IS THIS the sneakiest speed camera in the whole of Lancashire?

That's the question we're asking in tomorrow's West Lancashire editions of The Champion after dozens of you got in touch to attack the Gatso camera on Parbold Hill, which figures reveal is the fourth most lucrative speed camera in the whole of Lancashire. It nicks more people than all the other speed cameras in West Lancashire put together. Amazing, but true.

Our readers - none of whom had been clocked by the camera themselves, of course - were furious. My email inbox groaned under the digital weight of angry responses. One of them even called on me to "make a name" for myself and the paper by looking into it further and doing a follow up, investigating the numerous claims that it's not entirely legal.

So I have.

A story about a speed camera on a blind bend on a steep hill getting a lot of reaction doesn't surprise me - the figures speak for themselves - but what stuns me more is the reaction we haven't had over proposals to close several police stations across the borough.

I honestly thought, with all the best news sense I have, that by now we'd be buried under letters of complaint from readers angry about the cuts to frontline policing, but the honest truth is that we've barely had any. The ones we have had have tended to be the party-political ones, particularly from local councillors, but the reaction from the readers in general seems to have been strangely muted.

Given it's a fairly substantial cut to West Lancashire's frontline policing that's being consulted on at the moment, I can't help wondering why. Have you read the reports in the local press with a sense of sad resignation? Do you, unlike the members of West Lancashire Borough Council, believe that the closure of the police stations is necessary in these troubled, cost-conscious times? Or do you genuinely think it's a fair cop?

I would love to know. Send me your thoughts by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com and I'll promise I'll read it, once I've got through all the speed camera ones.

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