The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

Only when it seemed like Murdoch was going to get hold of BSKyB, did the public suddenly find out the extent of the phone hacking for which all the evidence lay in black bin bags for years. I think that that is part of what Oborne's article is getting at.

'I think the truth is that whilst the gang-members were murdering mostly each other, the feeling was that it was 'in-house', hoods killing hoods, and it attracted little sympathy.'

That is the height of immorality. Law abiding residents were terrorised by these gangs, old people can't go out at night due to drug dealers hanging round, young children were being swept up into drug culture and joined gangs and ended up dead or in prison. All of that should have attracted a lot more than sympathy from the ruling elite. If it was going on in Chelsea, they would have put a stop to it.

The public has no say in any of this. The residents have been begging the authorities to clean up these estates for years, just liek teh residents berated Boris and Clegg and said where were teh police in these riots. Of course it can all be stopped. Even Paddick said on TV last night that the police should have stopped the riots in Tottenham by using more force and then the copycat rioting would never have spread to other areas.

The hacking scandal had nothing to do with public outrage about murdered victims' phones being hacked. This was long known by many many people in the newspaper industry but only came out when extra pressure was put on to Murdoch and Cameron to look into it further. The public is a pawn in the game.

Of course something was being done about gangs. But why is Cameron talking about a "war on gangs" now? Shouldn't there have been a war on gangs years ago. Maybe then the riots and breakdown in respect for law and order would never have occurred.

I think the truth is that whilst the gang-members were murdering mostly each other, the feeling was that it was 'in-house', hoods killing hoods, and it attracted little sympathy. Innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire got more headlines, to be fair. But when the lawlessness goes outside the gangs and is very visibly affecting the wider community in such a dramatic fashion, then it's a bigger news story, of course it is. Nothing to do with property being more important than people. The same was true with the phone hacking. When it was only Sienna Miller or John Prescott affected there was a collective shrug of the shoulders. Hack the phones of murdered children and suddenly we're outraged. No consistency.

The gangs have been tackled in recent years by operations such as Trident. Ironically, by removing a lot of the older people at the top of the gangs, this has created a vacuum which has been filled by younger and younger people. So there's a still a lot to do but I think it's unfair to think that nothing has been done to date.

Good article. Oborne is very good.
There is a moral malaise throughout society, and corruption at the top is much worse in its effects than an 11 year old grabbing a laptop.

One of these excellent black youth workers we have heard on TV recently, correctly blames the riots on family breakdown, lack of discipline, a topsy turvy society where parents have less and less power etc., but he made the excellent point that, he has heard more about looting in the last 3 days than he has heard about 20 murders in the past few years of people in these communities.
He said there is a feeling that property counts more than people. Where is the morality in that?

Everybody knows that gangs have been around for years and murders have been going on. Why didn't those at the top stop it? Why didn't they make it a priority to stamp it out? Now they say there will be a war on gangs. But why not before? What happened to morality then? Didn't they care?

Criminality and rule-bending exist in all strata of society. This doesn't mean we have moral decay. The words 'two wrongs don't make a right' spring to mind.

Bloody good article!

Totally agree Custy