|  | Add your comment The Fire Brigades' Union is calling for a 40% pay rise and have rejected the 4% they have been offered. As the army and their Green Goddesses are mobilised, fears are growing in Beds, Herts and Bucks that emergency cover may not be sufficient. Should this action be allowed? Do they deserve 40 per cent? What's the answer? Have your say here. Read more about this story
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| Tony Flynn, Radlett | Wednesday 08
January, 2003 | | | We have got to support the Firefighters not only are they fighting for a pay rise they are fighting to keep the Fire service that we need and not a service that would but cut to us as the public if the goverment had there way. These people put there lives on the line for us we want them to maintain that service. support the Firefighters in there pay claim so they can maintaine a full Fire service to us you do not know when you will need the Firefighters but when you do you want a full service not one that has been cut and could put lives at risk. |
| Nigel, Luton | Wednesday 8
January, 2003 | | | Thanks for the info, John. I presume this is the Fire Cover Review, which explains why I couldn't find it. I'll download, peruse and get back. It may take some time.... |
| Caroline- 14 yrs , Lincoln | Wednesday 8
January, 2003 | | | Yes, I do think that firemen should be given a pay rise, but I dont think a strike is the way to do it. I do admire people in that line of work and I am not critising them in any bad way, for it takes huge amount a bravery to do what they do. Although while the strike is on there will be people out there who will be in fire accidents which could cause them serious injury or even death, just because the firemen want a pay rise. Besides, wouldnt the fact that you wouldv'e saved peoples life be more precious then the amount of money you recieve? |
| Che, Stevenage | Monday 6 January, 2003 | | | Nigel, you've been advocating moving appliances from the city to outlying areas of london because as your stats put it there are 500 000 people during the day and 5 000 at night. This maybe correct, i dont know how many fire engines there are in the Square mile but lets say for arguments sake there were 10. If you were to move threequarters of these - you still have three to cover fire and accidents that may occur - does 7 fire appliance movements make all that difference out of hundreds of fire appliances in london? You could not do the same anywhere else in london as there are high density residential areas everywhere else and what about places such as the west end? Particularly when new licensing laws come into effect. This is not what the bain report is all about because nowhere else in the uk is like london and the square mile! The basic fact is if you were trapped by fire you wouldnt care how much fire safety i did, you wouldnt care if my appliance went out twice the day before, you wouldnt care how many fire certification inspections we did that day, what you would care about is that we get there NOW and that when we do get there we are capable of getting you out NOW. As you know we do far more than you like to portray and you never know it may be you who requires help one day - im not so nieve as to say that it will never happen to me because it could and does happen to firefighters and there families. There are simply two seperate subjects the first is decent pay - you believe we get, i do not. we could both argue our cases and move no further forward. The second is the bain report and its proposals - quite simply they are an agenda for cuts and at the end of the day it is you (and me) as members of Joe Public who will suffer - but you will only find this out when you dial 999. Of course financially we all will be paying more for goods and services (Fees for afas will be passed on),more for car insurance (fees for rtas will be passed to you through premiums) and more for home and business insurance (because the longer a fire burns then the harder it is to put out, and the more damage it causes). Lets face it law abiding people will pay more through these than if the government had settled the 40% in full and we would still have a fire service that is the best in the world. |
| Peter, Hemel Hempstead | Friday 3 January 2003 | | | Nigel You are asked for facts. London get an average of 830 various calls throughout a 24 hr period divided by the 108 fire stations some of which are very quiet as you put it 2 calls whereas the remainder are constantly in and out to calls.However the one appliance you saw may be from a one appliance station and been going onto an adjoining firestation ground to make the attendance. Good idea call out bonus at busy stations But having every firefighter at one station does seem a bit daft as every firefighter would want some of the bonus as would you in your profession. As for moving the Fire Appliances out to the suburbs with the crews who is going to pay for the additional fuel costs?? Who will pay for the refurbishment of the outlying stations to account for the additional personnel attending ie: Toilet Shower and Kitchen facilities?? What time do you advocate the appliances leaving the inner stations to go to the suburbs and what time would they return?? or will this all be payed for by the cuts allowing no pay rise as there was no money left in the kitty. |
| John Smythe, UK | Friday 3 January 2003 | | | Try this address for the Pathfinder Review,some sites do without the 3 little letters at the start. safety.odpm.gov.uk/fire/fepd/fcr/fcrhome.htm |
| M Brooker, Bedford | Friday 3 January 2003 | | | I think they should be allowed to strike to get the wages that they deserve because there are plenty of people who are overpaid who dont save lives, like footballers for example who dont deserve £20,000+ a week wages. makes you sick dont it!!! |
| Nigel, Luton | Friday 03 January, 2003 | | | John: I cannot dispute the three main reasons you gave for fires starting, but surely this adds weight to redistributing personnel away from empty office blocks and towards where people are living. Also £8.50 is a lot less than £13.74 minus tax. I hope this doesn't also include your pension contribution which, although forming a significant part of your outgoings, gets reimbursed substantially when you retire. I've made constructive suggestions on this subject before. |
| Nigel, Luton | Friday 03 January, 2003 | | | Peter: I hate statistics as much as the next man but you need something to prove your point. (or at least fool people into thinking that you've done some research!) I've done plenty of work outside Fire Stations in several major cities and have to say that during a typical working day of 8-10 hours, I've rarely seen more than 2 responses. Of these calls, most have been single appliances. I'm not doubting your word, only quoting my experience. If you advocate a call-out bonus to reflect the additional work done by busy Stations, then you can have my support for this. This is, however, substantially different to a blanket massive pay rise. |
| Nigel, Luton | Friday 03 January, 2003 | | | Dear All: I've had a quick look for the Pathfinder Report but all I can find is an extract from Guardian Unlimited dated 21 Dec 02 which describes it as an "unpublished report." Obviously, I cannot comment further on its contents. The Guardian article doesn't help as comments made include increasing the staffing and equipment of the Fire Service by 50% yet that a significant cut in the financing of the Fire Service would not significantly increase the risk to life. Nick Raynsford (Fire Services minister), who made these comments, also indicated that he had not seen the full report. If somebody can point me towards the full text, I would be grateful - indicate by way of keywords to be entered in a search engine as links aren't permitted in this web-page. With regard to the Bain Review, this being the only formal document on the subject that I've been able to get hold ! of, I have not progressed any further with it since before Xmas. Though it may come later, the bit I've read hasn't actually advocated cutting the staffing, merely redistributing it to follow people, based on the requirements assessed by LOCAL Fire Officers. If I find that cutting of the Service is proposed then I promise that I will add this to my list of disagreements with the Review. Nonetheless, this is digressing from the real issue. Even the part of the Bain Review that I've read hasn't given any reasons why firefighters should receive a pay rise in excess of the cost of living, much less the rise that it recommends. |
| Peter, Hemel Hempstead Herts | Thursday 02 January, 2003 | | | TO ALL HAPPY NEW YEAR. Now down to business. We are off again, Statistics, Rhubarb, Rubbish, Blah Blah. Enough of Figures as averyone of them can and are deliberately distorted. Nigel these figures must come from Hicksville, I dont look at averages Try a Major City where stations get average of up to 15 calls per 24hr period times your 1.5hours each gives 22.5 hrs work plus lunch tea supper training and community fire safety, cleaning and servicing makes interesting figures dont it nigel as you see I have just destroyed your figures. Still sticking to bain NO COMMENT ABOUT PATHFINDER REPORT. The Pathfinder report has taken 3 yrs to complete and has been properly Government funded and cost £8m. The report has looked at all aspects Where as the bain review has been thrown together in 3 months with nothing but cuts, WHICH ONE IS CORRECT |
| John Smythe, UK | Thursday 02 January 2003 | | | Get real Nigel, the ?8.50 per hour is the take home figure, you know after Gordon Brown has taken his cut. It does not matter how many calls a Station gets in a shift or a tour of duty or a year, they are there for one thing only, to provide a service or Fire Cover to the public, to be there when they are needed. We do have quiet periods, but that is not a reason to shut down a station or change the way in which it is staffed, it is not like industry, people stop buying a product, the factory closes, people are made redundant, you cannot do this with the Fire Service, fire only takes a short holiday, it will always come back, why, because the 3 main causes of fire are Men, Women & Children, in that order. We do also do a few other things as well which I am sure you know about so I won't list them. |
