John O Groat Journal headlines for September 12, 2014

“WE can’t do it without you” is the message from a Highland League club which is asking for help from a local development fund to build a new community centre. Wick Academy FC have written to the Wick Academy Development Fund, asking for help in funding its proposed £340,000 Harmsworth Park Community Centre. Club chairman James Innes announced this week they want to build a new two-storey community centre at the ground which would be available to the public to hire for functions, classes and other events outside of match days.

TESCO has officially thrown in the towel over its plans for a new supermarket in Thurso. The news brings to an end seven years of uncertainty after Highland Council gave the retail chain planning permission to build a new store at the site of the town’s former auction site in Ormlie Road.
COMMONWEALTH Games athlete, Sarah Henderson, is targeting a high-calibre performance when she competes for Great Britain at the World Shooting Championships in Spain this weekend. Sarah will be part of the women’s team which is defending its title, when it competes in the 50m prone event on the shooting range at Granada on Sunday.

A LOCAL vehicle recovery firm has hit out over a second instance in which Police Scotland has apparently been happy for a garage in Elgin to be called to deal with a lorry which has come to grief at Berriedale Braes. Dunbeath-based John Elder and Sons, said it is “disappointed” not to be initially contacted to assist a lorry which got stuck at the notorious north hairpin on Sunday morning.

FAR north MP John Thurso is claiming rural community groups and village halls are losing out as they are being treated the same as international corporations when it comes to complying with money-laundering checks. The Lib Dem MP highlighted the issues facing groups in Caithness when he grilled the City’s top conduct regulator during a meeting of the Treasury Select Committee on Tuesday.

WITH six days to go until Scotland decides whether it should remain part of the UK, two independent MSPs are heading to Caithness to hold public debates about the country’s future. Highlands and Islands representatives John Finnie and Jean Urquhart are inviting people on both sides of the debate to public meetings in Wick tonight and in Thurso tomorrow afternoon. People will be offered the opportunity to ask questions in what they want to be friendly, informal events.

A WICK care home’s garden could be a winner after going up against 210 others in the UK, so far as making it down to the last few and hopefully heading for the final. Seaview House Care Home entered the Barchester in Bloom competition with its sensory garden and the contest is now down to the last stages with the Wick garden to learn soon, whether or not it has made it into the final.

HIGHLAND Hospice’s Project Build Appeal has passed the halfway mark with £2.7 million of the £4.5m fundraising target having been raised. The aim is to rebuild the hospice’s inpatient unit to provide the standards of privacy, dignity and choice, patients and their families deserve. The appeal was launched publicly in April as report in the John O Groat Journal and other Scottish Provincial Press newspapers.

AND finally...Christmas has come early for a Caithness mother after she saw her youngest son for the first time in 20 years this week, after he had mysteriously “vanished” from his family’s life. Other relatives and friends of William Macintosh, commonly known as Womble, feared the worse after the globe-trotting former Thurso High School pupil’s once regular contacts with home, dried up. But his mum Rita never gave up hope and the family’s long-time painstaking attempts to find him, finally paid off when his brother Neil tracked him down in London, on Sunday evening.