AN old friend of mine is now one in a million.

Or at least, he is one of the million recipients of an unsolicited letter from a Baroness Vere of Norbiton, asking if he would like once again to be a “king of the road”.

In other words my friend is – or at least was – an HGV lorry driver.

With Johnny Foreigner having been given his jotters, and next to nobody from the succeeding generation trained up to drive a bus never mind a tanker, the Minister for “Roads, Buses and Places” has turned to grey power for our salvation from the petrol crisis.

Baroness Vere is herself a bit of a stranger to electoral politics.

The parliamentary record suggests she only made a single electoral attempt at Brighton Pavilion in 2010, where she trailed in a poor third behind the Greens.

However, there is no suggestion that she stumped up £150,000 for the honour of being the Under Secretary for “Places”. She did not make an Offord they could not refuse.

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As far as my pal is concerned, the bold Baroness is doomed to disappointment. In his mid-70s, with one or two medical issues, he says that long-distance forays are no longer for him.

In his experience, the working conditions were deplorable, the schedules impossible and the penalties for the tiniest of regulatory infractions draconian. He therefore had some pertinent points to make about the letter.

The letter refers to “fantastic opportunities”, “attractive pay rates” and “more opportunities for flexible working”. This bears no resemblance, he noted wryly, to the industry he left a decade ago when “we were treated like the dirt on the shoes of the Tories and New Labour”.

Nor does he think the temporary visa gambit will work – “the Europeans were treated even worse than us” – while the idea of the army doing an effective job for any length of time provokes a great guffaw from this experienced trucker.

There is, he admits, a grim satisfaction in getting begging letters from the Government as opposed to the tax demands which still pop in regularly some 10 years after his retirement.

And this, after all, was his first-ever missive from a peer of the realm. And the letter is indeed very pleading. Short of backing it up with a poster campaign with a picture of the Baroness declaring “Your Country Needs You”, it is as deferential as you will ever get from a Tory.

However – and this is the significant point – he also said: “If they had been straight with me, and I was fit enough, then I might just have done it.

“What she should have said is that they had made a complete codswallop of Brexit, the country was in crisis and could I help them out delivering the Christmas turkeys until they train up a few youngsters”.

There is one other aspect he noted. People have to be satisfied on the tax, benefits and pensions.

At various times, mobilising the oldies has been presented as a solution to perennial shortages of teachers, nurses and ambulance drivers. And here, the Scottish Government is almost as guilty as the gang of Brexiteers who created the fuel and Christmas crisis.

These urgent appeals to the elderly are never planned and always stop-gap.

And yet the biggest single issue has never been tackled. People want to know in simple terms what the exact impact will be on their pocket, purse or family income.

Another acquaintance of mine, a former primary head teacher, tinkered recently with going back into the classroom. Undeterred by Covid, and being offered fourth ranking in a small four-teacher school, she was on the point of packing her satchel – until her accountant explained that her effective tax rate after pension and benefit reductions would be something like more than 60%.

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Keen as my friend was on teaching again, she felt that if she was being asked to help out, she should be properly remunerated – otherwise her granny responsibilities should continue to take precedence. And they have.

The lesson for policy-makers north and south of the Border is clear. In our brave new world, outside of pandemics, people live healthy lives for much longer. There are enormous reservoirs of skills locked up among retirees.

However, if you want to mobilise them, then plan it properly and don’t send silly, desperate letters like Baroness Vere.

Oh, and this above all, do them the respect of working out how to pay them properly.