I read 1984 by George Orwell when I was young and was heavily influenced by it. I hated the thought of 'Big Brother is Watching You' and therefore fought against anything that I thought would invade my privacy.

But I have now changed some of my views and have come to the conclusion that Supt Jim Trotter's suggestion of installing CCTV in Cowley Road would not be a bad thing.

It will instead help to curb the bad behaviour and crime that is now so prevalent in East Oxford. If nothing else, it would serve as a deterrent to potential criminals if they knew it was there.

Residents need not be worried about being on CCTV unless they are breaking the law. In any case we have all been probably filmed hundreds of times in the centre of Oxford already. It has not been a terrible thing!

I regularly see wanton acts of vandalism in the early hours where I live, but am not very good at giving descriptions to the police.

If there was CCTV there, they would have been filmed, and their behaviour probably noted by the CCTV operator as potential trouble-makers, in which case I could be shown a picture to clarify my memory of them.

Sadly, I think the shortage of police means that they need all the extra help they can get. I can remember when a 'mugging' was so rare, it made front page news in the Oxford Mail.

However, these days it gets reported briefly. Times have changed; there will never be enough police to cope with 24-hour binge drinking and the extreme vandalism that we see in Oxford nowadays.

CCTV seems to have been helpful in tracing missing persons' and abducted children.

It could identify bogus taxi drivers, prostitution, kerb crawlers, drug pushing and persistent pavement cyclists.

Privacy is important but so is safety, if not more. I do not think we need fear CCTV, after all, it could be an excuse to show off that new hat!

PAMELA WEBBER Bullingdon Road Oxford