The unseasonal summer weather and the unusual prospect of a Birmingham City Council climb down have had Moseley residents giddy with excitement. In some cases they’ve taken to the streets with unseemly displays of public eating.

It was clear from the beginning that placing security cameras in such a middle class area was always likely to be unpopular. The weight of evidence, from research, indicates that such surveillance is only truly effective when spying on more working class populations. So when people from as far afield as Sparkbrook and Balsall Heath met to show their displeasure at the three million pounds spent on a network of cameras, nobody really expected to have any impact our decision makers.

It is fair to say that almost all of us shocked to hear the news that the police had agreed to turn off their cameras and stop spying on us. There was even a substantial bonus to the local bag industry when it was agreed to cover every single one of the hundreds of different cameras, thus reassuring the public and keeping the cameras warm.

In an unfortunate twist  it now seems that our celebrations might have been entirely premature. The gesture of covering the cameras might actually have been a step too far. It appears that the so called Human Rights Act could also apply to the rights of  camera operators.

A police representative told us, “Ok, it’s a fair point that we didn’t ask anyone before we put them in. To be honest we thought it would be a lovely surprise for everyone. I think I can put my hand on my heart and say that next time we buy you something like this we will ask you first.”

He went on, “The whole bag thing has gone a bit far. I’ve got camera operators that are suffering real distress, it’s inhuman, they can’t see a thing through that thick waterproof fabric. We’ve sought advice and we think it is against the law.”

A dubious legal expert confirmed this for us “Some operators cannot tell whether they are looking up or down and that is effectively torture.  We need consistency. If we don’t let the security services kidnap people and send them to Syria with a hood over them then we can’t do almost exactly the same thing to police employees. They must be removed”

The Safer Birmingham Partnership did confirm for us that none of their employees are currently being tortured in Syria.

They are also looking for someone that wants to buy a couple of hundred very specific bags.