IMAGINE what it's like to be a Worcester taxi driver. It's two in the morning in Angel Place or near the Elgar statue, the pubs and clubs are disgorging their patrons, and most of them will need a lift home. You're a lone figure in a swirling mass of intoxicated humanity... and it just happens that you're an Asian person, too.

Most of us have no idea what it must be like to suffer the levels of abuse that our cabbies must endure. They so often become easy targets for mindless racists fired up by a night on the booze.

It is precisely because of this grim reality that your Worcester News gives a qualified welcome to Councillor Simon Cronin's call for an audio and video footage device to be fitted in every cab. This could later be examined by the police and council employees.

Surveillance cameras are nothing new. However, we feel that the addition of technology that can record voices should be treated with extreme caution. We will therefore play the role of Devil's advocate.

Suppose a sober, intelligent couple debated the merits or otherwise of Islam. Would any comments be seized upon by over-zealous public employees and used against persons at some date in the future? Criticism of a belief system is not illegal in our democracy.

And how could there ever be any absolute safeguard regarding the eventual fate of such material? Recent events, most notably the scandalous loss of information by the Inland Revenue, hardly fills the citizen with unbridled confidence in the bureaucratic system.

Yes, we must do everything we can to protect our taxi drivers. But any such moves must be tempered by the reality that total data protection simply does not exist.