the times | Friday August 28 2020 2GM 19
News
A third of mobile phone customers are
being “ripped off” by operators charg-
ing more than they need to each month,
a survey by Which? found.
The consumers rights group says
many customers who signed up for a
bundled deal in which their monthly
bill includes the cost of a new handset
are still being charged the same amount
even once the phone has been paid off.
Most mobile phone providers signed
up to a voluntary commitment by
Ofcom this year that promised they
would reduce bills once the cost of the
handset was paid.
Which? found that 36 per cent of cus-
tomers whose contracts had ended in
the past two months were still overpay-
schools reopen and roads get busier.
Gaist, a Lancaster-based road data
and mapping company, will help with
the project, which will be funded from
the extra £500 million a year commit-
ted to potholes in the last budget.
Data published by the Department
for Transport showed that the equiva-
lent of 319 miles of resurfacing work
was carried out on England’s roads dur-
ing the lockdown.
Analysis by Cycling UK found in
March that one in eight local author-
ities was meeting its targets to repair
road defects in a certain timeframe,
usually three months. One council
filled 13 per cent of potholes on time.nications open with her French com-
rades and was the only agent transmit-
ting in Paris. Keeping on the move and
changing appearance, she evaded the
Germans for three and a half months
while still sending messages.
She prepared to leave for England in
mid-October, but was betrayed on the
14th and taken with her transmitter to
the Gestapo’s Paris headquarters. She
attempted to escape several times and,
after refusing to agree not to try again,
became the first agent to be sent to
Germany “for safe custody”.
In September 1944 she was sent with
three other female agents to Dachau, in
Bavaria, where she was singled out for a
night of torture and then, like her com-
rades, shot in the head.
She told her captors nothing and her
last word was said to be “Liberté”.
Khan was posthumously awarded
the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star and
the George Cross.
Leading article, page 31Deliveroo to feed pothole
map that shames councils
Graeme Paton Transport CorrespondentThird of phone customers ‘ripped off ’
ing after surveying 4,006 people, 856 of
which had a mobile phone contract
expire in the past 12 months.
Natalie Hitchins of Which? said:
“While some mobile firms have taken
action to end overpayments, our re-
search suggests that others could do a
lot more to ensure that customers are
not being exposed to rip-off charges.”
Which? said that customers at Three
were the worst affected because the
provider chose not to adopt the meas-
ures. Its survey found 43 per cent of cus-
tomers whose contracts had ended in
the past six months said they saw no
price drop at the end of the term.
For EE it was 40 per cent, while on
Vodafone it was 30 per cent. EE and
Vodafone's discount only come into ef-
fect three months after customers havegone out of contract, so some surveyed
may not have yet seen a change.
Customers on O2, Tesco Mobile and
Virgin Mobile were less likely to face
such hefty overpayments, Which? said.
A spokeswoman for Three said its
deals were already much cheaper than
others and that “applying an arbitrary
discount to tariffs will not effectively
tackle what really matters”.
An EE spokeswoman said it was
“entirely wrong” to suggest it was fail-
ing to fulfil its commitment to Ofcom’s
fairness measures. Vodafone said it
contacted those coming to the end of
their contract to alert them to offers or
ways to reduce their bills. Those who do
not respond within three months of
their contract ending automatically get
their bill discounted by 5 per cent.Tom Knowles Technology Correspondent
England’s first national “pothole map”
will be created with the help of Deliver-
oo drivers to shame councils into fixing
the worst roads.
An audit has been ordered by Grant
Shapps, the transport secretary, to en-
sure money is spent in areas with the
most need. He said that companies
such as Deliveroo, Uber and Ocado
would help to keep the map updated.
Some businesses log road faults to warn
their drivers of potholes.
Information from local authorities
will also be fed into the map, which is
due to be finished next month asless operator with the Women’s Auxil-
iary Air Force but was recruited by the
Special Operations Executive, the espi-
onage and sabotage agency.
She was a natural for espionage work
being fluent in French and familiar with
Paris. One of her SOE instructors
called her “very feminine” and “inter-
ested in personalities, capable of strong
attachments, kind-hearted, emotional
and imaginative”.
The instructor said: “The motive
for her accepting the present task
is, apparently, idealism. She...
was longing to do something
more active in the prosecution of
the war, something that would
make more call on her capabili-
ties and, perhaps, demand more
sacrifice.”
