Is it me, or has something happened to the news?

I’m not expecting sympathy. Really, I’m not. But there was a time, and really not so long ago, when you knew where you were with news. Day one, thing happens. Day two, thing gets in the papers. Then, on day three, the parasites like me weigh in.

That’s how it worked back in the distant time of, say, February. Since then, though, that tried and tested old model seems to have gone out the window. And it’s not simply that old media can’t cope, because new media copes even worse. BBC news hacks used to joke that their rivals at Sky ought to have the motto ‘never wrong for long’, but even that is an aspiration too far for the sprawling chaos of internet punditry. On Twitter, for example, you can be wrong for ever. Thoughts settle upon each other like the sediment of ages, with the earliest — the wrongest — fast buried and forgotten.