Barack Obama said this recently in South Africa - he was aiming this at African Governments, but surely it applies to all governments. The common good, it would seem, is alive and kicking and running the USA. It's a shame that he is powerless to do anything. Here is a link to the report on this by the White House.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23097143

So what can governments do to help us all to make ourselves happier?

• Encourage small local scale businesses to reduce commuting - help people to live and work in the same 'village'
• Set up local facilities for social and political societies - village halls
• Subsidise restaurants

 David Cameron famously said "We are all in it togather" causing howls of derisive laughter from around the country. What do a bunch of Eton and Bullingdon Club public school boys know about being in it at all? Surely they are so insulated from real life by their enourmous inherited wealth and positions of privelege and influence that they can never feel the pinch of recession. Surely, the public thinks, they can sit in their ivory towers glugging Krug and scoffing caviar encrusted ryvitas without any concern for the welfare of the rest of us.

I keep hearing politicians and commentators say that a new supermarket opening is a good thing because it creates jobs and generates wealth. If only more supermarkets were opening we would all be saved! The unfortunate fact is that this just isn't true.

Well, that's that done for another 4 years. Or 2 years to the winter olympics - or 2 weeks to the paralympics. But anyway, it's all over - are we any happier?

It's a festival of sport, so maybe we all got some exercise and fresh air - but no, hang on, most of the country has been inside watching TV, which I learned recently consumes fewer calories than sleeping. So maybe it wasn't a fetival of sport at all, but a festival of TV. And beer of course, don't forget the reason this all happens - the sponsors.

Read the BBC take on it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18966729

"People who are married, have jobs and own their own homes are the most likely to be satisfied with their lives"

Whilst Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian is a little more circumspect:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/24/happiness-index-pol…

 Just watching Newsnight and the concept of the common good has come up in relation to tax evasion. That guy who lost his job at Saint Pauls over the occupy movement suggested that we might have to pass laws to encourage the common good. Crazy, I thought, how can you do that? Maybe this could be some kind of science fiction scenario, a world where it was illegal to act against the common good.

 The banking crisis was caused by people using the money trick - see the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressel - to funnel cash from the poor to the rich. They pushed all the money into dividends and bonuses before busting the banks and demanding government bail-outs.

They mistakenly believe that huge wealth can somehow make them special cases and immune from unhappiness. Money can do so much for them, surely it can do thisd too. Sadly for all of us, they find that they are wrong too late to fix the damage they have caused.

We live in a very strange world where some people are obese while others are struggling to find food and neither state is a particularly happy one. 

In the same way, some people are incredibly wealthy while some are incredibly poor. Again, neither situation is conducive to happiness. The rich are riddled with problems, drug addiction, alcoholism and plastic surgery aren't symptoms of a happy or meaningful life. But then neither are alcoholism, repeat offending or benefit fraud. Notice we get alcoholism in both states.

 It's heart warming to see so many people getting out and about and doing something to change the world. Unfortunately, I can't help feeling that they are campaigning for the wrong thing!