Peter Rhodes on eyewitness accounts, pure heroism and the missing lines from the Government's Referendum leaflet

IMMEDIATELY after the Leicester City helicopter crash in October, witnesses described how the pilot fought at the controls to steer the stricken craft away from people on the ground. Tales of doomed pilots desperately trying to avoid schools or housing estates have been with us ever since man first flew. And these accounts persist even after the evidence, as in the Leicester case, proves there was a sudden catastrophic malfunction and the pilot could do nothing.

EYEWITNESSES don't deliberately lie but I suspect sometimes people see what they want to see, or expect to see. It is deeply ingrained in our popular culture that pilots, whether shooting down Zeppelins or bringing us safely through holiday-flight turbulence, are heroes. Even after the official report, I doubt that the Leicester witnesses will be shaken from their belief in what they thought they saw. And I guarantee that witnesses of the next plane crash in an urban area will also report how the pilot fought to save those on the ground.

I AM reminded of the single bravest incident I ever reported. About 40 years ago a light aircraft crashed near Coventry. Two builders working nearby rushed to the scene. They found the pilot clearly dead and the plane drenched in petrol. No-one would have blamed them if they had run for their lives. Instead, they opened the cockpit, unbuckled the lifeless pilot and carried his body out of the danger zone. Later they explained they couldn't bear the thought of the pilot's parents having to identify a burned body. When the moment comes, ordinary people often do the most heroic things to save a life. But in this case, two men risked their lives to save a stranger's body from the flames, for the sake of his family. It was an act not only of courage but of great decency and empathy. It moved me then. It moves me now.

I HAVE been re-reading the leaflet the Government sent to every household before the 2016 EU referendum. The third page from the end includes the famous pledge: "This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide." Couldn't be clearer, could it? However, I notice that there's an awful lot of white space on that page which makes me wonder if, somewhere in the printing process, the computer lost a slab of copy (it happens, believe me). Maybe the missing bit, which went just after the sentence promising to implement what we decide, says: "unless, of course, you thickos vote the wrong way, in which case we will hold more referendums until you get it right." Suddenly, everything makes sense.

IN the meantime, will somebody please tell Jeremy Corbyn that "all options will be on the table" is not a policy?