Hero

A picture, repeated from social media, of a real live hero. Bernard Kenny, reported last week as the 77-year-old pensioner who was stabbed in the stomach as he tried to help Yorkshire MP Jo Cox as she was being murdered.

He is reported to be out of hospital now, and we wish him well, and a good recovery. One or two more people with that selfless devotion to helping where it is needed would be no harm.

In another news item that caught my eye from over the water was the man who, in a bus in the UK, upbraided a woman in a niqab for speaking to her child in a language he didn't recognise. Apparently he told her people in the UK should only speak English!! He was told by a fellow passenger that, actually they were in Wales, and the woman was speaking Welsh.

Comeuppance is nice to hear, but wouldn't it be a lot nicer if we were all a little more tolerant - and I say we not to criticise you reading this, but I'm sure I am no saint when it comes to patience and tolerance when confronted with someone or something strange ... I fear the Brexit vote will not go well. I know the Brussels bureaucracy has its downside (massively so) but the vote is about a spirit of togetherness as against apartness, and I think a principled stand would be nice.

Anyway, when principles counted, I like Bernard Kenny and his spirit. I don't think he stopped to ask Jo Cox how she felt about foreigners, blacks, Eastern Europeans, Muslims, Christians, Jews, or any other stereotypical group that are there to be pointed out as different: he saw a fellow human in need and stepped in. Good on you, Bernard.