Letter: Botanics beggars

I HOPE the Botanics management was grandstanding when asking for immunisation against the recession by the introduction of a £5 entrance fee.

It is only one of a number of institutions creeping cap in hand to parliament pleading "special status", not willing to pull in their belts like the rest of us. They must put their accountant advisers back in their boxes: I am fed up with their institutionalised begging.

I have always honoured the Botanics for being primarily an educational institution, but, like universities thumping the tub for tuition fees, it is now effectively demanding private powers to tax education… and it is inevitably the poorest who will be excluded.

DAVID FIDDIMORE

Calton Road,

Edinburgh