Firemen Strike
TG8 don't have the firemen to cover the major UK bases to start with, (haven't for some years), and most current RAF airfields are now covered by a combination of DFS and RAF. Many of the (few) regular RAF firemen that are left are busy covering the more dangerous RAF airfields overseas on deployment.
I can't see the RAF being able or equipped to help in any operations in any meaningful way. Besides this is officially a MAC provision these days and as far as I know there is no MAC request in at present from the Govt, so any bulletin, or conversations with ATC and Ops are moot. At best they'll be a prep notice just in case.
I can't see the RAF being able or equipped to help in any operations in any meaningful way. Besides this is officially a MAC provision these days and as far as I know there is no MAC request in at present from the Govt, so any bulletin, or conversations with ATC and Ops are moot. At best they'll be a prep notice just in case.
Last edited by Laarbruch72; 18th Sep 2013 at 20:16.
Laarbruch, if you didn't think my answer would be truthful then why did you ask? Feel free to read the Op Order tomorrow if you want to check, but please don't suggest I am making this up when you have no good reason to do so.
Sometimes people are just a little bit rude.
BEags, yep the TG8 guys are not happy. It didn't help that the news came direct from their trade sponsor and bypassed the normal chain of command.
Sometimes people are just a little bit rude.
BEags, yep the TG8 guys are not happy. It didn't help that the news came direct from their trade sponsor and bypassed the normal chain of command.
FFs are trained not to give their life ?? Who is ??
You need to look at the stats on how many firemen have lost their lives in the last decade. You will probably be surprised to find that it is staggeringly low - thankfully, so any argument about them risking their lives repeatedly is complete nonsense. My brother in law has just retired on full pension, aged 50. And in the 32 years in the service across three brigades he has never had a colleague die in his brigades. Its a myth that long ago ceased that firefighters dive into burning buildings to rescue people. It rarely happens these days as buildings are safer, less flammable, and have better fir prevention systems. And they only go in when they are at little or no risk to themselves.
Sure, accidents happen but more people die on building sites than firemen.
I'll get my coat!
Laarbruch72
I'm with JTO on this one. Thanks to the selfish action of the FBU and their brothers/sisters they have just knackered my weekend and a select few of my colleagues - still I'll still be there, as is expected of me. My pension will still be slipped to be paid at 60 from 2015 and I have had only 1% as a payrise since Apr 10.
Sympathy? It comes between sh!t and syphilis...
LJ
I'm with JTO on this one. Thanks to the selfish action of the FBU and their brothers/sisters they have just knackered my weekend and a select few of my colleagues - still I'll still be there, as is expected of me. My pension will still be slipped to be paid at 60 from 2015 and I have had only 1% as a payrise since Apr 10.
Sympathy? It comes between sh!t and syphilis...
LJ
please don't suggest I am making this up when you have no good reason to do so.
I'm with both you and Leon in having little sypathy for the FBU by the way.
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Laarbruch72
I'm with JTO on this one. Thanks to the selfish action of the FBU and their brothers/sisters they have just knackered my weekend and a select few of my colleagues - still I'll still be there, as is expected of me. My pension will still be slipped to be paid at 60 from 2015 and I have had only 1% as a payrise since Apr 10.
Sympathy? It comes between sh!t and syphilis...
I'm with JTO on this one. Thanks to the selfish action of the FBU and their brothers/sisters they have just knackered my weekend and a select few of my colleagues - still I'll still be there, as is expected of me. My pension will still be slipped to be paid at 60 from 2015 and I have had only 1% as a payrise since Apr 10.
Sympathy? It comes between sh!t and syphilis...
I believe we in the raf are paid to work weekends.
Last edited by gr4techie; 19th Sep 2013 at 02:35.
Courtney - a very kind offer old chap, thank you. 
GR4techie - I believe that your "paid to work weekends" is not entirely correct. Most in the RAF get 15% X-factor in their pay to allow for the embuggerance of being told to work the odd weekend, however, I do not. Furthermore if everyone was told to work 7 days a week for an extended period then I suspect within 18-24 months there would not be an Armed Forces left - not a strike, but everyone would PVR and leave! Furthermore, most of us did not join the military to cover for Fire Services, G4S and other such revent disruptions. So a call to arms for armed operations over extended periods is very different to filling capability gaps for others' shortfalls.
