I have to make a very shamefaced apology to anyone who comments on this blog.

I WAS a bit mystified as to why no-one was commenting lately. In fact, only yesterday I mentioned it to the DH, saying: "Can you see if something's happened? I haven't had a comment in ages..."

Well, the something was me.

It would appear that - ahem - I set up a filter some months ago, through which comments have been going, and then I left the box merrily unchecked. 

God, what a dufus. The really stupid thing is I kept checking my Local Folders etc, thinking something might have gone astray. But did I scroll down to the bottom? Did I bollocks.

Consequently, not a single comment has appeared on this blog since September, on account of I have to approve them all. 

So I will now do that, and many thanks for them. Then I'll shuffle off and attack one of them new-fangled mechanised loom thingies with a big stick... 

Given the date, I suppose I should post at least something about Valentine's Day.

The problem with Valentine's Day is I think it's utter crap - a con trick by the greetings cards manufacturers to persuade us to part with our hard-earned cash. Why women fall for this fake romance bollox is utterly beyond me and it goes past in this house without notice, which is the way I prefer it. 

But, having had my ten pennorth of bile, for those who prefer to mark the day in some way, here are some ideas:

At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/7093317/National-Trust-Romance.html  is a list of National Trust locations with romantic connotations.

At http://holidays.lovingyou.com/valentine/ you can find recipes with champagne, heart stamps and ideas for holidays. 

At http://holidays.kaboose.com/valentines-day/ you can find Valentine's craft ideas for all the family. 

I was interested to read an article on happiness in today's Guardian, which suggested that indeed money might make you happy.

Hardly a surprise when it's a question from Davos, abounding as it does in people who value money a great deal, but happiness is one of those tricky questions that we all juggle with. Generally, you know if you're happy, but defining quite why can often be difficult. 

You're certainly happy when you recover from illness, or when your headache disappears. You're happy when you see loved ones you've been missing. 

But many of us - especially in the west - have trouble differentiating happiness from comfort, and even more problem differentiating it from pleasure.

Comfort can certainly be helped by money - money buys decent housing, central heating, comfy sofas and lots of gewgaws. 

And pleasure can certainly be helped by money - money enables you to travel, to indulge your hobbies, to buy new clothes - all those things will give you pleasure. But I feel that happiness is something different - it requires meaning.

Meaningless sex, meaningless relationships, meaningless activities, and buying meaningless things may all give pleasure while they're being indulged in. But long-term, they may actually lead to unhappiness just like overdrinking leads to a hangover.

Human beings require purpose in order to obtain satisfaction, and pleasure doesn't necessarily lead to satisfaction - the wonderful meal that you know is putting pounds on you, spending time with the interesting man that you know perfectly well can live without you.

It is only a minor example, but I love pratting about with fabric. Purchasing new fabric or trimmings to sew with gives me pleasure, and the sewing itself also gives me pleasure while I'm doing it. But it's the achievement of creating something that actually gives me happiness. If I sew and cock it up - which I frequently do - the end result is dissatisfaction, not happiness, although the activity itself was the same. 

Money is useful here, because money increases my pleasure - the more money I have, the more money I can spend on sewing materials. But I also know that if I didn't have a cent, I'd still be out there, pressing leaves, making collages, tearing up fabric and weaving it to make something new, finding some way to be creative, because it is the being creative that is absolutely necessary to my psyche. 

For other people, it's other things. Being close to family, perhaps, which gives most people a warm, fuzzy feeling that nothing else can matc. But whatever it is, it pays each person to work out what it is, and focus on that. That is the way to true happiness, such as anyone can attain it in this life. 

The latest government information on how firmly entrenched poverty still is in the UK makes for sobering reading.

Personally, I blame the Tories.

It was under the Thatcher Government of the 1980s that the rich really broke away from the poor in Britain, singing 'so long, suckers'. After 40 years of a progressively narrowing gap between the very rich and the very poor - mostly due to measures brought in by post-War Labour governments - the gloves were finally off in the battle between the haves and the have-nots. 

Unsurprisingly, it was the haves that won. 

I came from a family of have-nots - my father a miner, my mother a skivvy. But thanks to parental encouragement, free public libraries, an excellent BBC and the university grants system, I managed to drag myself into a white-collar job - the first member of my family to ever do so.

Today's disadvantaged are not so lucky. What hope now for the children of the long-term unemployed, the young single parent or the immigrant who doesn't speak English well? At least, growing up in the 60s, there was full employment and cheap council housing available (something else the Tories put a stop to, preferring us all to rent from rich bastards who won't give tenants the kind of rights that are considered totally basic here in mainland Europe).

It makes you weep, really, and I only suppose that things will get even worse once the Tories get back in, as it looks like they will. New Labour squandered opportunities that Old Labour might have made the most of, but it is a case that in a democracy, the idiot populace gets the kind of terrible government it deserves.