Sir - At last, Royal Dornoch Golf Club is now able to lease a field that runs contiguous to the Meadows football field.

Seven years ago, when the Golf Club asked the community council to support their need for more common land to extend their greenkeepers' shed for a much needed wash down facility, I agreed to support their application for the extension of their lease to include this, with one proviso - and that was that they gave us the field next to the Meadows football pitch as a quid pro quo.

We shook hands on the deal, and I told the community council.

Later it transpired that the golf club rules did not allow for this, and the promise was not kept. Not unnaturally, this caused bad feeling.

At long last the new captain has put matters right. Good for him, but why did it take so long?

None of this has been reported in the press.

The way Highland Council is presently constituted ensures that local matters are not debated in public, so the local press cannot report it. We may not have a Kelvin Mackenzie but The Northern Times does a good job reporting local affairs if given the opportunity.

The answer, as I see it, is to expand the authority of the toothless at ward forums to include matters such as the strange goings on of the Dornoch Common Good in public.

I am sure that residents in other wards feel that the local views are missing in local government. The coming election gives us an opportunity to have local issues debated rather than foreign policy or obesity.

Readers might care to note in their diary to attend the Dornoch meeting to be held in the West Church Hall on Wednesday, 18th April, at 7.30 pm and lob a few "Kelvins" at the candidates - Duncan Allan, Craigroyston, Castle Street, Dornoch.