So exactly how much unpaid work do you do in a month? Going to the gym, cooking, taxiing the children, loading the dishwasher - none of that counts. This must be time given freely to other people or organisations - benefiting them, not you.

Yes, thought so. You're too busy in the day job. You barely have the energy outside work to do anything for yourself, let alone your family. You even get resentful having to visit your mother.

You are but an empty husk, your resources spent on yourself, your immediate family and your bank account. How on earth can you be expected to do stuff for people you don't know and don't care about? Especially now, in a recession?

How indeed? The Archbishop of Canterbury believes that we need to start looking for ways to rediscover volunteering; that to mend society we must relearn the unfashionable ethos of unpaid work, of giving something for nothing.

Dr Rowan Williams, not for the first time, is on to something. His main problem, however, is that society has grown a million times busier, lonelier and more self-centred. Giving is now a professional business, the preserve of the billionaire, not the amateur.

What we must do, I suggest, is introduce a new concept of universal compulsory volunteering. (As practised in the Army: “Right lads, we need three volunteers - you, you and you.”) Everyone aged 12 to 85 would have to devote a minimum of 12 days a year to the service of others - causes of any kind, as long as they are worthwhile. It might be giving financial advice to a charity, walking dogs, mentoring young offenders, gardening for the elderly. People could choose; but they must make a commitment.

Everyone, from those on invalidity benefit to, er, the Archbishop, would have to participate. There could be none of this carbon- offset nonsense for the rich, no exemptions, no excuses. This would be National Service meets jury service, with harsh punishment - months of community service, or raised taxes - for those who try to avoid it. AmeriCorps on testosterone.

Vital to its success would be forcing employers to facilitate it. We would require legislation to ring-fence those 12 days off - maybe on half-pay - to work for others. Radical, but simple.

Compulsory volunteering is win-win and a recession is a perfect time for it. Lots of new jobs administering it; much-needed cohesion for society; and the chance - the first for many - to experience the heady glow of a reward that is not money. Besides, as the Archbishop knows, it might get more of us into Heaven.

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