He Got On His Bike

Well, isn't this cosy. Andy Coulson, the former scumbag press editor and Downing Street truthfulness operative, has saved himself from the mercies of the Big Society by signing up for a new, if occasional, consultancy post. The ickily named One Young World, a "global conference for future world leaders", is the brain-drain of an advertising agency chairbeing and its chief executive; the agency for which they work was responsible for two of the best jokes of the last general election campaign: the image of Daveybloke as Barbie's pimp and the caption, "I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS", which Britain's leading liberal newspaper tactfully labels "famous". With even greater tact, the chairbeing told the Financial Times that Coulson was "a bright and talented individual". Coulson was so bright and talented a Murdoch tabloid editor that he doesn't seem to have known about half of what was going on at his newspaper, where gangs of rogue reporters apparently went about their criminal business while Coulson beavered away night after night shaping their sorry dross into actual journalism. With material of this calibre to call on, the world's future leaders will certainly be the equals of its present ones, at best.