WE'RE WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE! FORMER MAYOR DELIGHTED BY SPY-CAMERA UPGRADE

                                                      

Big Brother! Cameras will soon scan our every step

WELCOME to Grimsby - we're looking forward to snooping on you!

Just days after North East Lincolnshire Council unveiled plans to sparkle up Grimsby town centre, it has issued a bleak photograph which seems to spell out the grim reality.

Far from being an agreeable, friendly sort of place, this is a town with a limitless capacity for violence, burglaries, robberies and a depressing spectrum of anti-social behaviour.

And it needs to defend itself from its own community.

For that reason, more  than £1-million has been earmarked on upgrading CCTV to spy on people coming into Grimsby whomsoever they be - the good, the bad or the ugly.

The project, which is also being extended to the Memorial Gate in Cleethorpes, was approved at this week's meeting of NELC's cabinet.

Does cabinet member and former borough mayor Cllr Ron Shepherd have any misgivings about the authority spending such a huge amount of money on such an unlovely and unproductive project? 

Apparently not. 

"I'm thrilled,"he says.

The Grimsby News says: In its recently-announced 'vision statement' for an enhanced Grimsby, NELC had much to say about instilling in the town centre new vibrancy, vitality and a "beating heart". But it said nothing about the ugly and intrusive CCTV cameras that will soon be staring down on Top Town. Is that supposed to constitute a warm welcome to shoppers? No, it spells out defeatism - a message that Grimsby is a hostile, dangerous environment where crime is rampant. But if the council has a spare million quid in its back pocket, why not invest it in recreation facilities for young people - those most tempted to wander off the straight and narrow? That, surely, would be a far more positive and beneficial way of spending public money.