Magistrates have refused a license to supply drink to a premises in Balintore for the 3rd time. They feel the Seaboard villages are too well supplied with drinking hostelries, this is borne out by the amount of drunk and disorderly’s seen at the Tain police courts. There are cries of distressing poverty from the villages, people on the edge of starvation, yet, the average consumption of drink in the Parish of Fearn over the past 4 years comes to over £200 per annum.