Stop press...Labour Kills freedom of speech
How low can this cadre ( leader T Balir) who have hijacked Britain's Labour Party Go?
Some delegate (aged 85 years) a short while ago (this afternoon) at their national conference stood up to heckle the idiot Jack Straw about the lies he was at that time spouting about Britain's illegal invasion of Iraq. The labour man was silenced and removed from hall. A 35 year-old fellow delegate who attempted to help the elderly man was threatened by a police officer with anti-terrorist legislation.
This has echoes of 30's Germany.

Zadie Smith' s On Beauty


It is very hard to do justice to this complex work in a short review. For instance, I don't think the reviewers on BBC's Newsnight Review read the book properly. Think about it: they were probably handed the book a week ago and told to read it. What you got were a couple of ill-informed sound bytes from in-demand media types, who have very little time to sit in and read a sometimes difficult but rewarding book that took its author a great many hours to create. By the way, on the strength of this first programme in the new run, I think the show has 'dumbed down' quite a bit.
Better to read James Lasdun's piece in the Guardian. This review displays an appreciation of the sheer novelistic intelligence - expansive, witty and magnanimous - that irradiates the whole enterprise.
I agree with his slight quip that Sir Monty's character seems somewhat cartoonish. This is a minor quip of a very rich work.