It's not just politicians who tell lies. We're all doing it, more than ever before. Or so it would seem from two recent surveys.

One found that politicians are readier than they once were to bend and distort the truth. The other, that we're all more inclined than we used to be to make false insurance claims and generally lie and deceive. So maybe despising politicians for lying is pure hypocrisy.

I'm not as honest myself as I once was. In our house, telling a lie was the very worst thing you could do. Thump your sister, break a plate, sneak to the corner shop to buy sweets you weren't meant to have - all that was quickly forgiven, so long as you owned up to it afterwards.

To be accused of lying or cheating was so unthinkable I'd fall over backwards to be honest. If the bus conductor forgot to collect my bus fare, I'd hold everyone up while I put it right. If a shopkeeper undercharged me, by however little, I'd point out the error.

And I went on doing this until I'd left home and had children of my own. By then I'd begun to realise that other people regarded me as a pain in the backside for causing them difficulties over trivial amounts of money. Embarrassment set my standards slipping. Nowadays I accept minor undercharging as a bonus, and rejoice when - on one of those lamented London Routemaster buses - the conductor fails to ask for my fare.

I still wouldn't deliberately set out to lie or cheat, but I compromise a bit. And, like most people, I tell white lies - or at least try to word my answers to those tricky questions in such a way that they don't hurt the hearer's feelings.

Of course, there never has been a time when some people haven't told lies or at least twisted the truth. But my feeling is that untruthfulness has become more acceptable than it once was. Maybe it's just that there are more opportunities for deceit. Once, cheating in exams wasn't that easy and you were liable to be found out if you tried it. Now, if reports are to be believed (and journalists, like politicians and estate agents, are assumed to be another of those groups unable to tell truth from falsehood) students routinely cheat, downloading whole essays from the Internet and passing them off as their own.

Mobile phones and emails make it easier for husbands and wives to cheat on one another. The rich, faced with the lowest UK taxes in years (at least for high earners) use only-just-legal means of doing society out of the cash that might otherwise fund our schools and hospitals.

Does all this matter? If we're all cheating and lying, then a few politicans using a bit of spin to look good surely aren't important.

And if Tessa Jowell's husband has hidden his dealings from her - or if she knew all about it but pretended she didn't - then they're only doing what we all do.

Of course it matters. A civilised society has to be built on trust. Lying and cheating and the gnawing mistrust they bring are poisonous things. They don't just cost us money - as with tax or benefit cheats - but they damage and destroy marriages and families. And they leave us unable ever to believe what our politicans tell us - even when it's all absolutely true. If we get the politicans we deserve, then why should any of us bother to vote?

Published: 09/03/2006