This week

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Harold Pinter. The legendary playwright died on Thursday. His spirited contribution to theatre, human rights and politics was from another planet. However, Johann Hari in The Huffingdon Post makes a good point about Pinter's dubious views on Milosevic and the Balkan wars.

Paul Routledge in The Mirror on Boxing Day with a mock Gordon Brown speech.

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Channel 4. The idea of granting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran a prime time TV slot to air his 'Alternative Christmas message' was a slap in the face to the hundreds of thousands of oppressed and tortured people in Iran. Like Peter Tatchell wrote in The Guardian: "Whatever next? Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe? Herry Kissinger? Vladimir Putin?

Daniel Finkenstein in The Times on Tuesday. Believe it or not, this Tory is convinced the debt crisis "was caused by too much government, not too little". He must have slept through the last twenty years of galloping financial deregulation. Also, look at this pearl, "what['s] the difference, in principle, between Woolworth's and Jaguar? [...]why [does] someone, somewhere think it is right to rescue one and not the other?". The Chief Leader of the Times can't see the danger of a country that produces less and less stuff, where manifacturing skills are dying and where there are devastating ramifications for the rest of our manufacturing base (the automotive indusry emplys 800,000 people).

Nick Cohen in The Observer. He's back on Iraq. This time yakking against Harold Pinter (see above) for his opposition to the war. Pinter knew "betrayals" intimately, he wrote. Not a word, instead, on the fact that, on Iraq, Pinter managed to see past the end of his nose. Cohen didn't and he was wrong.