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its nearly london, but I spent some considerable time at the Warner brothers studios in Leavesden.....apparently, it was the set of Hugh Laurie's new HBO sitcom 'avenue 5'...All I know is, that I have a fucking great big spaceship on my resume.
In my (almost) 30years as a wholetime firefighter, this is a First.....
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Was that recently, and was it the spaceship that was on fire?
You could embellish the story a bit and say it was just off the shoulder of Orion. :)
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I'm in rural Herts mate....up near Stansted airport. I think I can retire mid November (I have strike days to make up).
My problem is the pension.....imiss out on a lot of it, due to my age. We defeated the government on age discrimination, but it remains to be seen if they will give it back to me...i know what I reckon. -
Steve was one of the main guys campaigning to save pensions and London fire stations when Boris was mayor... I'm amazed that story didn't get more traction with the public but the Tories were busy dismantling absolutely everything at that point... Here he is giving him hell at the GLA... Enjoy your retirement! Any lucrative consulting work on the horizon? 😉
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Yes, that was probably the main trick--there was just so much smashing and grabbing that fire stations closing was just another story in the local papers. I'm convinced that there's a direct link to things like Grenfell, but it's hard to prove.
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Yes, and it's not just about response times, but also about the fire service's capacity to go out and do preventative work, e.g. inspecting buildings. Would be interesting to hear stedlocks' take on all of that.
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I was praying Boris's place would go up in flames...
Do you mean City Hall? I think that's a rubbish building and I'd quite like to see it gone, but not by fire. I'm sure it's quite fire safe up to modern standards. I mean, it's not as if you have poor people living there.
It's generally quite safe to punch downwards and victimise vulnerable sections of society, waste public money, and be rewarded for failure on all fronts.
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well, at the risk of this being read by anyone else, I'll cover a couple of things, playing nicely.
The latest IRMP (integrated risk management plan) has just been released, two years late and after severe threats from Her Majesty's inspectorate.
It implies that reducing the average amount of firefighters on an appliance, from 5 (which is regarded as 'confidence') to four, removing fire appliances from certain stations, downgrading some shift systems from wholetime to 'on call'(part time, members of the public) and various other cuts, will have no effect on turn out times, levels of fire cover and the service's ability to save life, save property and to render humanitarian services.
Obviously, the councillors agreed and passed the draft plan......that's where I had better stop with that one.
With regards to the fire safety/education side of the job, that has increased massively in recent years, with the implementation of installing free detectors etc, and the responsibility of enforcing the Regulatory Reform Act being passed from the fire safety department, to the frontline operational personnel.
Now, I have yet to meet a firefighter who doesn't feel passionately about fire safety education. Thats a given.
I do, however, have a problem with the way we carry out home fire safety visits. They are never targeted at th type of people who need them most (people with English as a second language, for example, or who are unemployed, and struggling to make ends meet), and we end up fitting free detectors for people who are very aware of fire safety, and who are unlikely to be the demographic that need them most. Or scumbag landlords.
I really don't want to go into details about the inspection side of things....suffice to say, that it echos somewhat the above thoughts, and the responsibility has been handed over from inspectors who have had a minimum 6 weeks training at the fire service college, to people who had a quick chat with a bloke and were given some books.
A Good analogy of what we have to do ....imagine you deliver for a bakery. Now imagine that you have to know where every loaf is on your truck, what type it is, what the Ingredients are, how much it weighs, how many you have, how many you would need for a certain type of event, the laws regarding it, where to get another one, within two minutes, if one your loaves breaks or gets stolen etc, etc......But yeah......a fucking big spaceship!😂
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Thanks for all the background.
But yeah......a fucking big spaceship!
Spaced out, man.
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Picture posted by @seager in the Weather thread:
Lightning strike set the Wimbledon clock tower on fire today. Mad.
Took a picture of the wrong side of it but you can see the flames creeping through from the other side.
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A big fire on Thames island Platt's Eyot:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/thames-boatyard-blaze-fire-hampton-platt-s-eyot-b933034.html
It's only connected via an ancient footbridge, so probably no chance of quick firefighting:
A London Fire Brigade spokesman said: “Firefighters tackled a fire at two single-storey industrial units on the island, which were completely destroyed by the fire. The only access on to the island was via a footbridge, therefore firefighters have carried all of their equipment to the scene by hand.
I imagine they must have been prepared for this sort of thing, but it does make you wonder whether there's a firefighting boat that could take water directly from the Thames. There are quite a few light industrial uses on the Thames islands, so I'd guess it would make sense to have that kind of facility available, maybe on a boat that usually does something else.
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About
London fires
Posted by
@Oliver Schick
The Mall shopping centre in Walthamstow is on fire:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/walthamstow-fire-70-firefighters-tackle-huge-blaze-at-east-london-shopping-centre-a4195091.html
Fingers crossed nobody's inside any more, but that does sound as if the building will be closed for some time.
It was due to be redeveloped, so no telling what's going to happen to that now:
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2018/08/86000sq-ft-extension-mall-walthamstow-approved/