TWO very different political titans died this week: in North Korea, the brutal megalomaniac Kim Jong-Il, and in the Czech Republic, playwright president Vaclav Havel, right, who twice destroyed totalitarianism, first in words, and then in deeds.

So it was a bit odd to see which of these world figures Neil Clark, Save Botley Library stalwart and parish councillor (and thus presumably a champion of free speech), took to the pages of The Guardian to attack.

According to Mr Clark: “The question which needs to be asked is whether his political campaigning made his country, and the world, a better place. Havel’s anti-Communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of Eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women’s rights. Or the fact that Communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.”

Watch out – there may be a People’s Republic of North Hinksey before you know it. They are probably already checking which books you get out of the library.

TALKING of libraries, Culture Minister and Wantage MP Ed Vaizey has been accused of a “deafening silence” over library cuts by a group of best-selling authors.

He certainly was not his usually chatty self when it was a burning issue in Oxfordshire earlier in the year.

But the Insider has always suspected that he – and certain other Oxfordshire MPs – may have been a little more forthright behind the scenes.

A FEW weeks ago, the Insider revealed the county council was helping pensioners enjoy Oxfordshire’s night life by allowing the use of their free bus passes between the hours of 11pm and midnight.

Now a message has arrived in The Insider’s mailbox from one of his mature readers: “My good lady and I were pleased to read your paragraph relating to the late-night life we enjoy as pensioners and the good news that the anomaly had been changed to allow us more time to spend the excess of our state handout in other ways before returning home.

“Subsequently on Friday we went on one of our many rave-ups in Oxford to try to use up this extra money.

“We were soon to be assisted in our quest, for as we boarded our bus at shortly after 11pm but well before midnight to return to Witney, we were promptly relieved of £7.60 for our fares.

“After informing the driver that we had read that we should be able to use our passes at this very late hour he contacted his supervisor. No change from him either.”

And so the Insider owes this correspondent and other readers a clarification.

I’m afraid you will have to postpone your late-night hedonism until April 1 next year, when the change in the rules will come into effect. So go easy on the egg nog over Christmas.

Wishing a very Happy Christmas to all of the Insider’s readers.