Council orders �1,000 investigation after embarrassing picture of mayor checking phone at Armed Forces Day ceremony is posted online

A picture of mayor Mo Larkin looking at phone at ceremony posted onlineStaff member at Basildon Council ordered to spend a week probing snapThe probe cost ?1,000 and oppposition councillors are furious about it

By Rob Cooper

PUBLISHED: 17:16 GMT, 29 August 2013 | UPDATED: 18:41 GMT, 29 August 2013

A local council ordered an employee to spend a full working week investigating whether someone had tried to ‘embarrass’ its mayor.

The Basildon Council probe was launched after a picture of mayor Mo Larkin looking at her phone while on stage at an Armed Forces Day ceremony was uploaded to the internet.

The council ordered a member of staff to spend 42 hours trying to find out who took the picture. The investigation cost the taxpayer ?1,000.

Interesting text? A council ordered an employee to spend a full working week investigating whether someone had tried to 'embarrass' its mayor by posting this picture online

The picture was taken while Cllr Larkin was stood in front of hundreds of spectators in Basildon town centre in Essex on June 29. Soldiers were performing a military salute in front of her as it was taken.

Cllr Larkin ordered the probe after allegedly receiving a tip-off that it had been taken and distributed by a member of council staff. 

The picture was shared on social networking sites, which Cllr Larkin said had led to ‘nasty phone calls and emails’.

Cllr Larkin said she had been trying to switch the phone off because it kept ringing. Four people were interviewed by a council officer but the investigation failed to identify the photographer.

Cllr Larkin said she had been trying to switch the phone off because it kept ringing

Labour councillor and opposition leader Nigel Smith blasted the investigation.

He said: 'This was a disgusting waste of officer time and public money in a time of austerity when cuts are being made to public services. I believe it is more to do with the mayor’s vanity than anything else. I don’t believe it is in the public interest.

'It must be very demoralising for an officer to have to spend time on this nonsense. This is not why people go into local government.'

The Taxpayers’ Alliance also criticised Basildon Council.

Jonathan Isaby, political director of the organisation, said: 'Basildon residents will be absolutely appalled that money they have paid in council tax was spent on this investigation.

There is no justification whatsoever for council staff to be getting involved in what appears to be little more than an attempt to hide the mayor’s blushes.

Fury: Labour councillor and opposition leader Nigel Smith blasted the investigation

'When money is tight and Basildon Council is having to find savings, it can ill afford to be squandering hard-earned residents’ cash on this sort of distraction.'

A Basildon Council spokesman said: 'An allegation was received that the photograph had been taken by a council employee and that this was passed to another person or persons with the intent of it being shared and/or published to cause embarrassment to the office of the mayor and to Cllr Larkin personally.

'This was a serious allegation, which if it were proven could have amounted to a serious misconduct charge under the council’s code of conduct. Therefore, it was important that the council dealt with it in an appropriate manner, swiftly, responsibly and with due care and attention to all parties concerned.'

Cllr Larkin said she found out after the ceremony that her phone had been ringing because police were trying to contact her after her partner fell ill.

She said: 'What happened was my partner was ill in the morning. We had been on holiday in Barbados and he had been bitten by a mosquito. We had been back for just under a week and he wasn’t well. I wasn’t sure if I was even going to be able to go to the ceremony but he said he had to go out on business anyway.

'He passed out on the motorway and the police were calling me from his phone. My phone kept ringing and ringing. I didn’t answer it. I took it out of my bag and I was trying to turn it off but I couldn’t see it properly because the sun was shining directly on it, so I put my hand on it to try to turn it off.'

Basildon Council said the investigation could be reopened if ‘substantial new evidence’ was brought forward.

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Entrepreneur Lee Beaumont set up 0871 phone that makes HIM 10p a minute from cold-callers

Lee Beaumont has made ?300 since he set up his own 0871 number'I was annoyed with the PPI calls when I'm trying to watch Corrie', he saidKept his free line for friends and family and premium rate for companies

By Martin Robinson

PUBLISHED: 08:06 GMT, 29 August 2013 | UPDATED: 00:16 GMT, 30 August 2013

Clever man: Lee Beaumont was plagued by cold calls so hit back with his own premium-rate phone number

FED up with the constant barrage of unwanted calls, Lee Beaumont decided it was time to take revenge.

The businessman turned the tables on the cold-callers by  setting up his own premium rate phone number – and has since pocketed ?300 as a result.

