God, go out of the room for five minutes and when I come back you've gone all Daily Mail on me! I totally agree with Alan – and I genuinely don't follow the line of some of the arguments.
These shift changes will disadvantage firefighters pay and conditions but will also lead to a drastic cutting of emergency service provision at night, when people are most vulnerable. People are at greater risk of injury and death from fires which occur at night – the death rate from fires at night is double that during the day. I live here and work in the most densely populated borough in London, with the majority of people living in buildings more than four stories high, and I don't want less firefighters on duty at night. The consequences could be devastating for me and my family.
And I think you're getting away from the reason firefighters get good benefits and conditions – their job is to go into burning buildings or the scene of horrible accidents and put themselves at personal risk to rescue and help us and our families. That's why they get good pensions and conditions.
There was a really good article in the Guardian from a firefighter yesterday
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... jobs-livesRead it, see if somewhere along the line it changes some people's views.
On a quite depressing note, on the third page of a thread about how devastating the spending review is going to be, we're already pontificating about whether people have the right to strike against something they don't believe in and don't want (
97% of those who voted too, hardly a minority). Don't hold out much hope of us defeating these disasterous plans if we're sitting in judgement of others like this. And I can promise, when it's your turn, I won't be picking apart your pay, pensions, conditions of work and asking whether you're justified in doing what you do. I'll just pop round with a few teas and a box of biscuits and give you the benefit of the doubt. x
I'll think you will find, from your own carefully selected article, that the 97% were part of a survey - which as I'm sure you know isn't the same thing as a vote.
Just to balance things out here's someone else's views.