From Mr David C. Speedie.

Sir, How ironic that John Lloyd speaks of the ‘rebirth’ of the political dialogue through ‘online social networking sites’ (“In an online world, the party is over”, August 5), while, on the same day, your editorial “A constant critic” recalls Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address to Harvard in 1978 and his fulminations against “the destructive and irresponsible freedom” of the west and “the excessive burdening flow of information” from the media.