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Hans Muhlberg, 77 Mitchell Street, Hermanus:

Those who expect little of the Hermanus Times certainly weren't disappointed by last week's asinine editorial.

Complaints about vitriol on the part of the Checkers refuseniks! This from a man who once said that the naysayers were silly old fogeys who should leave town!

And then those insights! Insight one - Checkers won a fair tender which no one complained about. Wrong, there has long been suspicion about the tender process, including the role of Rabcav and the remarkable coincidence of Checkers offering just R50 000 more than the other party. Insight two - even if Checkers loses the court case, it can simply fall back on the council decision to sell the property to Checkers for R3 million.

Completely wrong - if the court finds that the council decision was flawed then that decision has no effect, and, in any event, that decision wasn't even an agreement because an agreement to sell land must be in writing. Insight three - when the issue was last canvassed, the members of the HRA voted to withdraw their opposition. Misleading - it's unclear what the HRA members think because, as the editor well knows, Richmond MacIntyre stifled all debate on the issue at the last meeting, whereas at the meeting before that when the vote was taken, he falsely told the meeting that the R3 million was a done deal. Insight four - if the counter offer was genuine it wouldn't be for R20 million but rather for the R30 million plus which the site is apparently worth. So childish, I'll let my 10-year old daughter who's just starting studying EMS answer that one - in business you offer no more than you think is necessary to get the deal.

This whole thing's really quite simple - the municipality is incurring heavy legal fees because it messed up. But, as a result of the court challenge, it also stands to receive at least R14 million more than it was expecting because, quite clearly, there is no way Checkers would have upped its offer from R3 million to R17 million if it hadn't been challenged.

The editor of the Hermanus Times clearly has his own agenda here. When will he tell his readers what it is?

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