Phone cards have done a lot to alleviate the problem, but British Telecommunications Plc is required by its licence to maintain coin-operated public telephones as well, and the company reckons that smashing and entering of the cash boxes costs it UKP19m a year – and if you think that it’s all just casual vandalism, think again – the company told the Daily Mail that there was actually a man offering courses on the best ways of clawing open the boxes quickly and easily – he charged UKP80 for the course, and then took the best pupil out for a test run around the local boxes.
