We have had a number of letters criticising West Sussex farmer Paul Langmead.

This criticism followed our exclusive story last Friday that he was claiming off the police for the damage caused to his crops during the search for poor Sarah Payne.

Typical of these was the one from Brightonian David Morgan, who believed farmers generally were a little too fond of government handouts, and Mr and Mrs BL Turrell, from Shoreham, who said they were disgusted at Mr Langmead and praised the Argus for "strength and courage" in publishing the story about one of our advertisers.

However, e-mailers Tony Crowther, from Poynings, and Michael Brayne, felt Mr Langmead had every right to claim compensation and the Argus had been irresponsible to name him (TC) and owed him an apology (MB).

Sorry guys, we weren't and we don't. We simply reported in a straightforward manner the facts and made no judgement in the story, unlike some of the national papers that followed us and branded Mr Langmead "heartless".

However, if the reaction in the number of letters we have received on the subject is anything to go by, you two are in the minority. Mr Langmead's claim was poorly-timed to say the least and the fact that he has since withdrawn his claim would tend me to believe he now agrees.

Letters have proved somewhat difficult this week.

The one from Sarah Godley, from Dorking, in Monday's paper wrongly accused regular writer Mary Frankel of using obscene language, assault and criminal damage.

Sarah had, in fact, originally written that this was the sort of behaviour she expected from anti-hunt protestors. Our mistake, for which I apologise to both parties involved.

We also badly edited former Adur Labour councillor Nigel Sweet's letter that day about councillors' allowances and the "brazen 140 per cent increase in allowances forced through this year by newly-elected Conservatives" so that it wrongly referred to Brighton and Hove councillors.

It should have referred to his ex-colleagues in Adur.

And David Steadman, chairman of East Worthing and Adur Liberal Democrats, says he was not the writer of the letter in Monday's paper commenting on Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker's parliamentary attendance record. He suspects the work of a hoaxer.

My message to the mystery writer and those who have attempted the same trick in the past is please don't. It's not big and it's not funny.

Which is not true of our daily Wizard of Id cartoon, a favourite of Shane Wentworth, from Brighton. Yet even he was bemused by Friday's strip in which one character said "and so I told my client to take the liter" to which the barman replies "that's metric for the fifth". Says Shane: "Having learned from my dictionary that liter is American spelling for litre, I'm none the wiser". Nor me. Can anyone help?

Our page three article in last Friday's paper about the Grand Hotel marking the Queen Mother's 100th birthday by offering a free weekend stay, bubbly and a birthday cake to any guest over 100 was fine except for one thing.

It was not the Grand in Brighton, as we said, but the Grand Ocean in Saltdean.