"It can't get any worse David."

A couple of days ago a backbench Tory MP sidled up to David Cameron in the House and hoping to cheer him up said, "Don't worry David, It can't get any worse." David's reply is not known but he must have known that it was about to get much worse and it has.

I remember in the early sixties the so called Profumo Affair, a government sex scandal that seemed to go on for ever with each new revelation being slowly but inevatively dragged out until the government minister, John Profumo, finally admitting he had slept with a prostitute, the same prostitute had also slept with a Russian spy. There was no suggestion that Profumo had told the prostitute, Christine Keeler, any state secrets she could pass on to the Russian spy but he had to go and the Conservative government almost collapsed following this affair.

There have been other scandals concerning government ministers including Cherie Blair's friendship with a known crook while her husband was Prime Minister and of course the MP's expences incident which senior government ministers knew about but only came out and did something about after a lot of pressure from a newspaper.

Now it seems the present Prime Minister has got an even bigger skeleton in his cupboard in the shape of Andy Coulson, his former director of communications. It would appear that at a trial held in Scotland a few months ago he stated under oath that he was not aware that The News of the World had paid police for information. Now it seems there are emails that prove he did know. That is perjury and better people than Andy Coulson have ended in in prison for perjury. And that isn't his only problem. He still has to clear himself of any involvement in phone hacking. That is looking an increasing difficult task.

Compared to all this, The Profumo Affair of 1963 is beginning to look the rather tame affair it actually was. Come back John all is forgiven.

I did suggest that not buying the News of the World this would be a good idea. I still think it's a good idea but closing the paper down shows the world what a mean bastard Rupert Murdoch is, putting hundreds of people out of work in cynical, and lets hope futile attempt to save face.