BBC Online report…

John Profumo, who was at the centre of one of the UK’s most famous political scandals, has died at the age of 91.

John Profumo’s public life was dramatically split into two parts: disgrace and redemption.

Nearly 40 years after he misled the House of Commons and helped bring down the Macmillan government, the former politician was a dedicated charity worker, for whom his friend Lord Longford “felt more admiration than all the men I’ve known in my lifetime”.

Nice coda by Martin Kettle:

Sixty five years ago this week, in March 1940, the 25-year-old John Profumo was elected to parliament in one of those odd, not properly contested, wartime byelections, as the Conservative MP for Kettering (his only rival for the seat was a rebel Labour councillor who ran as a Workers’ and Pensioners’ Anti-war candidate).

His victory brought the young Profumo on to the Tory benches just in time for perhaps the single most important parliamentary vote of the 20th century – the “Norway debate” of May 8 1940.

Although the Norway debate was ostensibly about one theatre of the British war effort, and ironically one over which Winston Churchill (then first lord of the Admiralty) had charge, it was in practice about the credibility of the Chamberlain government to lead Britain through the worsening war crisis in Europe.

Thirty-three Tories voted against the government that day, and another 65 abstained. The result was the fall of Chamberlain and the formation of the wartime coalition under Churchill.

John Profumo was the last surviving Tory MP to have voted against Chamberlain that night long ago.

He may have helped to wreck his party in the 1960s, but in May 1940 Profumo helped to save his country. That’s worth remembering too.

For me, though, the enduring image of the ‘Profumo affair’ is Lewis Morley’s wonderful photograph of Christine Keeler, the beautiful call-girl for whom he fell. The original is in the V&A Museum.

Brad DeLong blogged Paul Krugman’s intro to the General Theory…

Stripped down, the conclusions of The General Theory might be expressed as four bullet points:

Economies can and often do suffer from an overall lack of demand, which leads to involuntary unemployment

The economy’s automatic tendency to correct shortfalls in demand, if it exists at all, operates slowly and painfully

Government policies to increase demand, by contrast, can reduce unemployment quickly

Sometimes increasing the money supply won’t be enough to persuade the private sector to spend more, and government spending must step into the breach

To a modern practitioner of economic policy, none of this – except, possibly, the last point – sounds startling or even especially controversial. But these ideas weren’t just radical when Keynes proposed them; they were very nearly unthinkable. And the great achievement of The General Theory was precisely to make them thinkable….

Today was a beautifully, crisp, sunny day in Cambridge. As I turned the car towards town and music lessons this morning, I sang the first line of “Oh what a beautiful morning” from Oklahoma. Without blinking, the kids (aged 12 and 14) joined in and sang the entire thing, word- and pitch-perfect. And the strange thing is that 1950s musicals are not part of their culture — they’re into Coldplay and U2 and James Blunt and Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. So how does a popular song from an old musical get embedded in the collective unconscious? Deep waters, Holmes.

Thanks to AA for pointing out embarrassing spelling error!

So Tessa Jowell has separated from her husband, the corporate lawyer and associate of Silvio Berlusconi, David Mills. What always surprised me was what Jowell, who seems a wholesome and intelligent person, was doing married to a cove who specialised in tax-avoidance (which, I hasten to say, is perfectly legal).

I’m reminded of something Nancy Astor said, in a reply to a question about why she had shacked up with her first husband, an alcoholic adulterer. “I married beneath me”, she said. “Women always do”. She also observed once that “the penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you”, and that the only thing she liked about rich people was their money. Quite a dame.

I’ve apparently won a big prize (a million dollars, no less) in a lottery. Which is nice, especially since I did not buy a ticket. The helpful email conveying these glad tidings continues thus…

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Your fund is now deposited with ourPaying Bank and insured in your name. Due to mix up of some numbers andnames, we ask that you keep this award from public notice untill yourclaims has been processed and the money remitted to your account as thisis part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming of unwarrantedtaking advantage of this program by participants as it has happened inthe past.

All participants were selected through a computer ballotsystem drawn from 25,000 names from Asia, Australia, New Zealand,Europe, North and South America, Middle East and Africa .This programmeis sponsored by EUROPEAN UNION/BILL GATES and WORLD INTERNATIONALLOTTERY ORGANISATION TO PROMOTE and ENAHNCE the use of SOFT WARE IN THEGOBAL WORLD.we hope your lucky name will draw a bigger cash prize in thesubsequent programs. To begin your lottery claims , please contact yourclaims agent, MR GEORGE PRATT on Telephone number:0034-606-742-900or
email:santaluciaseguro@netscape.net orsantaluciamgt@netscape.net,with all your information provided that youare the user of this mail,either your country passport or any otherindentity.

Now my question is this: who would fall for such an obvious scam? Presumably people do — otherwise the spammers wouldn’t do it. You’d have thought that even a half-wit would be put off by the typos and grammatical mistakes. Weird.