Many people have suggested that we should set aside one day in the calendar to celebrate as World Community Day. How can we expect world peace, if we can't have harmony in the home and concord and friendship within our local communities? So why don't we agree to make the 7th of February as a permanent day when people of all nations and religions join together in a spirit of togetherness, love and peace. This idea is not without precedence, for it was on 7th February 1964 that the Beatles made their first visit to the USA, on their flower power campaign to tell the world that 'All it needs is love' That was one of the songs they sang on the Ed Sullivan show which was viewed by an incredible forty percent of the American public. It was on this same day - 7th February 1946 - that the three Allied Leaders, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, met at a secret Black Sea resort to prepare for peace and bring about an end to global strife. And last year, 7th February marked the start of the Chinese New Year, which always begins with the arrival a new moon. One of the main features of this celebration is the holding of 'Reunion Dinner', when young and old join together to celebrate the unity of their families past and present.

For far too long we've suffered the selfishness of the 'me' generation. Now we must work together to establish the pleasure and power of the 'us' generation. Whatever troubles we face, we're more likely to prevail if we face them together rather than in militant disarray. Karl Marx rallied the masses with his cry 'United we stand, divided we fall,' words which had been used before by George Washington, at the time when the American constitution was being created. This morning the world's newspapers carried front page accounts of Sarah Palin's astute high jacking of the American Tea Party movement to launch an attack on President Obama. The rhetoric she used spoke directly to the hearts and minds of the American public, calling on them to rally together for the national good. Politicians were not to be trusted. What was needed was a grass roots revival: a bottom-up approach to the restoration of community life and moral standards. We look for leaders like George Washington and Abe Lincoln to give us inspiration. Instead we're faced with politicians who are exemplars of deviousness, fraud and sleaze. As a result the 'trickle down' effect has a corrupting influence. If we follow the behaviour of our political leaders we become purveyors of dishonesty, duplicity and deceit. What we desperately need today is a grass-roots moral revival: an up-rising rather than a defiling, downward trickle.

Every morning my wife and I have tea in bed. During this time we share an inspirational reading, which might be from Confucius or Norman Vincent Peale. At present we're revisiting the messages that Sai Baba, the Hindu guru, delivered to the young Western sannyasins who trekked to his ashram in India during the flower power years. Today's passage included these words, which I pass on since they're highly appropriate for World Community Day: 'There is an urgent need to revitalise the world, to cleanse it of evil, and to sow the seeds of love, compassion and understanding....How can a man teach others the importance of human values unless he himself appears as a beacon of light?' That simple statement should be required reading for every aspiring Western politician.