16 FEBRUARY 2002, Page 31

Decadent Albion

From Mr ILW Crocker III

Sir: Matthew Parris (Another voice, 2 February) asks, 'What has happened to Conservative England's distrust of America?' Perhaps this distrust has evaporated because on so many indices of what Conservative England disliked about America — 'loose morals, divorce, sex, drugs and rock

and-roll . ignorant people with loud voices and preposterous clothes . . . noise . . the vulgar flaunting of wealth' and so on — England has gone far beyond America.

While America seems to have struck a tolerable equilibrium between economic vitality and such social pathologies, England seems on a ski slope of social decline. Can there even be said to be a 'Conservative England' any more?

H.W. Crocker III

Washington, DC, USA