Countess of Mar retires

Adrian

Adrian

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It sounds like the Countess of Mar is retiring. She will clearly be a loss as she had been one of the main campaigners for ME in parliament over the last few years. Fortunately there are others supporting the cause now.

 
Article in Daily Telegraph
'I want to go out on a high': Meet Parliament's last Countess

The Countess of Mar, Britain’s only female hereditary peer, is stepping down from the House of Lords after 45 years
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/politics/want-go-high-meet-parliaments-last-countess/
(requires subscription to view full article)

Following a second divorce in 1981, after five years of marriage to John Salton, the Countess wed her third husband, John Jenkin, now 79, in 1982. They agreed she should give up her day job with British Telecom and focus on the Lords full-time. Yet it was only after she suffered a catastrophic accident in 1989 that she fully realised the power of her peerage.

The couple were ‘dipping’ sheep on their farm in the Malvern Hills when some of the organophosphate liquid splashed inside her Wellington boot. “Three weeks later it was as though I’d been poleaxed,” she recalls.

The poisoning sparked 18 months of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME), which affected the Countess’s memory and speech. The experience prompted her to embark on a lifelong campaign for better awareness of the condition, dismissed by many at the time as “yuppy flu”.

“Psychiatrists would say - it’s all in your head. They’d been working on the principle that everybody was a shirker or could be cured by a bit of cognitive behaviour therapy and exercise,” she recalls.

It took nearly 30 years of campaigning but in 2018, NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) agreed to rewrite the outdated guidelines around ME
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But carrying around such an archaic title can have its downsides.

When, during a debate about food waste several years ago, she quoted Oscar Wilde’s remark about “people knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing”, the backlash was unrelenting.

“They said I’d got no idea about shopping or cooking or anything like that, but of course I do all my own shopping and cooking,” she exclaims.

“The abuse that I got from that online and in the post, you know plain brown envelopes with disgusting pictures in them and things. It wasn’t nice, but you get over it.”

Insisting she has never used her title “to get a good table in a restaurant or make a fuss about anything,” she adds: “The other privilege is that you can help people when Mr Smith might not be able to.”

Six weeks into the coronavirus lockdown and the Countess is worried about the long term effects of Covid-19 on sufferers like the Prime Minister. “There is such a thing as post viral fatigue syndrome,” she insists. “A lot of people have been pushed back to work too early, for example the medical staff. They will have a collapse eventually. The ME groups are keeping an eye open for that.”

Not being in the House has been “less of a wrench” than she expected, admits the Countess, whose underlying health problems mean she is one of the 1.5 million forced into self-isolation for the foreseeable future. She has taken up watercolours, started growing her own vegetables, and knitted countless jumpers.

“My husband plays the piano so I have lovely music to listen to,” she adds, along with tuning into Radio 4. The couple also regularly FaceTime her granddaughters Izzie, 28, and Frannie, 26.

Yet her life, it seems, is as dispensable as her seat in the Lords. “I’ve already signed a piece of paper saying I don’t want to be resuscitated,” she reveals. “John and I have both decided if we get it, we don’t want to see the doctor. If we get over it, we will, and if we don’t, we don’t. They don’t want us clogging up the hospitals.”

And with that, she bids me farewell to tend to the seeds in her polytunnel - the next chapter in the extraordinary life of Parliament’s last Countess.
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Article in Vis a vis symposiums:
THE COUNTESS OF MAR
A huge effort with many difficulties has been associated with her work in support of patients with a diagnosis of ME/CFS. It had been a battle to expose the failure of the mainline treatments used by the NHS for these conditions such as talking therapy and exercise regimes.
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The stalwart support and attendance from Lady Mar to all our symposiums has meant a strength unequaled. With grateful thanks, we now wish her a well deserved, restful, enjoyable, fulfilled, and healthy retirement spent with her husband and family.
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full article here
http://www.visavissymposiums.org/the-countess-of-mar/
 
I know I'm late here, but I'd just like to note that she did a lot of work behind the scenes. In particular she tried hard to get the Lancet to respond to our original concerns about the PACE trial, including going to the Lancet's ombudsman and to the press commission. She also was in regular touch with both Bob and I, and interested in our findings (by that I mean the findings of our larger group).

I gather that when she chased up the fact that the Lancet's ombudsman hadn't replied, she was told that he was on holiday. If any of you see the job coming up, apply quickly, because she still hasn't had a reply: that's one hell of a long holiday.
 
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