A letter in yesterday's Financial Times urged the Government to reduce the top rate of taxation in order to stimulate the economy. Most of the signatories were predictable: the usual "veteran monetarists" which the rest of us know as unreconstructed Thatcherites.
But there was, at least to me, one surprising name: that of Bob Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge.
Obviously no relation to the young Marxist Bob Rowthorn, lecturer in economics at the University of Cambridge, who sat with me and others in countless, endless Communist Party and Socialist Society meetings at the back end of the '60s, discussing the need for a socialist revolution.
Of course, it is the very same.
Just forty years on.
Which is a shame.
I take it personally. The Bob Rowthorn I remember was one of the cleverest and most eloquent elucidators of Marxist economics I have ever known. And, forty years on, I can still recall many of his casually delivered insights and the influence they had on a young undergraduate finding his way through the morass of ideologies which I encountered at the time.
Sure, I know all the cliches about a revolutionary youth and a conservative middle age. It's just that the Bob Rowthorn I knew would never even have considered putting his name to a call for the abolition of a 50p tax rate.
And, thanks in no small measure to Bob Rowthorn, I still wouldn't.
Today's listening: David Honeyboy Edwards, singing the blues.
But there was, at least to me, one surprising name: that of Bob Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge.
Obviously no relation to the young Marxist Bob Rowthorn, lecturer in economics at the University of Cambridge, who sat with me and others in countless, endless Communist Party and Socialist Society meetings at the back end of the '60s, discussing the need for a socialist revolution.
Of course, it is the very same.
Just forty years on.
Which is a shame.
I take it personally. The Bob Rowthorn I remember was one of the cleverest and most eloquent elucidators of Marxist economics I have ever known. And, forty years on, I can still recall many of his casually delivered insights and the influence they had on a young undergraduate finding his way through the morass of ideologies which I encountered at the time.
Sure, I know all the cliches about a revolutionary youth and a conservative middle age. It's just that the Bob Rowthorn I knew would never even have considered putting his name to a call for the abolition of a 50p tax rate.
And, thanks in no small measure to Bob Rowthorn, I still wouldn't.
Today's listening: David Honeyboy Edwards, singing the blues.
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