Sir - In their enthusiasm to close down the Cogges Museum (Report, December 14), enthusiasm veiled in the usual smoke-screen of 'Yes, it's wonderful, but ...', councillors Mitchell and Robertson resort to standard excuse no. 16 in the politician's manual: "It's not my fault, guv, really it isn't: it's them, they made me do it" - them in this case being lack of money from central Government.

Do they really think we are so naive, or worse, that we will buy the fantasy that every last service and project and initiative and plain old council waste across the county has been cut to the bone and beyond already, and that from now on only 'profitable' services can be allowed to continue or else catastrophe will strike?

In saying "We have to make the sums stack up for Cogges to have a viable future", Messrs Mitchell and Robertson betray their belief that nothing has value, but everything has a price; and that everything that does not show a financial profit has to go. This is such an astoundingly antediluvian, blinkered attitude that words almost fail, but let me try to explain this to them nevertheless: the cultural life of Oxfordshire is not a production line of money for the council.

It exists in its own right, however much some politicians detest its untidy, non-profit-generating presence outside the pure balance sheet, or indeed the messy existence of culture in the first place.

Will the council close down all state schools that don't make a balance sheet profit also?

Or what about concessions to pensioners, those unproductive people who merely use up space and don't actually contribute anything to the council's accounts: should we abolish the concessions, or perhaps be really efficient and abolish all pensioners? Just think of the savings.

John Kinory, Steeple Aston