Nigel Stroud, a firefighter on Hereford's Green Watch, reflects on how the ongoing row is affecting morale among his colleagues.

There is a bit of a mood of despondency at the moment - I am not saying that people are losing heart in the whole cause but we are just getting so fed up with the attitude of Tony Blair and his tabloid press, as it were.

We have been a little bit surprised at the fact that there has not been much in the news at all for a month - it all went very, very quiet and it plays on the nerves a bit.

We are not getting a chance to fight back - to come out with our own answers to his allegations - explaining what we do or what we don't do.

We do feel that the general tabloid press have really got it in for us

I know for a fact that a few people are very frustrated, in fact they have actually sent in articles to various papers and they just have not been printed.

We do feel that the general tabloid press have really got it in for us to be honest, because of the way things are reported.

So there is a bit of frustration, a bit of anger over the way we have been treated I think.

However, there has been a change in tactics as quite a large number of firefighters felt that the eight-day strikes were only really hurting ourselves - the last lot cost me over �500 in lost earnings.

There is more of a long-term strategy now - we will plan shorter periods of industrial action which are more sustainable.

I do not have any high hopes of an early settlement, I really don't. I do not think we are going to come off very well at all, to be honest.

Strategy change

All the people I speak to still support us. There have been quite a few people who are surprised that it has not been resolved yet. As it had all gone quiet, they thought it was all over.

But as talks continue the main questions that are coming up concern what kind of strategy should be going on and how we feel about it.

I think the FBU are going to get some help with PR, which they could do with - it is just a very gloomy time.

Nigel Stroud - centre, standing

On our station we have already been told we are losing one of our particular appliances, so each watch is going to lose two people.

We do recognise that the dispute is going to be overshadowed by the Iraq conflict.

The press are sort of demonising us, in the sense that our brave soldiers are going over to fight a war and we are picking this time to go on strike - it is not our fault.

We started negotiations over a year ago and some of the tabloids are using that angle to attack us.