How bleakly comic to learn this week that scientists in Manchester have found that we are now too busy to hug each other. You don’t need to be a psychologist to work out the benefit of physical touch, but a survey found that one third of the population receive no daily hugs, while three-quarters want to be hugged more than they are.

It seems that young couples get home late and are too stressed to hug; those with children hug them when young (under 11) but not much afterwards, and often forget their partners altogether.

You might think a lack of hugs nonsense or irrelevant, just another silly survey. Our ramrod British instincts run deep. In our macho culture, hugging is for wets and over-exuberant footballers. We are far more comfortable watching the gladiatorial combat of the House of Commons – there was nothing “hug a hoodie” about David Cameron as he leant with Eton nonchalance over the dispatch box to eviscerate Gordon Brown after the Queen’s Speech in an exchange that left Brown’s hand trembling. And yet, I couldn’t help thinking how irrepressibly sad the findings of those Manchester scientists are. Their report is indicative of the monstrous society we seem to have created, in which no one has any time and which, at one end of the spectrum, leaves us too busy to hug, and at the other, too busy to prevent people from dying.

Last weekend, four firefighters died in a fire at a vegetable packing and distribution centre. The warehouse didn’t have a water misting system and it was not, unforgiveably, a legal requirement. The previous owners had gone into administration in an industry – supplying vegetables to supermarkets – that operates with the tightest of margins, in order to deliver maximum profit to the supermarkets at minimum cost to the consumer. So tight is the squeeze that they employ migrants to pick the vegetables, as they are willing to work for a pittance.

Then there is the care home for the elderly where an undercover reporter’s account made for deeply disturbing reading. The home had all the right sort of guidelines in place but, because it employed too few carers, many residents were lifted wrongly and left with soiled clothes and incontinence pads. The reporter never saw the books of the care home, but one analyst estimated that at current full occupancy the it might make between £70,000 and £100,000 a year. Increase the carers or decrease the occupancy by much, and bang goes the profit.

In any office these days you will hear tales of budget cuts and redundancies. Staff leave and are not replaced, leaving the remaining workers to pick up the slack. People today are often doing jobs which a generation ago were done by two or even three. There is barely time to talk and it is commonplace to do several things at once. Only this week I mortally offended an old friend of mine because I skimmed her e-mail and then responded to it while answering a question from someone else. As a result I failed to pick up on the part of her e-mail which said her mother was critically ill.

Most people I know, men and women, feel they are working harder than ever and are so busy they barely have time to think. How laughable to remember those long, portentous newspaper articles in the early Eighties which predicted so much leisure time a quarter of a century hence – that is to say, right now – that we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.

For those who are working and raising children, time becomes the most precious commodity there is. From the moment you wake up to the moment you gratefully close your eyes, every minute is precious, something to be valued and stretched to the full. We become ruthlessly organised in order to fit it all in: get up early to exercise; then spend time with children from the moment they wake up to the time you drop them off at school; then work (no time for lunch, obviously – lunch is not for busy people); then the race home to supervise homework, bathtime and bedtime story; then your own supper and maybe a bit of TV, usually, in the case of many of the women I know, accompanied by some sewing, ironing or household admin.

What you discover is that you are capable of a lot more than you ever dreamt. You discern between those who are really busy (and who answer e-mails promptly – a friend whose job involves regular contact with the major television channels says those at the very top always answer quickly; it is those lower down who never get back to you) and those who are lazy (but never cease to tell you how exhausted they are).

But just how far should we go? It seems that we are so busy being busy that we have forgotten that everyone needs to rest. This weekend both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi called for families to spend more time together. As the Chief Rabbi pointed out, the Sabbath meal has saved many a marriage, because no one has to rush off afterwards. It was time, he argued, “for family friendly policy to be written into the corporate ethos in the way that environmental issues have been addressed.”

Well, that’s what David Cameron said too – a year ago – and now Gordon Brown has adopted it as Government policy, announcing plans for every parent to have the right to ask for family friendly hours. But it is not just in the corporate world that we need to take action; we have to learn to differentiate between profit and humanity in the personal as well. You can achieve everything on your list, each duty neatly ticked off, but what is the point if along the way you have forgotten what it means to enjoy yourself, or offended all your friends? What kind of people have we become when we can’t relax on holiday or perform any task with our children not connected to educational or sporting improvement?

By cramming much more into less time, we have created a world where the elderly are neglected, warehouses are deathtraps, and children become criminal, precocious or both. A world where you drop dead upon retirement because you forgot years ago how to relax.

I’m not advocating that we stop trying to be efficient or profitable, but I do think we need to impose some compulsory stops and balances. At the very least, we could start by making time to give those we care about a hug.

Breast is best – and a pleasure too

The revelation that babies who are breastfed have higher IQs has caused the predictable rush of “why I gave up the battle and reached for the bottle” pieces, all of them talking about breastfeeding as though it were some medieval torture designed to cause the maximum pain and inconvenience.

So I would just like to say that if you get it right, it is not only wonderfully pleasurable, offering mothers the feeling that all is right with the world as they bond with a happily feeding baby, but it is hugely convenient, too. Perhaps if we spent more time in hospitals caring for mothers after the birth, rather than shoving them out to fend for themselves at the earliest opportunity, more of them would discover its joys rather than its drawbacks.

In many countries in Europe you’re not allowed to leave the hospital until they are satisfied that the baby is feeding properly. How differently we do things here. I well remember, the morning after having my first child, saying worriedly to a scary looking midwife that I didn’t think my daughter was feeding properly and that maybe I didn’t have enough milk.

Her hand flashed out and squeezed my nipple agonisingly hard. “Ain’t nothing wrong there honey,” she told me firmly as a stream of colostrum gushed out. And with that, I was on my way home.

It’s not the quality, it’s the quantity

Still on the subject of breasts, it’s all very well for Susannah and Trinny to explain how to find your bra size by weighing them in a bowl of warm water. But what if, like those of us who are less well-endowed, such a feat is not physically possible? I always remember a fashion editor telling me years ago, “What you need to do is get yourself a Wonderbra.” “What you don’t realise,” I replied, “is that I’m already wearing one.”

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