Loneliness

Went along to an hour long debate in the grand committee room off Westminster Hall today to join a debate on ‘loneliness’. I would like to have made a speech but had not given notice to the Speaker. So many MPs had given notice, so I and a few others in the same boat were limited to interventions. Rachel Reeves, who had secured the debate was generous and allowed me a couple of sentences.
I had but one suggestion to make.
My background before being diverted into public affairs was as a Welsh hill livestock farmer. As a breed, such farmers tend to spend a lot of time on their own. But they do have their livestock for company. Non farmers don’t realise that each sheep is an individual. I ran a flock of around 900, and knew them individually. When the terrible foot-and-mouth-disease outbreak meant that most sheep flocks in the Severn Valley were shot in a mass slaughter, and burnt in massive bonfires on the farm. It had a terrible effect. For weeks, I had fathers of farmers contacting me, asking me to telephone and chat to their sons. It was usually the fathers. I was sometimes chatting to farmers who were in despair until the middle of the night. I used to comment that loneliness can be a silent assassin.
This is all preamble to the point I’d have liked to make. Yes we can have loneliness commissions. Yes  we can have policy statements. I approve. But we can do quite a bit at a personal level, just by telephoning people you know are on their own and lonely. It’s something I do at Christmas. I’ve asked my office manager to put together a list of names, often people I don’t know, just to ring them for a brief chat. I think it makes a real difference to people who don’t have someone to talk to. Ok so it’s very limited in the number I can reach, but I try to persuade others to do the same. It’s a sort of ‘direct action’.