Letters: Making it our business to add to zoo's success story

The prize on offer, however, is the housing of giant pandas, surely the largest draw on offer to any zoo, and a great benefit to the city in general. Since the then whaling company of Salvesens brought home the birds which started the zoo's penguin population, launching the change from annihilating to preserving species, businesses have been an integral part of support for the zoo.

It is not just preserving pandas to which we can contribute - although that is a serious need given the destruction of China's National Panda Reserve in the recent earthquake.

It is also that we are offering the hand of friendship to the most populous country on earth, and potentially our greatest trading partner.

Why wouldn't Edinburgh be proud of such progress?

Graham Birse, Deputy Chief Executive, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce

Trouble when the police go all PC

WHAT kind of system of justice allows a police officer to protect his tattoos (News, August 3) but does not allow that officer to extend that same protection to vulnerable senior citizen, whilst our streets are infested with feral children?

What about the rights of those whose lives are blighted by the things the police simply chose not to deal with?

I don't care for tattoos but I am not really bothered if a police officer chooses to have them, just so long as they turn up when needed.

Of far more concern to me is the fact that senior officers are spending time and money collecting a list of "offenders".

With a few less senior officers shuffling papers and more beat officers, preferably chosen from the best candidates rather than on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or body art, and with training including some understanding of law, rather than PC ( no pun) nonsense we would all be better off.

John Byrn, Seventh Street, Newtongrange

And may the force be avant garde

THE doctrine of policing, especially as laid down by New Labour and the SNP, insists that the police interact with 'communities' when beforehand it used to be with citizens making up the general public.These communities, whether defined by territory, ethnicity, lifestyle or religion have their own markers, rituals and symbols which the police are expected to heed and respect.

Why shouldn't Edinburgh now lead the way and allow the police to display bodily art which, after all, is just an expression of the identity of a number of its officers?

I predict that when this brouhaha dies down, we will soon get used to this. Indeed, perhaps in gratitude, Edinburgh's many tattoo shops (their numbers unsurpassed in the UK, I'm sure) will band together to sponsor an association of tattooed officers.

This is an opportunity for the force to show it is an exponent of avant-garde policing.

Tom Gallagher, Duddingston

Privatise water to save us money

IN the current situation of having to make cuts because of Labour's spending, it seems unreal that Scotland still has a nationalised water system and is likely to keep it. The Scottish Government is not living in the real world, particularly as the water system seems to cost money and it will have to make cuts in other places.

Why is the nation so opposed to privatisation when it can deliver a far more efficient service that will not cost the taxpayer anything? In the last few years the water system has been costing the taxpayer money, so the sooner we privatise the system the better.

Diana Mackenzie, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh