I just saw on BBC that the firefighters in Manchester broke their strike to save the lives of some people from the firework factory. After saving lives they went back on strike and left the army to put out the flames. If this is true then my support for them has doubled. Well done! Can anyone confirm this? Principal is principal but human life is life. Come on Tony, stop buying bombs and start paying wages.

I know secretaries that earn over £8:50 an hour, I know a host of people doing white collar jobs - not neccessarily professional or even responsible - that earn in excess of the firefighter's demanded figure.

And here we sit, with warnings of terrorist attack from the Home Office, CIA and INterpol - attacks the fire crews will have to deal with.

For under £8:50 per hour, To climb into blazing buildings, to mop corpses up from inside broken cars, to risk their lives and see and handle sights that none of the hyper-critical white collar massive ever have to cope with.

It's not right. Give the crews the money and the respect they deserve. Why should the white collar worker go home with thousands, while firefighters need a second job solely to buy a house? What right has the white collar London commuter to criticise these brave men and women when they look at what theyd id today, for their (more than) £8:50 per hour.

£8:50 is fair - in fact, the firemen are being generous. Give them a tenner, Blair. I'll pay extra council tax - after all, the firefighters are about the only thing I get for my council tax, now labopur, liberal and tory councils are shutting libraries and farming out education to PFI.

This system sucks.

I keep thinking how several years ago firefighters were marching with free-party people, critical mass'ers and so on, with official FBU placards, against the Bill which became the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. we've known for ages they're the good guys, and seeing them leave picket lines to help save lives FOR FREE just re-confirms that.
Other firefighters around the world also have an excellent track record of telling the cops where to go when the cops want to use fire appliances for water cannon/crowd control.

FACT OR FICTION? YOU DECIDE

I heard the following from some old man last week: that the so-called Green Goddesses are a remnant part of the post-war Army Requsition Surplus Expenditure program .
Is it true ? Are the troops actually driving around on an ARSE ?

Bizarre really that the people who actually do the important jobs; saving peoples' lives, looking after the sick, teaching our kids, etc... are among the lowest paid.

What a fucked up system we've created.