Mike Pottinger of the lottery's operator, Camelot, said that his investigators helped police with information from tickets found on suspects.Mr Pottinger described the assistance given to police following a burglary "Two suspects were found to have lottery tickets on them From the tickets we knew when and where they were purchased. The information, where it contradicts a claimed alibi, has been used in criminal courts and successful convictions have followed. Although the lottery is now an accepted British institution with 30 million computer terminal, as opposed to instant, tickets, sold every week, it would appear Britain's criminal fraternity have been slow to see they could be carrying around instant whistleblowers. Crime does not pay, especially if villains have their alibis ruined by keeping their lottery tickets in their trousers. In one of the lesser-known spin-offs of Britain's lottery mania, the coded information a lottery ticket holds can help police pinpoint where and when the ticket was bought. The Department for Education said no final decision had been taken on the legislation but it could require appeals panels to consider the interests of all children.. But Nottinghamshire County Council criticised Mrs Shepherd and John Major for not intervening.The National Union of Teachers asked Mrs Shepher to re-examine her powers. The group demanded a full independent inquiry into the employment of Mark Trotter.The council is expected to approve a motion for a formal independent investigation to be properly supervised by the chief executive..

Heads know best and governors should overturn their decisions over exclusions only in exceptional circumstances, head teachers' leaders said yesterday. Governors reacted angrily to the heads' announcement, made in response to a dispute at Manton Junior School in Nottinghamshire where governors have twice overturned the head's decision to exclude 10-year-old Matthew Wilson for allegedly disruptive behaviour. Yesterday parents who had withdrawn their children from the school agreed to send them back as "a goodwill gesture" to persuade Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Education, to talk to them. It is time that the interests of the law-abiding majority of parents, pupils and their teachers were given equal recognition."Commenting on the Nottinghamshire case, Mrs Shephard said she had the power to intervene over an exclusion only if the governors had behaved unlawfully, which they haven not Responsibility rested with the local authority. It is entirely the responsibility of the head to decide whether children should be permanently excluded. There then has to be a proper review by someone who is not as close to the affair".Heads also want appeal panels to be scrapped unless governors and the local authority disagree about an exclusion.In two recent decisions, in Nottinghamshire and Hebburn, south Tyneside, independent appeal panels overruled governors' decisions to expel pupils.Heads want a package of measures included in the Government's Bill on discipline which will be introduced into the Commons this autumn:t Power to detain pupils after school whether their parents agree or not.t Changes to allow pupils to be excluded for a longer period.t Legislation to allow schools to make home-school contracts a condition of entry.t Removal of parental choice of schools for those whose children have been excluded from two or more schools.Mr Hart said: "The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of individual parental and pupil rights.

They should not think their judgement was better than the heads'.David Hart, the association's general secretary, warned governors not to become emotional about cases. He said: "This is a ludicrous situation in which the governing body has managed to act in such a way that it has turned not only the teachers but the majority of the parents against it."Anyone looking at the situation could have seen as plain as a pikestaff that spending pounds 14,000 from the school budget would not be acceptable to parents because it is going to mean the loss of books and equipment or even of a teacher's job."Walter Ulrich of the National Association of Governors and Managers said that the heads' proposals about the role of governors in exclusions were "not what the law says and plainly not sensible. They have been protesting at the one-to-one tuition provided for Matthew at a cost of pounds 14,000 after teachers threatened to strike if they had to teach him.Leaders of the National Association of Head Teachers said the Government should tighten the rules on exclusions to stop governors overruling heads unless they have failed to follow the correct procedures. The rebels had resigned from Hackney's official Labour group and formed Hackney New Labour Group. The 17, who have already forged political links with Liberal Democrat and Tory councillors, said abuse claims involving a child-care worker who died last year of an Aids-related illness were "just the straw which broke the camel's back".

We should kill that number which our own scientific advice and judgment says is correct.". The Labour Party last night expelled 17 rebel councillors in the politically troubled borough of Hackney, in east London. The expulsions, which are believed to have been sanctioned by the party leadership, came hours before the rebels were set to force a vote at a council meeting to discuss an alleged cover-up of child sex abuse in the borough. "If there is no prospect of the ban being lifted, the best we can do is to look after our own farmers and domestic market and there is every reason for not killing all these cows unnecessarily. John Redwood, the former Tory leadership challenger, said he hoped the Government would be able to negotiate a better deal - killing fewer cows, while lifting the export ban."There is no point in killing cows that we think should not be killed unless that action gets the beef ban lifted," he said on BBC Radio 4's World at One. He said: "The Government had pledged the slaughter of around 120,000 cattle.