LJ
GR4techie - I believe that your "paid to work weekends" is not entirely correct. Most in the RAF get 15% X-factor in their pay to allow for the embuggerance of being told to work the odd weekend, however, I do not. Furthermore if everyone was told to work 7 days a week for an extended period then I suspect within 18-24 months there would not be an Armed Forces left - not a strike, but everyone would PVR and leave! Furthermore, most of us did not join the military to cover for Fire Services, G4S and other such revent disruptions. So a call to arms for armed operations over extended periods is very different to filling capability gaps for others' shortfalls.
LJ
PS. I don't believe there is anything I can do about my pension changes (except moan and whinge!). I can't strike as I would eventually be Court Martialled and go to prison. I don't want to resign as I am proud of my job and don't want to leave. However, I don't like the pension change and pay freeze and so I am entitled to "moan and whinge" if I want!
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Leon, yes you are entitled to moan and whinge and with the shafting we get I don't blame you.
If the govt had to choose between making cuts with us or with the fire service. We are the softer option. The stiff FBU opposition and the hassle it causes may make the govt think twice about cutting the fire service.
Rather than be angry at the fire service, you should be angry at the politicians.
If the govt had to choose between making cuts with us or with the fire service. We are the softer option. The stiff FBU opposition and the hassle it causes may make the govt think twice about cutting the fire service.
Rather than be angry at the fire service, you should be angry at the politicians.
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I do have to agree with your position there, Wensleydale. Change someone's pension expectatins when it's too late to do much about it is neither reasonable nor morally supportable. This has nothing to do with how good or bad their pension agreement was, not anything to do with what anyone else's pay or future expectations may be. It's what they were contracted to expect, that needs to be honoured. Same as the AFPS needs to be.
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@gr4techie
Rather than be angry at the fire service, you should be angry at the politicians.
I agree, but we can't get angry at the decision making now.. rather, we should be angry at the decision making then? We spent our way into debt, we decimated our retained wealth, we put the country onto AMEX.. we allowed ourselves to become prone to this type of financial disaster. A promise is a promise, yes. But is a promise made in genuine good faith only as valid as the ability to support it? Or do we then all become impoverished slaves in the real world to a principle? If you were married to the wrong person, if you didn't love your wife or husband, would you continue with the charade because you once promised, in all sincerity and with the best of intentions, to love honour and obey until death us do part? In defence of the government of the time, before writing a prescription, we must know the symptoms of the disease being treated.. and at the time, we weren't ill. Well, we may have been, we were certainly suffering from suffocation caused by putting our heads in the sand.
I don't mind Unions, I am not a rabid right winger, but you only have to look at Matt Wrack's agenda as far back as 2006 to assess where he's coming from on this. He probably still thinks that we all have the right to retire at age 50 on a full pension, he probably still thinks that his members have the automatic right to spend 25 or so years at work and then be supported by my kids for the next 35 years as they lurch towards an uncertain retirement age of 70 something. He is an anachronism and yes, he is employed to be a mouthpiece for those who fund his £45k pension contribution, but he also has the duty to tell them what the reality is.
Matt Wrack: ?Firefighters are ready for a struggle over pensions?
The FBU has done fantastic work in holding the state to account recently (and in particular the Government Actuarial Dept in how it calculated commuted sums at retirement) but Brother Matt, or whatever he calls himself, is using this issue as nothing more than the means to (ahem) fan the flames with his tub thumping hyperbole. The TUC echelon will sagely and tacitly allow him some rope, after all, the more senior and level headed Brothers in the rear will always need some spunky and rabid attack dog to lead the assault and generate a response from the enemy dug in. He says he doesn't 'relish a fight', of course he does - he just isn't honest enough to concede the point. He just wants to throw mud in the water and see which way Miliband flops; his members are nothing more than pawns in a battle which might see him elevated within the TUC if/when Miliband the Moribund gets shoved for either not being enough of a union patsy or being too much of a union patsy.
Steve Webb is the current pensions minister and he seems to be, generally, very well regarded.. he doesn't seem to have a personal agenda and he is insightful and considered. He spoke this week about the future of the state pension and over the past 12 months he has slowly been introducing the idea that we will be moving away from the idea of as flat rate benefit, and slowly shuffle towards something based on insured employer and personal contributions - and a state benefit that won't be defined until 10 years or so from anticipated retirement. Our state pension might well be awarded on retirement to match a target income and be based on a 'smoothing' determined by trustee discretion and actuarial methodology. In particular, he likes the Danish system. Defined Ambition pensions, fluctuating annuity pensions.. this terminology will become second nature to those in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and longevity risk will play as big a part of the financial planning landscape as inflation/investment/moral hazard/currency etc risk does now.
