Is The Argus losing its way? P Huggins, of Hastings, asks me.

He (or she) complains that we are in danger of becoming a "national evening" paper after reading in last Wednesday's editions "about 20 column inches" of reports on local senior football but "a much bigger and more prominent" report of Manchester United's latest European adventure.

"Sports fans had already seen this in their national paper. We rely on The Argus to keep us in touch with the local scene, which it is clearly not doing at present.

We know we have the excellent Sports Argus but one helping a week is hardly coverage.

"So please, Mr Editor, less of Manchester United and the rest of 'big' football and more of Sussex in our 'local' paper."

Firstly, let me point out that many readers do not buy a national paper and rely on The Argus for their national as well as local news and sport.

As to the day in question, we normally publish the best part of a page of local football action on a Wednesday.

This time, however, there were fewer games than normal and all those that were on were covered in the normal way, including every result and scorer.

Manchester United's game was illustrated because the pictures were better than those from the local games, which are often difficult to photograph because of inferior floodlights.

Furthermore, we always have two pages of local non-league football on a Monday, fixtures and a Division Two round-up on a Tuesday and a page preview on Fridays plus the Sports Argus coverage.

Now a question from me, P Huggins. Are you the man of the same name who chairs Hastings Town, whose home game had a full report and two pictures in this Wednesday's paper?

R J Sharpe, of Brighton, wishes to point out it was our misprint, and not his error, which led to East instead of Brest Peninsula being published in his letter last Thursday about the 1929 tidal wave. Sorry.

We were all at sea with our report last Tuesday of the return of a winter passenger ferry service between Newhaven and Dieppe.

We said in earlier editions that it would be run by Hoverspeed, when in fact it is Transmanche but, when, in later editions, we corrected this, we stated that the high-speed Seacat service was also run by Transmanche, when in fact that is run by Hoverspeed.

The earlier editions also stated that Transmanche had reopened the route in 1999 when in fact it was Hoverspeed, which will be the ticket agent for the new winter service and resume its own fast ferry service in April next year.

Thanks and apologies to Hoverspeed's Nick Stevens for the correct information.

Finally, Barry Pinchen, of Rottingdean, says he watched reports on the local television news last Thursday night about an announcement of the proposed boundaries for the South Downs national park but could find no such report in The Argus the same evening.

"You say," says Barry, "in your paper 'If It's Happening . . . It's In The Argus' . . . "

And indeed it was, sir, in all editions of Friday's paper because the park announcement was made late on Thursday afternoon after that day's editions had been printed.

However, we also had an exclusive report of what some of the likely boundaries were going to be - in Wednesday's paper, more than 24 hours BEFORE the announcement. As we say, If It's Happening . . . It's In.