More scumbags? Or more scumbags getting caught?

Has Britain become a nation of immoral, lying, cheating, scumbags as the increasingly pious Peter Oborne seems to suggest in his latest article? Peter, who writes for such unblemished upholders of truth and decency as The Daily Mail, suggests that these days, if people found money lying about in the street, they wouldn’t hand it in. Whereas before they would. As in: ‘Gaw, I fahnd a tenner dah the Ol’ Kent Road, officer – make sure it gets back to its rightful owner, me old china, and if not then bung it to a charity for the kiddies. Blow me dahn, though, Jerry did a thorough job last night and no mistakin’’.

Peter suggests that corruption in public life is to blame for our rapidly diminishing moral sense, and I suppose rightly has a go at Blair, Huhne and the RBS boss Stephen Hester. But isn’t it more the case that with greater openness these days, and journalists asking more impertinent questions, we simply know more about the chicanery of public figures? Isn’t it more likely that thirty or forty years ago we would not even have heard about Chris Huhne’s alleged speeding misdemeanours?