That was my reading at a carol service near Box over Christmas, and the message stayed with me. It is all too easy at a time like this to focus on the negative. The World at war; our servicemen being killed as we speak in Iraq and Afganistan; terrorism, starvation, poverty; Global Warming; local cuts and closures; personal miseries; sad Christmasses for some. It’s a sad, wicked World indeed.

But just maybe Christmas  - and certainly the new Year when it comes – is a time for all of us to pull ourselves together; assess what’s wrong in our lives and the wider world, and set about doing something to put it right. My Father used to say: All my little ducks are drownded.” But then, cheering up “When the wheels come off your wagon, you just gotta turn around and stick them back on again!”

So for example, it would be easy for the people of Wootton Bassett and area to sit in a corner moping over the threatened closure of their beloved Lime Kiln Leisure Centre. (And incidentally, I hear that the District Council are considering putting the private management of all five, excluding Cricklade, out to tender, which clearly means that Chippenham, Corsham and Malmesbury are most definitely not out of the frame.) But did they sit and mope? Not a bit of it. On one of the coldest Saturdays so far, 500 of them turned up to form a human life-belt around the centre, and to let off 500 orange helium balloons in protest. What an uplifting experience that was (if you’ll excuse the pun), and how determined we all are to find a solution in the New Year and in the oft-chanted slogan of the campaigners to “Save Our Sport.” And how wonderful it was in the year when Chippenham and other hospitals at very least came under threat of closure to go round the hospital singing carols with the Friends on Christmas Eve, and to see both the dedication to duty, but also the sheer cheerfulness of the hard pressed nurses and other staff. What a great bunch they are. And thehn on Boxing day, no matter what your opinion of the Government’s botched bid to ban hunting, who could fail to be cheered by the 2/3000 people packing Lacock High Street as they have done for hundreds of years  to celebrate an ancient English Tradition with the Avon Vale Hunt, cocking a snook at Mr Blair and his politically correct thought police.

“The pealed the bells more loud and deep/ God is not dead; nor doth he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the Right prevail. With Peace on earth; Goodwill to men.”

Shuts, closures and and threats to our communities almost everywhere you look. It was great to attend the Burton Hill School Carol Service in Malmesbury Abbey, but sad to reflect that it may be the last if the Shaftesbury Society cannot be persuaded to extend the school’s life. How awful to read that the Wiltshire Air Ambulance (to whose partner in Cornwall I owe my health) possibly being cut, or restricted to daytime flying; police stations being closed (or at least their enquiry desks); the leisure centres of course in Cricklade, Calne and Wootton Bassett threatened with the chop, but all of us fighting hard to save them; RAF Lyneham still threatened with many thousands of jobs dependent on it; eight rural registrars of Births Marriages and Deaths to be closed; our hospitals and other NHS services under threat; and now an announcement by the Government that 3500 Post Offices, so essential in so many of our rural communities are to close. Incidentally, you’d have thought that deep cuts like these would at least result in lower taxes. If so, you’d have been wrong.

Particularly in an area like this we need community. We need local services. We need to keep a life blood in our villages and market towns if we are to prevent them becoming dormitories of neighbouring metropolises. And local health, post offices, village shops, local jobs, public services – these are essential in areas like this, but being systematically undermined.

Nationally, we see our Prime Minister and several of his closest aides having their collars felt by the Metropolitan Police’s finest (and I pay tribute to the Assistant Commissioner who is in charge of the Cash For Peerages investigation. He is one courageous police officer.) Nor do I find Mr Blair’s protestations that it was all Lord Levy’s fault, nor Gordon Brown’s claim that he knew nothing about it all entirely convincing to say the least. There must be a strong presumption that they are all in it together. Then we see the fraud investigation with regard to the Saudi arms deal suspended “in the national interest.” More to that than meets the eye, methinks. The Middle East is in chaos, and I am not sure that the Prime Minister’s tour will have achieved much, Iraq and Afganistan in open warfare. What a sad and dangerous world we are all living in.

