Paddy Ashdown, a thoroughly descent chap

Subject: Paddy Ashdown, a thoroughly descent chap.

It's funny when death takes away someone who you felt, although you had never met him, a thoroughly good chap.
Paddy Ashdown's death this morning was both a shock and a reminder that the image of "a jolly good chap" is fast disappearing from our public life. To hear Paddy speak and hear the common sense, unadorned with political side seemed oh so refreshing. He was a man who had lived a real life, one which allowed him to see the wood for the trees. His refreshing single minded non sectarian stance on many subjects made one tune in to consider what he had to say. He also had magnificent gravitas and represented a very British way of expressing his liberalism and his concern for his fellow man.
And so we wake up this morning to hear this totem has fallen at only 77 and one is left to reflect on the hole people such as Paddy Ashdown leave when they depart this life.