HBG

I agree with most of that, but it's a Catch 22 situation. Police, Fire Brigade and Soldiers numbers are stipulated by politicians, and if the older ones are retained for simple desk jobs or going round schools, and not replaced by younger blood, there will be nobody left for the front line duties.

I remember going down that long escalator at Tottenham Court Road tube station during the rush hour and saw a policeman going up the adjoining one. People were leaving a long gap behind the officer and I could see why; he was carrying several plastic bags dripping blood, from a jumper.

When he got nearly to the top, he dropped one of the bags and a bloody human head started bouncing down the escalator. The officer chased after it, against the flow, and finally caught up with it. Luckily it was a young woman's head and she had long hair. He continued his journey up the escalator with a tight grip on the woman's head by the hair.

People were fainting all over the place and the escalator was stopped, causing total chaos.

Beaverstate

True. Also over 50's could use their experience for detective work. Maybe solve a few crimes instead of just taking a report.

agoreira

Exactly, and after 30 years service most aren't on the front line anyway they're desk bound or doing other jobs. As has been said many FF visit schools etc, around here we've had two come around our house checking for smoke alarms. We had smoke alarms but they decided to fit free new one's for us and issued us with free extension leads. Very nice of them but it hardly needs two front line FF's the do that job. Outside of the major cities lots of the fire crews contain retained FF's, part timers anyway. Seems over 2,000 London FF's have a second job. Perhaps one or two of you are London firefighters!

Lynn R

They'll be in good company with MPs and non-executive Directors, then, the vast majority of them have quite a portfolio of well paid strings to their bow, none of them involving any risk to their person.

No doubt the Chief Executive of Astra Zeneca, David Brennan, who has agreed to retire on 1 June (it was, ahem, suggested to him by the Chairman after the company experienced a 38% fall in profits) will already have a bunch of one or two day a week non-exec numbers lined up. Poor lamb, he will need to supplement his £978,000 per annum pension - and if paid in full his retirement package could be worth £40 million pounds. Now THAT's what I call a gold plated pension.

HBG

It's right that we should be indignant over obscene bankers bonuses, perhaps even over public service pensions, but they are comparatively little things on the wider canvas.

The most indebted countries in the world at the moment are the US, the UK and France. Why? Why are countries like Germany, Brazil and Russia much better off, with much lower debt?

It's quite easy to work out, but economists shy away from the answers because there is no financial date available, the cost of wars will always remain secret, for obvious reasons.

We've conducted wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lybia, dropping bombs that cost up to a million pounds a throw, and we've dropped tens of thousands of them. Leaving aside the human cost, the financial costs have to be staggering, yet there is no data available.

So we blame everyone and everything else, from Gordon Brown to some benefit cheat costing the state a few grand. It's human nature.

Beaverstate

Sad and true. The cost of everything is coming home. Wars, welfare, Public retirement, private retirement (SSN in US) and etc... Without an unreasonable growth rate it will all be unsustainable. I can't decide if it was better to be born in the late 50's, and having 50 pretty good years. Or when my son was born in 1987. Get it over and start again. I do not believe there is any hope of the congress addressing this in a meaningful way

Fredbargate

So long as those bombs are manufactured in the UK and UK citizens are paid to produce them then it helps the money go round.
However if we buy them from abroad that is bad for the economy.

It always amazes me how many government departments buy foreign equipment.

I remember seeing Union leaders turn up at UK strike meetings in Volvo cars

teuchterpete

Spot on Fred
There are no significant British car and motor bike makers, because the Brits bought Japanese cars and bikes. Indeed British is regarded as being sub standard.
Pete

Domino

a friend of mine, ex RN, was retired from the Fire Service twice on medical grounds.

In his case he lived and breathed for his job, he had exceedingly strong support from his wife, and he went on to design a lifesaving product now in use in hospitals.

But not everyone is out of that mould. Many are there for what they get out of it and will be first off at the end of a shift to do another job

JLFS

You sure have seen some things in your time, I wonder how many others have seen a severed head bouncing down an escalator........

Did they ever get to the bottom of the headless woman case, despite the dozy plod destroying a lot of the forensic evidence?

Bigger Jim

There speaks someone who has no idea at all of battlefield accounting, it becomes a nightmare the moment the first round is fired. The number of rounds issued to the unit is all neatly recorded but the moment the first round is fired in anger and the enemy is engaged you can forget about accurate accounting.

If you read some of the papers this week you will be aware that HMG is giving away One Billion pounds worth of equipment to various countries in the ME. Will we completely refurbish it? we might, we might not, who knows?

In the Korean war it was common to ditch faulty equipment and replace it with new. Sometimes this was recovered mostly it wasn't.

During the withdrawal from Aden brand new equipment that had just arrived and never been used was ditched straight into the Red Sea.

Could we interest you in the post of Stores Accountant on detachment to the ME. The shooting bit that is!!

Jim

johnnyone

Didn't the uk produce 950000 cars last year. And to say British is sub standard is nonsense. As a mini owner (I have had 4) IMO this is a great car and certainly not substandard.

HBG

I'm sorry, I don't understand your post. I was pointing out that we're skint because of the expensive wars we've had to fight in recent times, while those countries who didn't fight in those wars, like Germany and Russia (although the Germans are in Afghanistan), are better off.

It's pure common sense, wars cost money; centuries ago our Kings had ships filled with gold shipped across the channel whenever we went to war and we repaid the war loans afterwards. Nothing much has changed since then.

15 years ago the UK had no debts and made a surplus, now we are 150 Billion in debt.

And no, I wouldn't want a job on the frontline counting the bullets, especially the one that makes me walk with a limp.

VFR

Yes I have heard that those BMW mini cars are quite good, but the BL mini was a very different animal.

mikelincs

And how many are truly British, that is British owned.. very very few, we produce poads of carsw, but they are Japanese, German, french and US owned companies. Even the mini is now German owned (BMW)