I had an interesting job yesterday, but for various legal reasons I’ll have to wait a bit before posting about it.  You’ll see why when I do post about it.

One of the things that the newspapers seem to like to do is to stir up trouble between different racial groups, one need look no further than the amount of press given to the Forest Gate demonstration last week – less than 100 people turned up, and yet it was ‘important’ news.

Actually living and working in Newham gives you a much better picture of how people get along, and it has nothing to do with mainstream media’s attempts to split us apart on behalf of various vested interest groups.

I was sent to a ‘little old lady’ who had fallen over earlier in the day, she had been found by her next door neighbour who looked after her.

My little old lady was White British, while the family who looked in after her were Bangladeshi Muslim.

For a number of years they had helped her and her husband, checking in with them to make sure that everything was alright, the son of the neighbours would help out around the house,

When my patients husband had died, the family only stepped up the amount of help they gave her.

So it was the neighbours son who had found her and called us.  It took us some time to deal with the patient – she had an obviously broken hip and we needed to give her a large amount of painkillers before we could move her.  During this time the Bangladeshi mother and son stood watching, making sure that she was alright.  The mother spoke no English, but even I could recognise her prayers.

As we loaded the patient into the ambulance both the mother and father were praying, and it brought a smile to my face when their son shouted at then, “Will you both stop that, we aren’t in the village anymore”.

When the patient’s real son turned up he appeared more concerned about the inconvenience that his mothers fall was causing him.  The neighbour’s son was more concerned with her health.

This is what I see – I see communities working together and looking after each other, not because of government sponsored ‘multi-racial community days’ but because, quite simply, we all live together.  The only thing is that you don’t hear about these small acts of humanity when so-called ‘community leaders’ are shouting about perceived unfairness.