Pride of Britain Awards

Ordinary heroes doing extraordinary things giving hope to us all

It takes a hard heart to be unmoved by Pride of Britain Awards. And this year was no exception

 

 

 

I bet you all cried, didn’t you?
It takes a hard heart to be unmoved by the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain Awards. And this year was no exception.
It is that extraordinary mix of triumph over adversity and true selflessness which strikes such a deep chord in us all.
For the rest of the year we become used to stories of success built on greed, fame founded on selfishness and crimes fuelled by hate.
And so sometimes we can end up thinking that’s the norm and that we are living in a world where everyone is out for themselves and the values that made this nation great – fairness, politeness, a belief in justice – have gone the way of Woolworths and red telephone boxes.
But by slipping into that mindset we let the bad and the greedy and the feckless win. Because by doing that we forget that the vast bulk of the people of Britain are defined by their selflessness, by generosity and by love.
They are the often forgotten majority.
People like Pride of Britain winners Flo and Jim Essex, who have raised more than £160,000 for good causes by taking up any bonkers challenge they can find.
People like the RNLI and coastguard crews from Hartlepool, who risked their lives to save a young man who was drowning in quicksand.
People like Doreen Lawrence, who fought tirelessly for 19 years for justice for her son Stephen.
And what’s extraordinary about these people is, in many ways, their ordinariness.
They are people as normal as you and me who have found themselves through choice or necessity doing something just extraordinary.
On stage Doreen Lawrence said she would exchange all the plaudits and achievements just to have her son back.
What a totally ordinary emotion from a truly extraordinary woman.
And so, while Pride of Britain rewards the winners’ bravery, courage and ­brilliance, it is also rewarding the human spirit – for actually we might all be capable of doing something amazing one day.
Bradley Wiggins – a man who exudes coolness through his every pore – said at Pride of Britain that 2012 was a great year to be British.
Certainly we’ve had a string of extraordinary successes – the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the ­Olympics and victories in the Tour de France and a tennis grand slam.
But more importantly, away from the headlines, we have had millions of ordinary Brits doing their ­ordinary – yet extraordinary – things that keep our country ticking along.
Some of these have again rightly become winners at Pride of Britain. They were there on Monday night because they are brave and because they care. But they are also there as a reminder to the rest of us that we don’t need to be an Olympian or a royal or a celebrity to be great.
We can all, by following the example of these Pride of Britain winners, be great if we want to be, in our own very ordinary ways.

 

 

Care thugs really hit home

THE mugshots of the monsters who attacked vulnerable patients at Winterbourne View care home look as menacing as any I’ve seen in a while.
I get all that “you can’t judge a book by its cover” business and often that is true – but who thought this gang of thuggish-looking characters were ­suitable carers for people with learning difficulties?
Probably no one.
But what these thuggish types might have lacked in compassion and empathy they likely made up for by being cheap.
Carers in homes for the disabled and elderly are all too often underpaid and poorly treated while the owners cream off massive profits.
That’s why owners of these places can’t be picky about who they recruit.
And so they end up with employees disaffected and with no passion for caring.
Nothing can justify what these vile individuals did to poor, terrified patients in that home. But until the owners of care homes are required to give their staff the pay, ­conditions and respect that people in those jobs should have, I fear there are more of these cases waiting just around the corner.

Web squabbles make Twits of cops

POLICE are now apparently spending hours of valuable time and hundreds of ­thousands of pounds of dwindling resources investigating “petty squabbles” on Facebook and Twitter. Why?
Why is my taxpayer’s money being spent on this nonsense? At least three arrests are made every day but most enquiries result in people just being told to “grow up”.
Rooting out truly vile Twitter trolls should be done, but at the expense of investigating real life face-to-face crime? I don’t think so.
As the Government’s cuts hit frontline policing over the next few months, it is time to make some serious decisions about what we want the police to do.
And messing about over idiots whose weapon of choice is a keypad is not it.
If the zillion dollar companies like Facebook and Twitter can’t be trusted to police themselves properly then it is time they were forced to contribute towards the real police keeping their sites safe – just as football clubs have to do.

Ill Bernie's just so strong

BERNIE Nolan doesn’t think of herself as brave for telling cancer to “get stuffed”.
It isn’t like this is a battle she has chosen – it is one she has been dumped with. So maybe brave isn’t the right word – but strong certainly is.
She’s been told her cancer is back and has spread to her brain, bones, liver and lungs and that it is now incurable.
But still, she has vowed to never give up fighting.
Bernie is fighting for herself, but also for her 13-year-old daughter Erin.
Because as a mother she knows that as in all things, how she tackles this illness will be a life lesson for her daughter.
This week Dawn French told me how watching her mother battle serious illness had been an example and an education to her.
And this is the example of strength Bernie is showing her daughter.
She’s an inspiration.