NEWS that veteran poppy seller Ron Jones was continuing to help the Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal was one of our most talked-about stories in the last week.

Mr Jones, 101, was a prisoner of war at the Auschwitz concentration camp in the Second World War.

This week, he was present at the official unveiling of the Gwent County Royal British Legion's Poppy Appeal at Tesco in Spytty.

A crowd of people turned up to meet Mr Jones and buy a poppy from him.

Many of our online readers commented on the story to express their admiration and gratitude to Mr Jones.

Here's what readers said on our website:

Well done Ron – An inspiration to everyone.

riverebbw

Wonderful! Much respect to you sir.

Kim Eccles

I had conversation with this hero a few years ago. It was inspirational and enthralling the things he spoke about. He mentioned his mates he had lost and hardly spoke about himself .

ortz44

Ron is an inspiration to all of us. I know him well. He is a man of great integrity and we could all learn from his cheerful and positive attitude to life.

Melvyn The Milk

Well done sir. To put it into context, Ron was a prisoner of the Nazis. He survived Auschwitz concentration camp. If anyone should be given respect in bucketloads, it's this man.

Monslad

ALSO drawing a lot of reader attention this week was news 500 homes in Monmouthshire were likely to be approved by the county council, despite strong opposition from residents.

Here's a selection of our online readers' reactions:

Where will these new House Occupants work? None of these Towns have industry, and like the rest of the UK have Town Centres of empty shops. Newport is the nearest city, and the M4 at that point is the busiest piece of Bottleneck Motorway in the Country, with road improvements being constantly put off. Why add another possible 1000 cars .

Piggysmum29

I'm so fed up of every spare piece of land suddenly having a housing estate springing up on it. The Planners clearly have no regard for the additional strain this puts on surrounding roads, doctors surgeries, schools etc. They use the 'affordable housing' excuse but in reality how many of these new houses are actually affordable for average person?!

Jo_Williams

READERS also reacted to news that Gwent Police would withdraw front-counter services from more than half of stations currently offering the services.

Here's what they had to say:

This is just a cost cutting exercise because they have not got the manpower to run these desks and no consultation with the public about this undermines confidence in the police. Get your housein order.

Mab y mynydd

Good luck turning up to a police station to speak to a bobby.

Big Hank C

The reason they are closing the front desks is because there so very little crime to report. Apparently the only thing that's investigated are assaults, murder, arson etc. Everything else is categorised as of low importance. Law abiding citizens are meant to put up with the non-crimes that used to be all the rage to report.

Redoxblood