Khan, codename Madeleine,
flew to France on June 16, 1943,
to work for the Resistance, but
the network soon collapsed.
She stayed on to keep commu-A Second World War spy who was Brit-
ain’s first female radio operative in oc-
cupied France and who defied Gestapo
interrogators, will today be the first
woman of Indian origin to be honoured
with a blue plaque in London.
Noor Inayat Khan lived
in Bloomsbury before
going to France in
- It was the ad-
dress she scratched
on the bottom of
a food bowl at
Pforzheim prison:
“Nora Baker,
Radio Office Ser-
vice RAF, 4 Tavi-
ton Street, London”
as she tried to con-
tact fellow prisoners.
Khan, the daughter of
the Indian Sufi mystic
Inayat Khan and his American
wife, Ora Ray Baker, was betrayed and
captured. She was tortured and shot
dead, aged 30, at Dachau concentration
camp in 1944, having revealed nothing,
not even her real name.
The plaque will be unveiled by Noor
Inayat Khan’s biographer, Shrabani
Basu, and can be viewed on English
Heritage’s Facebook page at 7pm. The
unveiling marks the return of the blue
plaques scheme after a brief hiatus
because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Basu said: “When Noor Inayat Khan
left this house on her last mission, she
would never have dreamt that one day
she would become a symbol of bravery.
She was an unlikely spy. As a Sufi she
believed in non-violence and religious
harmony. Yet when her adopted coun-
try needed her, she unhesitatingly gave
her life in the fight against fascism.
“Noor’s story will continue to inspire
generations. In today’s world, her vision
of unity and freedom is more important
than ever.”
Khan, a descendant of Tipu
Sultan, the 18th-century
ruler of Mysore, spent
much of her childhood
and early adulthood in
France, where she stud-
ied child psychology at
the Sorbonne and con-
tributed children’s sto-
ries to Le Figaro.
The family fled to
Britain after the Ger-
man invasion in 1940.
She trained as a wire-
Spy is first woman of Indian
heritage to win plaque honour
Mark Bridge History Correspondent
an lived
efore
in
d-n-
s.
er of
mystic
s American
r was betrayed andNoor Inayat Khan fled Paris to escape the Nazis but returned to help the Allies’ campaign.
She is the first woman of Indian origin to be honoured with a blue plaque in LondonMet arrest
suspect in
African war
crimes case
Fiona Hamilton
Crime and Security EditorA man was arrested in London yester-
day on suspicion of war crimes in
Liberia. Scotland Yard said that the 45-
year-old suspect was arrested early in
the morning at his home in the south-
east of the city by officers from its war
crimes team.
The alleged offences breach the
International Criminal Court Act of
2001, which allows for the prosecution
of genocide, crimes against humanity
or war crimes.
Between 1989 and 2003 as many as a
quarter of a million people in Liberia
were killed in a civil war, with thou-
sands more mutilated and raped.
Charles Taylor, the former president of
Liberia, is serving a 50-year sentence in
a British prison after being found guilty
by an international tribunal of crimes
against humanity.
The Met was searching the home of
the new suspect, who was being held at
a police station in central London.
War broke out in the west African
nation of about five million when Tay-
lor started an uprising in an attempt to
topple the government. Backed by a
rebel group, the National Patriotic
Front of Liberia (NPFL), he gained con-
trol of large parts of the country and
rose to become one of Africa’s most
prominent warlords.
The NPFL has been accused of a
range of human rights abuses and the
high death count during the conflict
eventually led to the involvement of the
UN and the Economic Community of
West African States.
A final peace agreement led to the
election of Taylor as president of Libe-
ria in 1997. A second civil war broke out
in 1999 and he was forced into exile in- His ex-wife Agnes Reeves Taylor
was charged by British police with tor-
ture in 2017 but the case against her was
dismissed at the Old Bailey last year.
Mr Justice Sweeney said that there
was a lack of evidence the government
was in full control at the time of the
alleged crimes.
Yesterday a police spokesman said:
“Officers from the Met police war
crimes team have arrested a man on
suspicion of war crimes, contrary to
section 51 of the International Criminal
Court Act 2001.
“The arrest follows an allegation of
offences relating to the first and second
Liberian civil wars, between 1989 and
2003.”
BBC