AS the reporter who brought the Raasay scandal to the-then Glasgow Herald readership some 40 years ago, I was appalled to read that it is still alive and well and resident in governing establishments in Edinburgh ("Crofters lose shooting rights to outsiders", the Herald, February 21, and Letters, February 23).

I had first come across the start of this sad saga as a young reporter in Skye eight years earlier.

I thought it had died with the demise of the notorious Dr John Green in 1980. But it raises its ugly head again 33 years later with disturbing echoes of the earlier flawed decision to sell out the people of Raasay.

Despite a change in office premises it's clear that a blinding virus regarding Raasay has followed the civil servants to their new abode. Has Paul Wheelhouse, the minister in whose portfolio the island has been unfortunate to land, inherited a characteristic of some predecessors of Scottish Office days?

There have been instances from the past of ministers signing papers without realising their full implications.

May I suggest he buys a pair of scissors and cuts himself free from the tangle of red tape in which he has entangled himself. Not that I'm particularly concerned about him, but he should at least have the decency to clean up the mess he has spread over Raasay.

Martin Macdonald,

4 Canal Road,

Inverness.