This pension battle is a hastily dusted off contingency, just as somewhere within the bowels of Main Building, we probably have a mouldy military contingency for restoring harmony, culture and happiness to the Americas when they all realise they need us again. But instead of recognising that our times have changed, Matt Wrack just wants to blindly turn the clock back. And that isn't good for anyone.
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Al R...
You may be correct that we spent our way into debt.
But the reality is, that is how economies work, they are debt based.
Thats how financial institutions make their profits. If you look at a £10 note you'll see it says "Promise to pay the bearer". Thats because the £ is based on debt and is not backed up by anything physical like gold or oil. If everyone was to do a run to the bank and ask for all their savings in £ notes the bank would not have enough to give everyone, as it loans out more than it has.
The economies are that ridiculous that when the US Government needs more money, it phones up the privately owned Federal Reserve, there is nothing federal about it and it has a reserve of nothing. It's a clever marketing name, like Fedex.
The Federal Reserve then puts some paper into a printer and makes $ bills out of thin air and LENDS them to the US Govt with interest!
Despite what "call me Dave" says. He doesn't stand a chance of getting us out of debt. It'll never happen on a currency backed up by nothing. And the UK's interest payments exceed the Uk's income. Call me Dave uses the national debt as a political pawn, something he can use to pretend he is doing something.
You may be correct that we spent our way into debt.
But the reality is, that is how economies work, they are debt based.
Thats how financial institutions make their profits. If you look at a £10 note you'll see it says "Promise to pay the bearer". Thats because the £ is based on debt and is not backed up by anything physical like gold or oil. If everyone was to do a run to the bank and ask for all their savings in £ notes the bank would not have enough to give everyone, as it loans out more than it has.
The economies are that ridiculous that when the US Government needs more money, it phones up the privately owned Federal Reserve, there is nothing federal about it and it has a reserve of nothing. It's a clever marketing name, like Fedex.
The Federal Reserve then puts some paper into a printer and makes $ bills out of thin air and LENDS them to the US Govt with interest!
Despite what "call me Dave" says. He doesn't stand a chance of getting us out of debt. It'll never happen on a currency backed up by nothing. And the UK's interest payments exceed the Uk's income. Call me Dave uses the national debt as a political pawn, something he can use to pretend he is doing something.
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I agree, to an extent. But there is a difference between spending wisely and not spending wisely. And when you see countries like Australia which has 30% of the debt to GDP ratio that we have, and sits on billions of tons of valuable minerals and natural resources.. which position would you prefer to be in? We can't even get village fracking established and we have very little to offer in the way of manufacturing - no wonder we fought so hard to have the financial transaction tax killed off before it was born. We won't get rid of our debt.. of course we won't, if we did we'd be in a different kind of trouble. But what we have to do is make ourselves look a diligent and attractive proposition relative to the next country, and the next, and the EEA/Eurozone.
Europe financial transaction tax hits legal wall - FT.com
Europe financial transaction tax hits legal wall - FT.com
This is bad enough
...but this is appalling...
A danger to themselves, and the public they are supposed to be protecting!
...but this is appalling...
Results in Scotland were worse than the UK average, with only a third of staff in Strathclyde meeting the standard.
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To be fair, what is the percentage of RAF who failed the fitness test?
There's porky bloaters who should put the pie down, in all walks of life.
*Edit= Plus statistics can be misleading.... The article said only a third of staff in Strathclyde met the standard.
But it doesn't say what that standard was?
The standard could be quite high (I know a pass on the Royal Marine bleeptest is level 11) and those that failed, could just have only just failed and therefore be still reasonably fit compared to the rest of the population?
But it does prove the point that they should not be still working in their 60's.
There's porky bloaters who should put the pie down, in all walks of life.
*Edit= Plus statistics can be misleading.... The article said only a third of staff in Strathclyde met the standard.
But it doesn't say what that standard was?
The standard could be quite high (I know a pass on the Royal Marine bleeptest is level 11) and those that failed, could just have only just failed and therefore be still reasonably fit compared to the rest of the population?
But it does prove the point that they should not be still working in their 60's.
Last edited by gr4techie; 20th Sep 2013 at 17:10.