WHAT a fantastic firework display from Big Ben and the London Eye to welcome 2012.

It was the best ever to welcome a new year which is going to be very exciting.

We have the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, both the London Olympics and Paralympics, and football’s European Championships.

Let us hope that the economy grows and we begin to well and truly start to come out of the recession.

I also hope and pray that this year will be the start of peace throughout the world and that the troubles of the last year in the Middle East will be a memory.

Also, let us hope that the conflict in Afghanistan will come to an end and that our brave service personnel will all return home safely and that the repatriations will be a thing of the past.

We humans cause all of these problems, so it is up to us humans to put an end to them.

MICHAEL CLARKE Lewell Avenue Old Marston