The report doesn't say if it looks at levels of community volunteering, numbers of community groups or proportions of populations attending church, all of which I imagine would increase the feeling of belonging to one's local community.

I'd say the opportunities for feeling part of the local community are probably there but it involves individuals going out and seeking to be involved with activities that bring them into contact with their local community and environment.

Hmmm, somewhat like the regular advice in papers to lonely people "have you considered Amateur Dramatics ?".

As the person who makes the ice at parties, who could teach Toby Young a thing or two about "how to lose friends and alienate people" I'd suggest that for those, like me, who have problems relating to others it's a lot harder than that.

eg I was in awe of your neighbour Lynne at your party who must have known about as many people there as I did who systematically went round table after table spraking conversations and relating to people in a warm and personal way. Yet these are things I cannot do.

For all the difficulties you face in conversation, your simple knack of being friendly and interested in people and their issues is one that utterly defeats me. A lack of empathy, call it selfishness or self-centredness if you wish, but I don't know how. Really.

But it's not from being disinterested, from being disdainful of friendship. there's a wonderful advert I saw recently from the Autistic society which said something like "just because he doesn't know how to relate, doesn't mean he doesn't want friends". And, even if to a lesser extent, that's how I and probably tens of thousands of other lonely isolated people feel.

And I don't want to do amateur dramatics and my lack of personal warmth means I'm hopeless in so many social or volunteer situations where it's the only thing that's required. But just cos I don't know how, doesn't mean I don't want. Desperately.

And don't play me eleanor rigby, it's the most terrifying song in the world.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Britons 'saving money with sex'

As the credit crunch bites, Britons may be turning to sex as a cheap way to pass the time, a charity says.

A YouGov survey of 2,000 adults found sex was the most popular free activity, ahead of window shopping and gossiping.

The Scots were most amorous with 43% choosing sex over other pastimes, compared with 35% in South England.

Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, which published the survey, also welcomed recent figures showing an increase in condom sales.

Around one in 10 respondents to the survey, carried in November, said their favourite free activity was window shopping and 6% chose going to a museum as the cheapest way to pass the time.

But the sexes differed on their priorities, with women preferring to gossip with friends while men had sex firmly at the top of their list.

Firmly, even...

On a serious note, I think, based on purely personal experience, there appears to be a growing backlash to the "Bowling Alone" culture in America.  Suburbia will always be an anti-social hell on earth, but I do think we've reached a tipping point in the States where we've realized how cut off from one another we've become and are actively reaching out, coming up with new ways to create little communities.  Also, this is weird, but a lot of people have remarked on it: since the election, people in Chicago are just nicer to and more open with one another.  It's kind of neat.  That sense of existential isolation has seriously diminished.  Who knows how long it will last, though.

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

The 'anomie index' is very poor science. It seems to have been invented in the 70s, never tested properly, and not updated since then. It ignores things like Internet socialising and work relationships, and also doesn't ask if perhaps people are more self-reliant than they used to be.

It also doesn't ask how people actually feel.

The league table on the BBC site is ridiculous. What does a difference of 0.7 between London and Edinburgh actually mean? Is it statistically significant?

It's also part of the media's 'The UK's relentless world of eternal misery and woe - it's a bit crap really, isn't it?' negative reporting mindset.

Was 'community' ever really the idyllic world it was supposed to be? People may have chatted over their garden fences, but at the same time family life was often drunken and violent, with systematic child abuse. There was no mechanism for reporting dysfunction, and no media or social framing for it, so it wasn't seen as the problem it is now. That doesn't mean it wasn't important - it was more that expectations were low, and family violence of every kind was seen as background noise.

Besides - I can think of places like Brighton which seem to be quite fun places to live, even though the turnover of people is likely to be quite high, so they'd score high on this faked-up anomie index.

What makes people engaged now isn't a nostalgic hankering for a rooted family life which never existed, but chances to meet people and do fun stuff.

If there's loneliness it's because the UK's social culture revolves around getting bladdered, which is a pastime of limited appeal. But even out here it's not impossible to find cool people and cool things to do, and this is hardly the cosmpolitan hub of the bustling South.