Okay, coming out of polemical mode... in all seriousness, there is a limited requirement for this role in genuine situations of safety and traffic flow - I recognise that and accept that, and so does every right thinking member of the public - however we all know that the vast majority of the 'work' wardens do is nothing to do with genuine issues and everything to do with sneaking about raising revenue for the council from the soft target that is the increasingly beleaguered motorist. Years ago wardens were only to be found in city centres but now they have proliferated to the point where they can be found hovering round small suburban 'high streets' and even local housing estates where there is no issue of safety/flow at all [at the same time as the council has slapped double yellow lines all over small local roads]... the reason is the motorist is a cash cow for Salford Council.

   Ah Richard, if and when you become a councillor you will realise that traffic wardens (or to use their correct title- parking attendants) do a vital job. Illegal and haphazzard parking does cause severe problems on traffic flow and safety as well as causing problems for local residents. Ask any school which experiences school gate parking on zig zags. They regularly contact the council begging them to deploy parking attendants to keep the area clear for safety reasons. They do a difficult job in difficult circumstances and your comments are unfair and ill-judged.

   I find this whole affair somewhat alarming. Going off what I saw from the video, Darren Ingham was no more than a 'low level yob' giving a bit of verbal abuse to traffic wardens; I do not condone his behaviour which was idiotic and which was tinged with a 'streak of racism' but that is what it was... basically idiocy - NOT a serious crime. This was more Alf Garnett than the KKK! I am staggered he spent several weeks in prison and got a TWO YEAR supervision order... that's so way over the top it's unbelievable. He's been excessively harshly treated to 'make an example out of him'... I believe what he said and did merited a police Caution and no more. To my mind his 'threats of violence' were obviously not to be taken seriously... yes it was 'threatening language' but he was just a foul-mouthed yob, NOT somebody who was ever going to follow up his 'mouthing off' with a traffic warden shooting! Traffic wardens and police officers often speak and act in exactly the same way as this man did but I don't see them being prosecuted! I've had police officers use identical offensive language and act in a similarly aggressive manner towards me on several occasions [but unfortunately I didn't have my headcam on to capture it! ...and if I had, what would a bent copper have done? Rip it off and destroy the evidence of course].

We already live in a country with the highest level of camera surveillance in the world. These headcams will be used for snooping, spying and prying by the state into our daily lives more and more. The idea of protecting public sector workers is a convenient fig-leaf. We should remember why traffic wardens are the cause of such contention in the first place... they may be within the law but what they do is immoral and is a waste of taxpayers' money for a non-job which irritates and inconveniences people for no good reason. People are usually right to be angry with wardens because wardens are just pickpockets robbing easy pickings for the council.

The headcams are also dangerous from an evidential point-of-view because they do not show what the wearer was getting up to [!], they invoke a subtle prejudicial bias in favour of the wearer and recordings can easily be tampered with. Furthermore you can 'bet your boots' that any time recordings might incriminate the warden or police officer those recordings will mysteriously vanish into thin air! [Oh sorry, the battery was dead, it didn't record] There are so many potential abuses of this technology from a legal regard that more widespread application really is alarming. And in the long run as criminals adjust to the technology it won't protect wardens from attack because real criminals bent on attacking them will just make sure they keep their mouths shut and their hoods pulled down... but if an ordinary irate motorist justifiably tells a warden to - you know - he may in future end up with more than a parking ticket... a frankly ridiculous state of affairs to have arrived at. Rather than equipping wardens with headcams we'd be better to make them all redundant; the fact that wardens encounter so much criticism from a rightly disgusted and frustrated public is clear evidence that it is the wardens who are an 'abuse' and a 'criminal offence' to us!