' S un ' and 'Mirror'
\ , Sir: If your newest press pundit Robert Ashley (August 9) was really working for Mirror Group Newspapers, he would probably get his facts right. So he probably isn't.
Mirror Group Newspapers — not News International Limited — say that the average daily sale of the Daily Mirror in June was 3.92 million. In July it had dropped to 3.9 million.
How come, then, that in your issue dated August 9 Mr Ashley feels able to say that the Daily Mirror is "sinking nearer and nearer to the 4 million mark"?
What sort of a pundit is he, if he can't read published circulation figures?
Pundit Ashley (who is he, by the way?) also suggests that the -Sun 'circulation increase in the first half of 1975 was wholly attributable to the Mirror's industrial troubles.
Really? The Sun's published and audited increase was 131,625 copies a day. We had industrial troubles of our own during the period under discussion. Could it be that Mr Ashley, like his infamous predecessors, is incapable of simple arithmetic?
Or could it be that Mr Ashley, like all the other pundits, simply cannot bring himself to accept that he is wrong about the Sun?
The famous forecast that the Mirror would reach 4 million before the Sun did (which, incidentally originated not in Bouverie Street, but at Mirror headquarters) has alread been fulfilled.
Let me make another forecast: that they will reach 3,750,000 before we do. But only just before.
Larry Lamb Editor, The Sun, 30 Bouverie Street, Loridon EC4
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