Cold hands, warm hearts — but can kindness of strangers go the distance?

IT WOULD have to come from Scandinavia, wouldn’t it? These days, the minute any discussion gets going about some social progress our nation or any other nation wants to achieve, up pops an expert to tell us the Scandinavians have already done it.

The Finns, Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes get lumped together for generalised approval in exactly the same way as Japan, a couple of decades ago, used to be approved of as the example to be followed by Western industry.

The Japanese had the whole thing sussed. They had a handle on just-in-time delivery. When they went face down in the economic mud and even their cars started to be subject to mass recalls, those reflexively approving comments died away, although no country has quite replaced it on the industrial development front as the example in front of which we should all bow down.