THE Camden New Journal can reveal this week how the Town Hall is failing to stop postal vote fraud.
We were able to obtain ballot papers after filling in postal application forms that were swiftly processed by officials dealing with the election at the Town Hall. In one case a member of the New Journal staff obtained a polling card addressed to a resident who had left Primrose Hill more than a year ago.
After filling in the name of the resident a ballot paper was returned on Tuesday.
The same staff member, who is able to vote in Camden, applied for a postal ballot using a different forename than his registered name and, again, officials sent him a ballot paper.
Although these are only two cases they illustrate how easy it is to set out to rig the vote.
In both cases we wish to make it clear that we do not intend whatsoever to use these ballot papers or to take any action that will allow anyone else to use them.

JUBILANT swimmers have won their battle for the right to swim unsupervised in Hampstead Heath’s ponds.
In a landmark High Court decision, Justice Stanley Burton ruled on Tuesday that The Corporation of London acted unlawfully when it banned early morning swimming without lifeguards two years ago.
His judgement – peppered with references to the Heath’s greatness and its historic role – paves the way for winter morning swimmers to brave the icy waters again later this year, and to swim unsupervised in the Mixed Pond, currently closed from September until May.

TRAFFIC wardens have missed out on pay for two weeks in a shaky start for Camden’s new parking contractors, the New Journal has learned.
Parking giants National Car Parks (NCP) took over ticket patrols in the north of the area from rivals Apcoa at the start of the month.
It followed a fierce contract chase last year which saw the Town Hall dump Apcoa in favour of NCP.
But three weeks into the new deal – worth £7 million to NCP – wardens say they are missing their pay packets.

VIOLENT crime has soared in Camden despite an overall fall in the number of crimes committed, figures released on Friday show.
The number of rapes, sexual assaults, muggings, gun crimes and murders all rose last year, with violent incidents increasing by 19 per cent on 2003 levels.
Violence now figures in 17 per cent of all recorded crime in Camden, with more than 7,500 violent incidents last year.
Overall there was an 11 per cent drop in recorded crimes, down to 45,432 – around 125 crimes a day.

GANG warfare erupted on consecutive nights in a crime-ridden Camden Town street last week.
Shopkeepers and stallholders in Inverness Street – just yards from Camden Town Tube station – have renewed calls for better policing after the teenage Safeway Bridge Gang – based in near-by Chalk Farm – fought with drug dealers, angered by the theft of a bag of cannabis.
The furious dealers clashed with 30 youths, who brandished bottles, knives, bricks, baseball bats, planks of wood and a garden fork in a running battle on Thursday night.