| Bill Stevenson, Stevenage | Tuesday 31 December, 2002 | | | Statistics have been used in abundence to enforce lot of criticism aimed at the Firefighters for the amount of hours they actually spend fighting fires. This is unfair as it does not take into consideration the other work the Fire Service do. We should all stop using statistics to prove/disprove a point. Using statistics, there is enough food produced worldwide to prove that famine does not exist, but it does. Mathmatical data has proven that a Bumblebee cannot fly, but it does. It's not about the amount of work the Firefighters do, it's about what they are PREPARED to do to save lives and property. It takes a special kind of person to become a Firefighter. They are not greedy, self centered semi-skilled manual workers. They are courageous professionals. When the call comes we will expect these people to put our safety first and their own second. Firefighters will do this without question as has been proven in a number of disasters. Most people kid themselves that they would show just as much courage if put into the same situation, what rubbish. Self preservation is a basic human instinct which few people can ignore. Firefighters, fortunately for the rest of us, can and do. |
| Bill Stevenson, Stevenage | Tuesday 31December, 2002 | | | I was joking Nigel, lighten up. |
| Nigel, Luton | Tuesday 31 December, 2002 | | | John Smythe: FBU figures for call-outs suggest an average of less than two calls per shift with less than 1.5 hours attendance on each. Perhaps your Station is one of the busier ones. As you mention the "most workers," perhaps you would also consider that 53.5% of workers in Hertfordshire and 62.2% in Bedfordshire earn less than ?24k. 34.2% and 40.3% respectively earn less than ?18.2k. (Office for National Statistics, April 2002). These figures include people who have been working for more than 30 years. Your current wage of ?21.5k seems fairly typical of that in your area. As this can be attained after only four years service, the younger firefighters must be more affluent than their peers. Incidentally, the ONS figures don't include the unemployed or part-time workers, so it could be argued that they are artificially high. I still don't understand why you want £13.74 per hour when the firefighters at St Albans had a board outside their Station asking for just £8.50 per hour. |
| Nigel, Luton | Tuesday 31 December, 2002 | | | Bill Stevenson: Greetings were sent on Xmas Eve. 3 Counties posted them on Xmas Day, presumably the same day you sent your reply.... |
| John Smythe, UK | Monday 30 December, 2002 | | | Yes Nigel, £3.91 per hour before stoppages, that is what I said and that is what a 40% increase of the current hourly rate equates to. Why do you keep talking about the number of days we work each year ? it is nothing to do with number of days it is the hours. 48 hours per 8 day tour of duty which equals 42 hours per week over the period of 1 year. (most workers do 37 hours per week) and yes we are allowed to rest at night because the shift is 15 hours long and no we don't get much rest beacause of the number of callouts we get so you cannot plan to do anything the morning after the last night duty because we may not be fit enough to do so. |
| Bill Stevenson, Stevenage | Friday 27 December, 2002 | | | Nigel from Luton. I personally think you are sad, lonely little man. Who else would bother to spend time posting messages on Christmas day!!. |
| Nigel, Luton | Wednesday 25 December, 2002 | | | Che: You've got it. I would like to see an increase in the night-time staffing in the likes of Beds & Herts. I haven't read through the rest of the Bain review since I last mentioned it but it does seem to propose that levels of staffing are decided at local level and this gives the opportunity for transfer of night-time staff from, say, City of London to North London. (I don't know the district boundaries, so please be patient). I suspect that the outer suburbs won't get a look in anyway but at least some people will sleep more comfortably. If the control moves to local level, then at least some common sense can be applied to the numbers, rather than a central authority (looking at the whole country) deciding staffing levels based on a general overview. It also makes sense to charge COMPANIES for abortive call-outs where a faulty automatic alarm is to blame (apparently up to 50% of the call-outs in city areas). Until the companies improve the alarm systems after being hit in the pockets, this would be a source of revenue to the Fire Service. Since this government came into power, it has been delegating its powers to other institutions, finally it seems to have a Review which recommends a sensible delegation to knowledgable and considerate authorities. Of course, when I read more, I may change my mind, but until then.... |
| Nigel, Luton | Wednesday 25
December, 2002 | | | Regardless of which side of the fence you stand, I sincerely wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Safe and Peaceful New Year. |
| Nigel, Luton | Wednesday 25
December, 2002 | | | Barbara: Just to keep the record straight, part of my job involves ensuring that firefighters entering burning office buildings DON'T encounter additional hazards. There are many who consider economies (after all, there may not be a fire) and want to save a few hundred pounds. I don't. I will continue to do my level best to ensure that your husband comes home from work without burns or lung damage, so please restrict your comments to providing reasons why firefighters should get a pay rise or correcting mistakes I may make. |
| Nigel, Luton | Wednesday 25
December, 2002 | | | John Smythe: Are the firefighters asking for an extra £3.91 per hour before stoppages? After 4 years (if qualified} they currently get £9.83. Are you really advocating a basic rate of £13.74? Have you considered that firefighters work only 161 days per year (202 if you add the day following the night shifts)? |
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