Government to blackmail fire service

The government has decided to blackmail the fire service into meeting diversity targets to get them to recruit more female and ethnic minority firefighters.

Those local fire services that do not reach the quota will forfeit £2 million in extra funding. The question is do local fire services need this extra funding? If they do surely the local fire brigade should get it anyway and if they don’t why not just give us it back?

The fire brigade shouldn’t be bothered with diversity targets. They should be bothered about how well the fire brigade performs. They should be bothered about getting the very best fire fighters for the job.

Fire! (2?)

Firefighters in Lancashire are being handed Polish phrase-cards with sentences including 'What is on fire?' and 'Are you hurt?' to help cope with an influx of eastern Europeans.

Free Polish classes are also on offer to firefighters, to help make them understood by the 50,000 Polish immigrants who have settled in Lancashire neighbourhoods.

Incase you don’t know I blogged about this in March 2006, however it was Grampian firefighters that used the language cards and those were printed in 13 different languages.

Immigrants should be able to speak English if they come to work here. If they can’t they shouldn’t be given a job.