Mr Beaumont said he was inundated with calls to his landline from  salesmen, especially those offering help with compensation claims for mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance, so decided to make them pay to speak to him.

The 25-year-old paid ?10 plus VAT to set up a personal 0871 landline and now makes money every time he receives an unsolicited phone call.

He said it was ‘extremely easy’ to set up the number online.

He chose an 0871 number because it was more profitable than one starting with 0845 or 0844.

Mr Beaumont said he gave out the premium rate number whenever he needed to talk to utility companies but had a separate line for his friends and family to call.

‘I was getting annoyed at the PPI calls I was constantly getting so I thought there must be a way to make money out of them,’ he said.

‘I decided I would get an 08 number and realised if I had an 0871 number they would be charged 10p a minute.

‘Out of this I get to keep 9p for every minute, so I phoned up all of my service providers and told them I would be changing my number. This was in 2011 and I’ve made ?300 from it.’

Mr Beaumont, who runs an e-commerce business from his home in Leeds, said the cold calls had now dried up, but he continues to make a few pounds a month from utilities  trying to sell their products.

‘Companies ring me up and the first thing they ask is, “Why do you have an 0871 number?”,’ he said. ‘I tell them it is so I can make money out of them.

‘Npower were particularly annoyed and wouldn’t call me. They’d keep emailing me, but I’d tell them to call me. Eventually they gave in, but I have left them now and they regularly call asking me to rejoin them.’

Frustration: The calls came, as usual, in the evening during Lee's favourite shows, so he spend ?10 plus VAT on his own 0871 number (file picture)

Far from dreading the nuisance calls, Mr Beaumont now says he relishes the sound of the phone ringing.

‘I actually want to be cold-called now,’ he said. ‘I’d definitely recommend everyone to do it – it definitely stops the PPI calls.’

But premium number regulator Phone Pay Plus yesterday warned other members of the public against trying the same thing.

A spokesman told Radio 4’s You And Yours programme: ‘Premium-rate numbers are not designed to be used in this way and we would strongly  discourage any listeners from adopting this idea, as they will be liable under our code for any breaches and subsequent fines that result.’

Consumer champion Which? has been extremely critical of cold-callers and launched The Calling Time On Nuisance Calls And Texts campaign in March.

The campaign called for an expiry date on third-party consent, so firms have a limited period to call a consumer after they tick the opt-in box on a form.

It is estimated that up 700million nuisance calls are received every month. Research by Which? found eight in ten people have received an unsolicited call in the past month, while six in ten have received calls about Payment Protection Insurance and half have taken calls from accident claim companies.

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Fake Apple: Cheap phone chargers could burn down your house

Cheap chargers go for ?5 online compared with official ?15Apple running worldwide programme to replace counterfeit USB chargersDevices can take around five hours to charge with authentic chargers but more than 19 hours with a fakeMan from Cheshire electrocuted in most recent case of Apple gadget malfunctioning

By Jill Foster

PUBLISHED: 23:14 GMT, 29 August 2013 | UPDATED: 23:15 GMT, 29 August 2013

No workplace, coffee shop or even school playground is complete without them. But Apple’s ubiquitous gadgets, the iPad and iPhone, have been making headlines recently for some — literally — shocking reasons.

This week, a father told how his daughter’s iPad charger exploded in his hand giving him a massive electric shock.

Tim Gillooley, 34, said he was thrown across the room and left with blackened fingers when he reached down to unplug the device at his mother’s house in Widnes, Cheshire. He believes his eight-year-old daughter Chloe would have been killed had she touched it.

Shocking: The Apple iPad and recharger plug, which exploded at the socket, burning Tim Gillooley''s fingers and sending him flying across the room

It’s the latest in a line of incidents where iPhone and iPad chargers have been blamed for putting lives at risk. So are your Apple chargers really dangerous? Or is it all down to the cheaper imitation chargers which flood the market?

Yes. The incident in Cheshire comes after two in China, leaving one person dead and another in a coma. Chinese air stewardess Ma Ailun, 23, was reportedly killed by an electric shock in July when she answered a call on her iPhone 5 while it was recharging.

Earlier this year in New York, a woman claimed her iPhone 4S spontaneously melted, oozing acid that destroyed the handset. Then in February this year, fire crews in Oregon blamed an apartment blaze on an overheated MacBook battery which had been placed on a mattress. In 2011, two iPhone 4s on opposite sides of the world caught fire and self-combusted.

