Private lives can affect public duties.

If a politician or other public figure cheats on his or her spouse, there is a certain amount of finger-wagging but apparently little surprise among the British public. So common have revelations of sexual misconduct become that all but the most bizarre have lost their power to shock.

Is lust becoming the acceptable face of sin? The others that were once deemed `deadly' (pride, wrath, avarice, gluttony, envy and sloth) are equally wide-spread but less fashionable. `Fat cat' bosses who make a killing from privatized companies, for example, get plenty of stick--even if one suspects that much of it is motivated by envy.

Religious considerations aside, does misdirected lust matter? Does anyone (except the jilted and the children) suffer? Does it matter if `the great and the good' have feet of clay?

As is being increasingly recognized in the world of work, person-to-person skills (or `emotional intelligence') do matter. The family is the ultimate testing-ground of such skills. Every character fault-line, hidden hurt, emotional scar is liable to be exposed.

For those blessed with an active conscience, giving in to inappropriate sexual urges leads to feelings of guilt, loss of self-esteem, a sense of inner disquiet. Suppressing one's conscience may seem the best option. But conscience is indivisible; you cannot refuse to listen to one part of it and remain sensitive to its promptings in other areas. Any resulting loss of moral judgement can be very costly, not least when faced with the inevitable temptations of high office.

But not all is doom and gloom. Anyone is at liberty to start putting right relationships which have gone wrong; perhaps with a timely apology, perhaps by deciding to live differently, or quite possibly both. At least one prominent British politician has made up with his wife after admitting an affair.

Perhaps the new Millennium will see the emergence of new levels of self-discipline and integrity in private life--and hence greater effectiveness in the public arena.