But have no fear. The Blair Thought Police are on the case. A friend of mine sings in a choir, which was asked to perform some carols in Whitehall’s Banquetting House last week. After a fair performance, and feeling rosily warm about the festive season, they wandered down to Trafalgar Square afterwards and thought they’d add a little seasonal cheer by performing Ding Dong Merrily on High in one corner. No drink. No collection. Nothing out of order. Just a little cheerful singing by a quality choir in a more or less deserted square. But Oh No. That’s quite out of order. Who should jump from the shadows, but a curious official wearing a day-Glo Tabard declaring himself to be a “Heritage Warden” to tell said jolly carollers that it was all wrong and they’d have to be moving along now, for fear presumably of disturbing the heritage. I am pleased to report that being of robust outlook on life, said carollers finished all the verses of Ding Dong before acceding to the Heritage Warden’s absurd request. It’s a funny old world indeed.

Never mind. Let me be bold enough  wish you all a Very Happy Christmas.

Politics seems to get ever more frenetic too both in Parliament and the Constituency. Last weekend I was delighted to be asked to Chippenham’s Fleet Support Group’s party in The Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe, to go to Trowbridge to read a lesson in the pre-record for BBC Radio Wiltshire’s Christmas Eve carol service; to speak to the Ladies Luncheon Club at Westonbirt, do a TV interview in Bristol, attend functions in Malmesbury, Wootton Bassett and Corsham and hold surgeries in Chippenham and Corsham. Then during the week I can boast a question to the Defence Secretary, a meeting of David Cameron’s Foreign Affairs Policy Group, a contribution to the debate on the cut in funding to the Wilts and Berks Canal, assorted efforts on the Save Lime Kiln Leisure Centre campaign , including my own “Adjournment” Debate in Parliament on Wednesday, our office party, and assorted other social events, and 2000 Christmas cards signed and stuffed.(If you didn’t get yours, or if it was incorrectly addressed, unsigned, or lacking its stamp, please don’t blame me. The system is a little chaotic!)

What fun it all is. But how secular. It is not for me to pontificate on religious matters. My Father, a Minister of Religion and one time Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, strenuously avoided party politics from the pulpit. (Unlike some other clergy I could name.) “Half the congregation will be Conservative, the other half Labour”, he would argue, and it would be wrong for the preacher to alienate either half. “Leave the politics to the politicians,” he would say. “And leave the religion to the preachers,” I would add. Nonetheless I really do feel strongly that those schools and public buildings who have refused to put up Christmas decorations for fear of alienating the non-Christians amongst us; and those self-righteously politically correct souls who send out cards with us “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy holidays”, adorned with fat snowmen or Christmas puddings really are missing the point.

If I am visiting or living in a Moslem or Buddhist society, I will greatly enjoy taking part in their religious observances. And the notion that I might somehow or another be outraged by Ramadan or Diwali is nonsensical. So while I am enthusiastic and energetic participant in the parties, presents, parcels and pretty cards parts of Christmas, and while I most certainly would not subscribe to the excessively pious approach to the Festival, I do think we should find just a little chink of time in all of this rushing around to remind ourselves of the baby in Bethlehem.

Well, apparently that’s not how the ruling group on North Wiltshire District Council whose rank incompetence seems to have led to the threatened closure of the Leisure Centres sees it.  I hope they are by now coming to realise what a huge mistake they have made over the last five years in allowing directly or vicariously the leisure centres to have been run, and to have been run down in the way they have. If they have not already realised it, I hope that it may become more obvious to them after the District Council elections on May 3^rd next year!

So I was pleased to attend the two meetings in Wootton Bassett over the weekend, to have sent out something like 3/400 letters in reply to emails and letters, and to have led a protest of a good few hundred people up and down the High Street during Friday’s Victorian Evening. Rarely have I felt such an upsurge of popular outrage at an official decision. The closure of our hospitals, and the threat to RAF Lyneham are similar, but perhaps less vociferous.

Now I have tried to make it  plain to all concerned that I am happy to act as a facilitator, a chairman of meetings and committees, a media spokesman and a figurehead in general, and while I am more than happy to do what I can with the Government, Sport England, the national lottery amongst others, I should be absolutely plain that I personally have no kind of magic wand to wave. I am particularly taking an interest in the various approaches to businesses in the area and nationally who may be able to make some kind of proposal, which seems to me the most likely solution to the problem.

But I also agreed to take on the role, because I do accept that the local MP has a duty and an ability to pull together different parts of an issue or a campaign – local and national government and quangoes, the media, business and a host of others in an attempt to pull together some kind of a solution to what might otherwise seem a fairly intractable problem. So I am glad, if hesistant, to do the work asked of me, and much buoyed by the 70/30 support for my work as a local MP in last week’s online poll conducted by the Gazette and Herald, pledge to continue to do all I can to work with local people of all kinds to keep these centres open.