The first happened on a plane over Australia and the second in Brazil when its owner was awakened by the smoking device on his bedside table.

Lethal: Tim believes his eight-year-old daughter Chloe could have been killed in the explosion

It's highly likely that some of the dangerous incidents have been the fault of chargers. Indeed, Miss Ma’s death was blamed on an imitation charger.

So why do people buy them? It’s simple — the price. You can get them for under a fiver from Amazon sellers, for example, whereas the official one is at least ?15. But it’s a saving that could come at a high price.

‘There are plenty of reputable companies that make accessories for Apple products, and as long as you go with one of them, you should be fine,’ says David Price, online editor at macworld.co.uk.

‘I’d never buy an ‘official iPad charger’ from a bloke on the street and I’d advise others not to do the same.’

There are over 600?million Apple devices including iPhones and iPads being used around the world and only a handful of reported incidents. The chances are you’re very safe. But counterfeit cheap chargers appear to raise the risks significantly.

‘Any genuine products from a well-known manufacturer such as Apple are rigorously tested and should be safe,’ says Dr Kevin Curran, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a reader in computer science at the University of Ulster.

‘But you may experience problems with non-proprietary products — those that may fit your iPhone or iPad but come from a different company.

‘I can understand why people would buy cheaper chargers but a few years ago I had one that exploded so I wouldn’t go near one now.’

So big is the problem that Apple have decided to help customers tell the genuine articles from the fake —although, ironically, their detailed online guides to spotting the difference may well help counterfeiters imitate the visual design of Apple products more closely.

For details about how to detect a genuine Apple charger see: www.apple.com/uk/power-adapters/.

Any item connected to mains could lead to a shock but this is exceptionally rare. ‘To tell people not to speak while a phone is charging is akin to telling people to disconnect a microwave before opening the door to remove food,’ says Dr Curran.

‘If the report about the Chinese lady being electrocuted when she answered her phone is accurate, then it is fair to say that the phone or charger was defective. The current flowing into a charging phone is typically not enough to kill a person.’

While it should be safe, you shouldn’t do this if you want your battery to last.

Most modern smartphones and tablets have a device that stops the charge from trickling out once it’s full, but if you have too many apps open or your Wi-Fi is left on, a small amount of charge will leak out — even when it’s plugged in. The result? It will just keep on re-charging.

‘The problem with that is that batteries can only be recharged a finite number of times,’ says Dr Curran.

Action: Apple says it is running a worldwide programme to replace fake chargers

‘It varies from battery to battery and can be anything from 10,000 times to 40,000 times. That means that if it’s plugged in overnight, your phone or tablet might lose, say, one per cent of its charge as it searches for Wi-Fi or one of the apps becomes active and then it will recharge itself.

‘That means your battery will recharge itself 30 or 40 times a night which will affect its lifespan.’

To combat this, Dr Curran advises putting your phone/tablet on a socket that is controlled by a timer and only charging it for a few hours a night.

You could even use the timer to switch it on and off a couple of times during the night. ‘I used to put mine on charge until about 5am and then it would switch off,’ he says.

If you’re using the charger that came with the phone or tablet, it shouldn’t take as long as if you’re using a non-proprietary model.

A recent test by Techhive.com found that an iPad 4 took five hours and nine minutes to charge fully, but an incredible 19 hours and 13 minutes with an alien charger.

Victim: Ma Ailun, a 23-year-old air stewrdess with China Southern Airlines, who died when she picked up her phone as it was charging

Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 took two hours 16 minutes to charge with the Apple charger, but two hours 57 minutes with the alien charger.

And ensure you have ten or 15 hours to spare if you’re ever tempted to use your iPhone charger to charge up your iPad.

Phones have no problems drawing charge from tablets, but tablets take much longer to draw juice from phone chargers. In tests, the Apple iPad 4 took ten hours and five minutes to charge using the iPhone charger.

Prompted by the Chinese incident, Apple has now begun a worldwide programme that will run until October 18 to replace third-party and counterfeit USB chargers.

‘Recent reports have suggested that some counterfeit and third-party adaptors may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues,’ says Apple. ‘While not all third-party adaptors have an issue, we are announcing a USB Power Adapter Takeback Programme to enable customers to acquire properly designed adaptors.’

Consumers with any concerns about their adapters should drop them off at an Apple store or an authorised service provider, Apple says, where they will be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

They will replace it with a genuine adaptor for the reduced price of ?8.

More details of this scheme can be found at: apple.com/uk.

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