The Blairs are safely tucked away in their Tuscan paradise. William Hague is relaunching his image - again - by spinning a tale of how he used to drink 14 pints of beer a day. In London, tourist attractions are full and the Underground is a warm, sweaty place.
In cities like Portsmouth and Manchester, gangs of residents are hounding paedophiles and an alleged sex offender has been driven to suicide after vigilantes attacked his home.
But there is a place where these events have not happened.
Locked in a purpose-built house in east London, a group of young, good-looking contestants, each hoping to win £70,000, are now the subject of endless office emails and gossip around the dinner table.
Although the BBC's Castaway project hoped to be the most popular docu-drama on British television this year, it just hasn't been able to compete with the romance and backstabbing at Channel 4's Big Brother house.
And that simple formula has hooked the British public. Ten strangers arrived at the house a month ago and cameras film their every move. Among them is Anna, the former nun from Ireland, Craig from Liverpool and Nicholas from London, who has been scheming since he arrived.
Each week they are asked to nominate two of their housemates for eviction and each week viewers vote on which of the two should leave, until one is left and walks away with the £70,000 prize. The Big Brother house was brought together for one simple reason. So the public can spy on the contestants while they build friendships and verge on nervous breakdowns: and watch the boys decide which of the girls they like. So far, the contestants have provided a good deal of entertainment, although some people who have logged on to the Big Brother site on the Internet have said it is painfully dull watching a group of people eat their breakfast.
Apart from a few technical complaints, Big Brother has lived up to the hype. It is has infiltrated everyday language in such a short space of time that one commentator observed: "Like Madonna and Elvis, we now have Sada and Nick - no surnames necessary." The Sun newspaper's "Kick Out Nick" campaign to evict a scheming member of the household is further evidence of popular appeal.
And the Labour Party's website parody of Big Brother - "Ten Tories have been forced to share a political home together, but as months go by the tension is rising and cracks are beginning to show" - is New Labour spin at its best.
The remote-controlled world of Big Brother has made some observers uncomfortable. Is it a chance to be voyeuristic? Has society abolished privacy? And why do the contestants never discuss events in the "outside world?" A feature writer in The Guardian pointed out this week that if Big Brother was a one-way mirror on the nation, then it was not making the British nation look good at all.
Power-hungry viewers and the exhibitionism of contestants had erased the line between private and public.
The writer Jonathan Freedland said: "Now we make a national pastime of what would once have been a furtive activity: spying on others. We pry into their lives and they are only too willing to show us."
A healthy dose of controversy has also helped the programme.
The British Psychological Society confirmed this week that it was considering claims that the two university professors who appear in a studio offering viewers a psychological profile of the contestants were engaging in professional misconduct.
The professors have defended their conduct, insisting they have had no contact with the Big Brother contestants. But the investigation will go on and no doubt the salacious, the entertaining and the banal stories from the Big Brother house will fill the newspapers for the entire summer.
There is no doubting that the British - and the Americans and Swedish, who have their own version of Big Brother - love to spy on others.
So, whether it is "surly, but handsome" Tom from Northern Ireland or bubbly Caroline who is evicted tomorrow and "Nasty Nick" eventually wins the prize, the British public just can't get enough of Big Brother.