The Royal Mail paid £50 million in compensation after meeting none of its 15 targets in the first quarter of the financial year, delivering only 88.3 per cent of first-class letters on time between April and June, against a target of 92.5 per cent; Oxford saw only 68 per cent delivered on time. By July Glasgow still had one in five first-class letters late. The Electoral Commission recommended that all-postal voting should be dropped in British elections after reports of abuse and disorganisation in the pilots in June undermined public confidence; Mr John Prescott’s all-postal referendum on regional government for the North East on 4 November would have to go ahead because it was too late to change it. Sir Bobby Robson, aged 71, was sacked after five years as manager of Newcastle United. The Fire Brigades Union called off strike plans after reaching agreement with employers about pay and bank holidays. Mr Abu Hamza al-Masri was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 ‘on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism’; he was in Belmarsh prison at the time, awaiting the resolution of an application for his extradition to the United States. Muslims and Catholics united against plans by the Scottish Executive to give sex education to primary-school and pre-school children. Only one man was shot dead during the Notting Hill Carnival. A strange unfrocked priest, Cornelius Horan, who says the Second Coming is not far off and who disrupted the British Grand Prix last year by running on to the track, pushed the leading runner in the Olympic Marathon into the crowd, making him fall back to third position; next day Mr Horan was given a 12-month suspended sentence by a Greek court. Britain came tenth in the table of Olympic medals with 30 in all.
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