Obviously, I do not know why Catherine Cole (‘Right to vote’, May 11) is not able to vote in the UK general elections and I am very surprised that foreign nationals are entitled to vote in the UK.

The position as I understand it, speaking as an indigenous Englishman living in Malta, is this: I am entitled and registered to vote in the UK general elections, which I normally do (see also my final paragraph), but I am not allowed to vote in UK council elections.

In Malta, the opposite is true; I am registered to vote in local council elections but not in Maltese general elections. I am surprised to hear these rules do not apply to Maltese persons in the UK.

If it’s any consolation to the correspondent, I had been registered for eight years to vote by postal vote supplied via my old council in the UK and there was no problem until this UK election when, to date, neither my nor my wife’s papers arrived. I was assured that those forms were posted on April 21 by first class post.

I will never know where those papers are or whether they were posted but it seems from web searches that many British people worldwide are in the same boat. We were not allowed our right to vote last week.

I draw no conclusions other than in eight years I have had no problem whatsoever with the excellent service of Royal Mail and Maltapost and, in fact, most mail arrives in timescales little different from UK internal post.

(I have contacted the UK Electoral Commission and received a swift but soft reply, something about things being looked at in the future. It will be interesting to ask why the rules apparently don’t apply to foreign people in the UK.)