In the late 1920's, a notorious gangland killing in Chicago, USA, was termed the St Valentines Day Massacre. On the 14th February, several prominent members of an organized crime syndicate were gunned down in cold blood by rival gang members posing as police officers.

The ethics and morals echo my thoughts on Valentines Day today. 

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Valentine's Day:Will you pour cold water on romance?

Don't get me wrong. I am a romantic. I believe in love, in spontaneous shows of affection, in both physical and emotional expressions of extreme emotion. But what I don't subscribe to is the commercialism of romance.

For me, the gangsters of yesteryear represent the idealism of substance and the bullets that tore into them are symbolic of the capitalism that today taints the most fundamental of human traits.

Valentine's day is a con.

A florist prepares bouquets made of papers for Valentine's Day at a flower shop in Macao, south China, Feb. 12, 2011. [Xinhua]

A retailers' dream, a quick way to boost sales based on a shallow conception of love, which, in my opinion, does not even begin to equate to the highest plateau of human emotion.

It is easy to forgive the young who are seduced by the glitter of heart shaped gifts or fluffy trinkets for they are quite rightly blind to the reality of the world but it staggers belief that the so-called "left over men and women" would succumb to such false gods.

For the record, men aged 30 or above and women aged 27 or above who are without partners fall into this category of "left overs" (figures from All-China's Woman's Federation).

Anyone of a half-rational mind would recognize the absurdity of this term but the fact remains, that with the current prevalent high divorce rate in particular, millions of people find themselves bracketed in this group. A healthy, relatively young group of unmarried people condemned to being "left overs" because of obsolete expectations of a life of conformity.