I could travel 50 miles without being caught on camera. My journey had ended in miserable failure. I just couldn’t make the journey without appearing on a CCTV camera – and in recognition of my failure I waved at the camera that caught me on the pier.”