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A set of toilets have been closed after vandals ran amok inside. The yobs’ handiwork caused flooding and damage to the block in a Durham village. A council employee had to shut the building in St John’s Chapel after reporting that in the male toilet the WC, hand basin and the urinal had all been blocked with fish and chip wrappers. Council officials only refurbished the facilities to the tune of £27,000 five years ago.

Police today (January 21, 2013) said they have made an arrest over a missing £230,000 car. The highly-prized Ferrari 458 Italia, thought to be the only one of its kind in the UK, was taken from a dealership in Surrey nearly a fortnight ago. CCTV footage taken at the site showed the distinctive black car being loaded on to a flatbed vehicle before being driven away. Police said the theft was “planned and well-organised”.

Equipment from summer Olympic venues will come to the aid of a school gutted by fire. The school’s insurers have arranged temporary accommodation from London 2012 sites to be transported over and they will be reassembled as classrooms. A second fire to strike in a dozen years at Lytchett Minster Upper School had destroyed the arts and theatre block last month. The blaze at the Dorset school is believed to have been started by a lightning strike.

An under-fire council has gone public on its financial strategy options, which include dropping wage rises for its top staff. Also up for discussion is dismissing the senior employees at Caerphilly council and offering to re-engage them on their previous terms and conditions.

Union members are planning a number of protests for today (Wednesday) over the pay of agency workers. The Communication Workers Union (CWA) says large recruitment agencies are skirting around the EU legislation that requires equal pay by employing staff permanently. The CWA maintains that many agency workers have been signing “pay between assignment,” or PBA, contracts without realising it would mean lower pay.

A funding website is helping to raise the cost of a community project that is refurbishing a disused public toilet in Somerset. The Loop de Loop scheme is raising £11,000 through Spacehive.com, which collects online contributions. It is turning the former WC into a gallery and food bar to drive footfall back into town. Loop de Loop, which has received backing from the presenter of Grand Designs Kevin McCloud, requires a further £7,000 in donations to reach its target. Tensor are specialists in Toilet Turnstiles that control access to loos, using coin, token or smart card methods. Styled in a tripod design, both single and double half height turnstiles are available allowing you to double your throughput while keeping the amount of space used by the turnstile to a minimum. They put up with high traffic volumes and can be placed in prestige access points – either interior or exterior installations. All of our turnstiles come complete with a two year warranty.  

An attempt to rob a shop left a volunteer very shaken by the incident. The volunteer, who only wanted to be identified as Heather, said she had been working at the shop for a few weeks and was alone on the shop floor when the attack happened on a weekday afternoon. She explained the shop was empty due to the bad weather keeping people away. The unknown assailant grabbed her and shouted: “Open the till, open the till.” Tensor can help commercial premises tighten up security and staff safety. For high security measures choose biometrics, which is the technique of studying the physical characteristics of a person such as a fingerprint, hand geometry, eye structure or voice pattern. Biometric methods of identification work by measuring unique human characteristics as a way to provide irrefutable proof of identity, for example, finger or iris scanning. Our recommended product for use with your Tensor System is our smart card access control scanner with built-in fingerprint reader.  

Police are looking into the alleged ill treatment of pupils. The investigation means the head teacher and five staff members have been replaced with temporary teachers at Revoe Community Primary School in Lancashire. A statement from Sarah Riding, cabinet member for education and schools, said parents had been informed of the situation. She added: “We were made aware of an issue… that raised concerns to us about the professional judgement made by a number of staff in relation to pupil well-being.” Tensor has the solution to better discipline and pupil attendance in schools with WinTA PC Clock, which involves technology ideal for a school or college. PC Clock is a simple PC based booking system ideal for schools where each pupil has access to a PC. Automatic and definable reports showing registrations or clockings can be viewed and printed. The reports can be customised using the Report Generator and can be printed automatically at any given time of the day.  

Found out on Facebook: a thief ended up being fined for his foul play. The 29-year-old chicken thief was apprehended after posting a photo on the popular social networking website. Anthony Campen had stolen the bird from a local school but made the mistake of publishing his new feathered friend online. Campen, who posted a photo of himself with the chicken on Facebook on January 28, was ordered to pay £135 compensation by magistrates this week. If only the ultimate in Access Control is good enough for your firm or organisation – then look no further than Tensor. The equipment is fully expandable and can control an access control system of one door all the way to a multi-site, multi-national enterprise. Our access control units can be directly connected via a peer to peer cable connection, or be part of a network using your existing Ethernet IT backbone. Tensor access control can also include USB port PC security with optional fingerprint reading.  

Fire crews tackled a substantial fire at a derelict school. The blaze broke out at about 02:45 on Tuesday morning. A fire service spokesman said about 30 per cent of the school in the east end of Glasgow had been affected, resulting in a large amount of smoke. He added that at the height of the fire, it was being tackled by 35 firefighters. It was quickly contained and there are not thought to be any injuries. Time and attendance and security products from Tensor can be integrated with fire roll call software to ensure health and safety at schools, factories or offices. As employees assemble at their fire roll call points, they use their proximity read smart cards or key fobs to record their presence. If employees have not brought their cards or fobs with them, they can be checked off manually using the generated reports that are printed off automatically. The cards grant exit in a quarter of a second.  

Detectives want to speak to two pedestrians who could have witnessed an armed robbery on Monday (February 25, 2013) afternoon. During the incident at a nightclub in Hampshire a man was tied up and threatened with what is believed to have been a handgun. Police said they were “very keen” to speak to two pedestrians who separately crossed the road towards the nightclub and also the driver of a red car who turned into an underground parking area nearby. Gates are an integral part of a durable Tensor security system. Tensor’s gates, barriers and turnstiles fully integrate with our smart card and biometric access control systems giving you full jurisdiction over movement and access in and around your site. All gates are supplied complete and are ready to accept power and data connections. Each gate is individually adjusted to meet your needs, ensuring exceptional durability and delivering longer lasting, problem-free operation. They work with a Smart Card, ticket, token or coin.  

BBC flagship programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing are threatened with severe disruption if strike action goes ahead. Unions announced on Tuesday (October 25) they are to ballot thousands of BBC staff over job losses. The corporation has had discussions with the likes of the National Union of Journalists since announcing 2,000 jobs cuts earlier this month. The result of the vote is not expected until November 24; therefore any action is likely to be scheduled for December. The time and attendance software for Tensor clocking and payroll systems deals with all manner of working rules and pay bands. Your company’s payroll department can create a wide range of daily working patterns (shifts), with either fixed or flexitime rules. These can run past midnight, making night shifts simple to define. Standard reports in Tensor WinTA include: Weekly Clock Card, Payroll Summary, Absence Summary, Exceptions, Job Booking and Working Time Directive Compliance. Using the Auto Clockout function, employees can be automatically clocked out at a certain time.