I’ll just have to a quick run through of all three.

On recycling and packaging, I’ve been struck in recent weeks that there seems to be a growing presumption that supermarkets should be ‘forced’ into reducing packaging on their products. Now I have friends who tell me they don’t see excess packaging on what they buy – I can only assume they grow it all in their own garden.

Wandering round my local supermarkets I see numerous examples of superfluous coverings. They are not required for the maintenance of freshness. The bulk of the excess packaging stems from EU directives, as ever. You may recall that KitKats once came covered just in foil. Not any more. Asked yourself why? Answer: EU.

So what to do? If you accept there is a problem, then make sure you only buy products appropriately packaged – whether from a farmers’ market or a supermarket. Then you are sending a market signal to the supermarkets. Tell the supermarkets you are doing it as well. Consider the example of Sainsburys’ bag for life scheme. Or the fact that M&S are now going to charge 5p per plastic bag. It will make me think at the checkout whether I really need that bag for my meagre range of purchases.

Enough on that then.

Queen’s Speech? It’s amazing how Gordon thinks that if it is a problem that an arm of a state can’t solve, then it isn’t a problem. Almost everything in this Queen’s Speech seemed to require a new Agency to oversee it. He said it was an ‘agenda for change’ – as if change alone is enough, whether it makes things better or worse. One of the Republican challengers for their presidential nomination, Ron Paul, has started campaigning to abolish a whole host of Government departments on the principle that ‘less is more’. Whilst I would not go quite that far, I would always ask whether any policy ‘does what it says on the tin’, and whether the department or agency is helping or hindering the achievement of a goal – presuming that goal were desirable in the first place.

And why on earth do they think that raising the school leaving age to 18 will achieve anything other than a generation of frustrated teenagers. The reason too many get to 16 without the necessary skills is because of what happens in the ‘grey period’ of ages 11-14. That’s when children are lost to the education system, because by the time they start their GCSE courses, their interest has already wained. The cost of this scheme will be enormous. My favourite acronyms date from the last time a Labour Government raised the school leaving age – HORSA (Hutting Operation for the Raising of the School Leaving Age) and SFORSA (School Furniture Operation for the Raising of the School Leaving Age). I wonder whether we will see a similar rather ropy provision of second-hand chairs and desks in draughty prefabs?

Meanwhile in Stoke-on-Trent, the Labour Mayor is trying to close down the city’s most successful school, St Joseph’s College, which is also the city’s only grammar. All schools in Stoke are due to be ‘reorganised’, with the current 15 schools being rationalised to just 12. The Labour Mayor said that closing St Joseph’s would ensure that the reorganisation was ‘fair’. The director of children’s services in Stoke said it was a ‘wonderful opportunity’. I am not sure the parents would agree. This is a classic case of punishing a school for doing well, and “levelling down” so that everyone is equally bad. The spirit of the sixties’ education disasters of Barbara Castle is still with us.

In addition, the new Marine Bill that I have long been calling for will not be published until January, so we still do not know if it will do all the things it is supposed to. Early indications suggest it will focus only on new planning controls for offshore windfarms – which is nowhere near enough.

And finally. Too often in politics, the passion goes into a slanging match. But sometimes you come across a story which makes you angry, and reminds you why you spend your time freezing on the doorsteps. This was in today’s Times.

Back in 1937, a young woman of 15 from Birkenhead was sectioned after it was judged that she was ‘feeble-minded’. The use of the Mental Deficiency Act was, at that time, a not uncommon way of dealing with the ‘slow’ or the ‘different’. After being released on licence in 1944, she was sent back to a locked institution after a false allegation of theft. Whilst her family kept up regular visits, in 1957 her father committed suicide. Even though the Mental Deficiency Act was changed in 1960 to allow for regular three-year reviews, the family were unaware of this and so never requested a review. Communication gradually broke down, as the woman moved from institution to institution, and the family were not informed. Contact was lost. Until last year, when a chance letter to her mother (who had been dead for over 30 years) arrived, and it transpired that the sister they thought long dead, was alive aged 85. A reunion ensued, only for the women in question to die just a few months later.

There must have been grief on both sides. A family feeling guilty that they had lost contact, only to lose contact again once and for all so soon after a reunion. And a woman, sectioned unjustly and denied a review, who survived in an institution for 70 years.

I find it shocking on so many levels. I am struck by the ease with which you could fall into the hands of the state. In the 1940s, a boy was arrested on suspicion of stealing a bike. Because he had a minor speech impediment, he was put into care, and did not manage to emerge until 60 years later. Incarceration under the Lunacy Act could occur because of speech impediment, dyslexia, Asperger’s or autism (then little understood). As someone with a mild speech impediment due to equally mild cerebral palsy, I shudder to think what my fate would have been under such a system.

Equally shocking is the current situation. In 2001, a government survey found that 20% of those aged 65-74 in care homes had no contact with their family. In many cases, the family probably had no idea where they were. It was the policy pre-war to advise parents not to maintain contact with sectioned offspring. The result is decades of loneliness, and of suffering in silence. To be sectioned meant that, often, any attempt by the individual to talk their way out of their predicament was dismissed as ‘ramblings’.

Loneliness is a cruel state to be in, I would imagine. Charities such as Age Concern desperately need more of us to volunteer to visit these people – it is a worthy task.

Unless he was to set up a Loneliness Agency or a Compulsory Volunteering Scheme, I doubt Gordon Brown would regard this as a problem. Yet it is.

It is a story worth reading, as we should not hide from such silent suffering:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article2819451.ece.

And yes, I kn
ow this is far too long for a blog! Tough.