HAPPY, BETTER NEW YEAR

So, was 2001 your 'annus terribilis'? The horror of September 11th in the US changed our world. Foot and mouth changed English country life. The General Election changed very little.

For almost all of us, life got more complicated, moved even faster, offered us more choices, demanded new priorities, challenged old certainties, shrank the world and confronted us with yob culture and general ugliness.

Let me share with you one tiny symbolic cameo. On Remembrance Sunday hundreds of us assembled in the Guildhall Square for the wreath-laying and remembrance. Along with red-robed councillors in their tri-corn hats, and immaculate officers from all three Services, I processed to St Thomas's Church for the annual British Legion service. At one point, two children, about ten years old, crossed our path at right angles. They were not going to stop for anything - and ploughed straight through the Mayoral column. They didn't even stop chatting! They showed no respect - but no deliberate disrespect either. No one had ever explained to them how to behave in such circumstances. They were innocent and oblivious to their blunder. Their parents were open-mouthed, as were we. I suppose they were behaving as if we were just another television channel, a sort of virtual reality pantomime.

What was sad is that this unusual spectacle clearly did not arouse the slightest curiosity in these children. We might as well have been on separate planets. I have often thought that this is a condition which is shared by rioting British football fans on the Continent, as well as by

the groups of aggressive youths and yobs who make life such a misery for older people in Salisbury and the villages, usually at weekends. All that matters is their own immediate group. Anyone else is, in computer parlance, wallpaper. As usual, the fault lies with we adults, not the children.

I will share with you two wishes I will make for 2002. First, that where it has broken down, trust will be restored between politicians and their electors. I regret the departure of Elizabeth Filkin as our Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. She has been a good public servant. Parliamentary allowances and how they work is public knowledge. As your MP I have to account for all claims. Office costs must be justified with receipts, in arrears. I am answerable to not one but two independent HM Tax Inspectors - and a third is based permanently in the House. Incidentally, I neither employ nor pay for the staff at the Conservative Office in Salisbury, nor rent premises from them.

Secondly, I wish the Queen a wonderful Golden Jubilee year. On Wednesday 6th February 1952 I was a seven year-old at the Cathedral School and I remember the Headmaster coming into the classroom to tell us the King was dead - long live the Queen. She has and she will.

In the midst of our hectic, often sickening world, thank God that once a year we pause to remember something as simple and as hugely symbolic as a newborn child.

So when the tills stop ringing, the roads are empty, the guns stop firing and the politicians stop talking, let's give the real Christmas message a chance as we wish each other a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

ROBERT KEY MP