Indeed.  In addition, the recent scandals surrounding the donation of money to the Labour party in return for honours and peerages has strengthened the hand of those who call for public funding of political parties.

I quite like the idea as it would at least allow those who have been elected to get on with doing the job they were elected to do and not, instead, have to spend a prodigious amount of their time trying to earn money for the next election.

On the actual subject at hand, I welcome this shift in attitudes.  There was a recent e-mail from Nigel Smart, a professor in Bristol University's computer science department, which warned students to be cautious about the data that they put online with a view to potential employers questioning their judgement if they show themselves to value privacy so lightly.

What occurred to me at the time though was that he had missed the point somewhat in that they didn't regard privacy lightly, they just have different attitudes towards it.  In time the generation polled (and I would suggest these attitudes penetrate a fair way into the 25+ age group too) will be the employers.  I found particularly odious though the idea that the real sin was not to go out and have fun but to show yourself doing it.  It seems to me that that notion of privacy only encourages us to hide what is really going on from each other.