ON September 13 you printed a letter from Emma Bailey stating that Blackpool Zoo was run for the purpose of "generating profit" and was a "commercial business". What a laugh! How mistaken she is -- Blackpool Zoo has never turned a single penny profit in all the 25 years or so since it opened!

It is actually a severe financial drain on the ratepayers to the tune of £500,000 loss every year -- something like £10 million since its inception.

It was opened at the insistence of a Councillor Jacobs (since deceased) who had a fancy goods shop on Talbot Road and who hoped or presumed that more visitors would visit his shop after being at the Zoo. The whole thing, like the Sandcastle, has been a gigantic folly.

M C Cardwell,

Common Edge Road,

Blackpool.