Are in for a tough time this Valentine’s Day. The day has been formally banned in Iran. No cards, no gifts and no promotion of the day will be allowed.

Which will, surely, make young lovers even more determined to mark the day.

The proportion of us who volunteer has dropped for the fifth year in a row.

Perhaps the way to reverse this is to think of the problem in terms of association. Are we harnessing the power of association in the way we encourage volunteering? No, we are not.

Invariably you find that groups of volunteers last longer than individual volunteers. They gain a stronger sense of identity and belonging from whatever it is they are doing, so they are bound to keep coming back for longer.

Until we embrace that it seems those numbers will keep dropping.

Is a two-part programme about Rotary Clubs in Britain today. It aired this morning on Radio 4. Fascinating stuff. I like the presenter.

But so many things he didn’t say… Also he didn’t seem to get the fact that having an elderly membership in your club is not necessarily a death sentence. With our average life expectancy what it is today – and rising always – clubs like this can often sustain themselves by recruiting people in their 50s and 60s.

Also, not a word about the sense of identity you get within a Rotary Club, the role of regalia, the gap these groups fill in so many lives etc.

Maybe he’ll take that on in part two – airs next Friday.

at the last General Election was spirited, tense. Yet in many ways what swung a lot of voters away from the BNP was the work of one or two voluntary groups campaigning against them. The Frontline Club are showing a film about this on January 13.

The former US diplomat Chas Freeman, or Chas W. Freeman Jr. to you and me, has written a book. It’s called America’s Misadventures in the Middle East, which, as titles go, is not a million miles away from Misadventure in the Middle East. But I’m told they’re very different books (his is readable, funny, interesting etc. etc.).