ONE of the country’s most famous booksellers has called for tighter controls on postal voting in the General Election amid fears that the poll could be open to fraud and dirty tricks.
Christopher Foyle, who lives in Covent Garden and is chairman and managing director of the popular Foyle’s bookshop in Charing Cross Road, has suggested the panic over voting systems might be calmed by a dramatic intervention from United Nations observers.
He said: “I’m very concerned about the potential for massive fraudulent postal voting.”
And his views were echoed by last night (Wednesday) by senior Labour councillor John Mills, the Town Hall’s finance chief, who admitted he had reservations over the promotion of postal voting. This follows the vote-rigging fraud case in Birmingham that led High Court judge Richard Mawrey QC to warn that the use of postal votes could be abused and compared the British system to a “banana republic”.

THE man responsible for overseeing criminal cases in England and Wales had his Dartmouth Park house burgled on Monday night – while he and his family were asleep upstairs.
Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald, who was appointed to the position in 2003, was raided by the burglars in the middle of the night – prompting a house to house investigation in the leafy street where he lives.
Police say personal items were taken but would not confirm their value. A spokesman said: “We are looking for witnesses.”

COUNCIL staff have been set quotas for the number of Asbos they are expected to win, it emerged this week.
The revelation that 50 housing managers have each been ordered to help bring at least one Asbo case a year came as Camden and police pressed ahead with plans to Asbo a 12-year-old boy.
Pressure is now mounting on the Labour-run council, which has secured more than 150 Asbos, to review its policies.

A BLACK South African nurse was victimised and harassed by managers at University College London Hospital because of his race, a tribunal has heard.
Kissinger Njoku, the first black African to work in the Medical Intensive Care unit at the National Hospital for Neurology in Queen’s Square, Holborn, alleges he was bullied and let down by his bosses after emigrating from South Africa to work at the hospital in 2002.

A BITTER dispute between three Camden doctors has resulted in their NHS contracts being terminated, leaving hundreds of patients uncertain who their GP will be when the medics have worked their notices.
Dr Marian Latchman has not returned to the Regent’s Park Medical Centre in Cumberland Market, Regent’s Park Estate, since she was forced out on January 7 by Dr Harbikramjit Chandok and Dr Christine Pickard following a series of rows that have since reached the High Court.