Dear Sir,

Imagine how easy life would be if we all told the truth!

Yes, all township clerks were invited to the Community Landlord by a Graeme Sinclair to discuss various matters on an agenda prepared by the landlord. There were trifling sundry points, but the real reason we were called before the Grand Master was to be told that we were going to lose our Common Grazings as they were going to be turned into a giant deer farm and that the Community Landlord was going to deer fence the east side of the main road for a length of 35km and that £300k has already been budgeted for, but the Grand Master felt that £300k was not enough – would the crofters help by tapping in to the CC fencing grants?

Wow! Asking us to fence ourselves out of our grazing, knowing that such a request is unlawful.

Councillor Ronnie Mackinnon proposed that since that the deer on our commons were illegal in the first place, that they be completely wiped out to safeguard the community as it has transpired that the population is suffering due to the high incidence of Lyme Disease that the deer have caused, most of us agreed to this.

Seeking more info, I spoke with Joanne Ferguson of SNH and they had already told the Grand Master that the fence was a no-no, as it would cause a welfare problem. She also told me that the deer had been counted from a helicopter 18 months ago and that the head count was 800, but the middle district nor the machair was not counted and it was felt that there was more, maybe as high as 1500 as a calving has happened since!

The Land Court has already ruled that a landlord cannot introduce another grazing animal onto crofter grazing ground. This reinforces Councillor Mackinnon's proposal that the Grand Master's actions are unlawful.

We all ask everyday, every one resident on the Community Buyout, what on earth has gone wrong, if this is what land reform is called when there is no recourse, when the Grand Master is supported 100% by the SNP government. Where it gets funded for harebrained ideas and allowed to take crofters to the Land Court, the people that they are supposed to protect?

What's next? Sell our hills for a nuclear dump!!

Angus A Macdonald,

Balivanich,

Benbecula