After kiss and tell, it seems, we now have surrender and tell (as in, pick up a couple of years' worth of service pay for telling the Daily Bugle and Independent Sensational News how 13 days in Iranian custody seemed to you). These are "exceptional circumstances", says the MoD, granting exceptional rights to the Shatt al-Arab 15. They can sell their tales to the highest bidder: and Faye Turney - the lady with the drooping fag - will probably make more than the rest put together. It may not always be a woman's life in Her Majesty's Navy, but Fleet Street certainly knows what shifts copies across newsagents' counters.

So, yet again, we're in the business of drawing lines. How quick a buck can you make out of life in the public sector? Over there, lurking in a shadow, is Alastair Campbell, preparing to net a fast million or two for his diaries of the Blair years (once the final Blair year is done). Over here is Tony Blair himself, ready, like Major and Thatcher before him, to cash in on life at the top. (Former PM with wife and mortgage to support seeks fast fix.) Not so far off in the distance, just beyond David Blunkett as a matter of fact, stands John Stevens, Met police chief supreme, penner of News of the World columns on demand.

Are there standards here? Not really. Civil servants - the high mandarins of probity - are far quicker off the memoir mark than they used to be. (Our ex-man in Washington will shop John Prescott faster than Prezza can down a pint.) The working assumption round every cabinet table must be of frantic scribbling in the car back to the ministry, detailing who said what for some lucrative dabble in instant history. Will Liam Fox, so incensed by "undignified behaviour" yesterday, feel any differently 10 years on when he gets his contract for Inside Cameron's Cabal?

Too much of yesterday's predictable fuss, then, has a pong of hypocrisy to it. We're used to politicians writing their tell-all life stories and selling the rights to Fleet Street. We're increasingly used to Sir Humphreys, top cops and military brass doing the same. Why raise a fuss when a handful of ordinary sailors get caught in a headline horror and enjoy a chance of media payback? Why operate one wonky rule for the big and powerful and another for those who, impotently, had a very nasty turn?

Yet, when you've made all the egalitarian arguments available, there is still something rancid about this particular turn of the shekel screw. Did the famous 15 do anything remotely heroic, or even interesting? No: they sat there in their boat, allowed themselves to be captured, gave a variety of forced statements to camera and showed why Britain's most famous old cigarette brand was called Senior Service. They had a pretty unpleasant time but it was never, to be honest, a truly threatening one. The lather about "hostage taking" and humiliation was always much overdone. This was a diplomatic waltz of low intensity, with an hour of smirking PR as its top prize.

In short, the rewards on offer for surrendering and telling are quite out of proportion to the actual offence. Those who dole them out inflate a "heroism" that's nowhere justified and pump up not much of a story. Maybe they, too, need a cooler, wider view.

Is it fair game now for every embattled sergeant on the Basra road to sell his saga of personal bravery under fire? Is it fair game for the third major on the left to tell the Sunday Bugle what Prince Harry had for mess breakfast, and if he turned as white as the porridge after another wild night out? Is anything that happens of interest (and monetary value) to soldiers, sailors, airmen or policeman now fodder for a cheque?

That seems a glum counsel of despair, a shrug over discipline, duty or just mere togetherness. And it's why the MoD has made such a hash of this decision.

Perhaps they wanted to keep some control over the stories as told, and this was the only practical way. Yet, in fact, this is to be a precedent that comes back to haunt them, a line that has to be drawn whenever somebody wearing a uniform does something interesting.

But how do you finagle such lines when they run straight through the heart of Downing Street and Whitehall, trailing hypocrisy behind them? That's easy. You put a five-year financial block on all political tales from office, all mandarins spilling indiscreet beans, all coppers making a good screw, all press secretaries spinning themselves a fortune. History? History can wait. And news? The best, most truthful balance of news doesn't come with a chink of the cash register. It arrives spontaneously because it needs to be told. Loot is the worst foe of truth in such contexts. Cut it out and we might all be a little better informed.

p.preston@theguardian.com