Cameron said he’d clean up politics — so why is Coulson still around?

Things are speeded up these days, there is no time to wait. Everything is hurried along to fit our frenetic lives, our shorter attention span, our impatience with the world. You remember poor Jade Goody, the coarse-natured and half-witted ‘reality’ TV star who presented, as the medical people put it, during an episode of the programme Big Brother? No sooner had you heard of her than she was in disgrace for being racist. No sooner was she in disgrace for being racist than she had contracted cancer. No sooner had she contracted cancer than she was dead. No sooner had she died of cancer than she was forgotten. An entire life telescoped into a few years, the frantic tempo kept up to retain our interest, until she’d been used up and then suddenly just vanished, like a downmarket bar of soap, one of those oval-shaped pink things smelling of synthetic violets you get in old-fashioned guest houses on the south coast.