I am a simple soul

[aztec]

hi jeremy. easy answer is they have not been bought by the taxpayer they are leased to the local fire authorities. for a number of years now there has been insuficient funding for the outright purchase of fire appliances, we therefore now lease them, alond with other capitol items such as cars, BA sets, Firekit, and in some cases fire stations, this is often called a PFI agreement, but amounts to the same thing. most of us would welcome the british armys use of the kit, to give them the fighting chance they deserve. i do however, believe that there are some other difficulties.

the training to use the equipment is not the whole problem, most practical people could learn 90% of the operation of the equipment in about two weeks, the main problem is if there is a breakdown or a fault. in which case we need to have more than a working knowledge of our equipment. it takes about 4 years to achieve all of the competancies laid down for a firefighter. i'm sure in some cases it could be condensed. also all the technical kit could be taken off, to reduce the learning, but then you just have a bare machine. i'm not sure if that would help.

hope this explains a bit, steve.

 

[claymore]

So are we saying

That money doesn't change hands here under the lease agreement?
Let me see if I have this correct
Someone builds a truck chassis 0 lets say Volvo for example - thought I saw one on an F6 cab on the news last night.
Volvo release that free of charge and it goes to the body shop who put it together free of charge and then someone comes along with the cart load of paraphenalia that they carry and that gets fitted again, free of charge. The whole shooting match and the figure of £160K was quoted on Look North last night is then handed over to the local fire authority who get to use it free of charge until the lease expires.
All this without cost - how the hell do you strike a deal like that and could anyone sort me something for an Audi A4 tdi (230bhp) quattro avant?

regards
Claymore

 

[claymore]

Anyway Gentlemen

It would appear that the soldiers are in fact going to be granted access to our equipment.
I can't think why but it really annoyed me to see picket lines dressed in firefighters uniforms whilst the piteous displays shown on the news of wholly inadequate GG's with a jet of water coming from them the strength of a cat's piddle - miles from the core of any fire with the poor sods working with this stuff dressed in their army uniforms.


regards
Claymore

 

[aztec]

Re: So are we saying

as i understand it we lease the vehicles, dennis sabres, £180K at a yearly rate not free (where did that come from?) the comany is a subsidiary of british gas. but i don't know much more than that, i do know that they have a life span of twelve years, and it's been said that we pay more over those years than if we bought them outright, but again i don't have that sort of information.

again with the PFI we lease the fire station from a company that will build it to our spec. someone out there must be able to explain leasing beter than i can as i don't lease or buy on HP.

sorry i can't help further.

 

[jimmie]

Lib Dems

When I was a man the Lib Dems were very friendly! Charlie is a darling ...

 

[tcm]

Rethink.

Not totally sure (since i don't read Polly Toynbee/the Guardian) how Thatcher and Hitler come in the same sentence. One eventually killed six million jews and started a war that killed another 20+ million, the other eventually launched the "poll tax" that stipulated that everyone paid roughly the same amount of local govt rates with the dreadful result that houses with thre working adults in paid er 3 times more than those with one person innem ..oh and she said that the EC seemed out of control, with centrl bank, interst rates and taxes...yet no, no, no is the current answer from all 3 parties as i unnerstand? Eighteen wasted years! Unlike new labour which has nearly banned fox hunting (but not quite) inside six years. Notional tory tax rises (frm 32 to 35 %) were a result of people earning more and moving up thru the tax bands, whereas the rise from 34 to 38 has entirely been the result of tax hikes.

Hitler's name is invoked by those who should know better. An orator without equal in modern times, narrowly elected in Germany at a time of unimaginable economic despair, the election campaign ran "Hitler - our last hope". As today is israel, the jewish community heped each other, held beliefs that say they were the chosen ones, were naturally intelligent and through religiously-encouraged restictive breeding were (and still are) below average height. Exactly the formula to irritate a bully , and an easy target especially whilst 85% of lawyers in Germany in 1930 were Jewish, not forgiving but certainly explaining the gentle slope towards the horrors of 1941. Your right that he began to belive his own publicity, and fairly early on, but wrong that I am a sympathiser of any description. Now demonised in the west as thoroughly bad and having no redeeming qualities whatsoever, Hitler was known through the thirties and forties and beyond within Germany as the leader that built the autobahns, an astonishing architectural achievement by any standards, still standing, still far more extensive than anything in any other country, the cheapest work that could be devised for an unemployed working class in the early thirties, indirectly promoting a car manufacturing industry that beats the pants off the rest of the world - as every customer could test the top speed of their car on day one.

Oh, you mentioned Universities. These day Universities do their darned best to attract as many people as possible to attract the highest possible grants.

Dispassionately, quite a few of these now run courses that only a few years ago would be seen as Poly courses, Bradford and many others included. Is it 9 out of every 10 graduates of media studies fail to find a job withion a year?

Education is a fabulous Brit industry. Hundreds of english teaching schools teach thousand to speak the language, privately. Yes, teaching in return for money. Public schools ll find no shortage of foreign students ready and willing to pay 16grand a year plus their own flights home. Universities offer a tertiary education for a fraction of that outlay.

The myth that is sold and believed by the non-mathematical and business-clueless slightly-left is that of a munificent, intelligent and worldly-wise government ready and able to marshal the resources to teach toddlers to read and write, teach youngsters maths, languages and sports excellence, and in later eductaion breed a super-class of world leaders. All completley free. Unsurpirsingly, since this is free of charge, the money for staff is a bit rubbish, so unsurprisingly the brightest people are not teaching nor in government, and the brightest kids simply have bright parents who teachem to read at three, their times tables at six and the periodic table at ten.

But wherever people are in the world, the language of government, of the internet, of computers, of radio, of music, film, entertainment is English. English universities should charge 50k a year to foreign nationals and they'd get it. They'd pay ace salaries, and attract the best students, the best staff.

Sorry, but any purely vocational courses that don't invite boundary-pushing, don't require free thinking but merely the following of an easily proscribable set of rules ..belong in a technical college. As bradford used to be before even a poly, and before Harold Wilson was vice chancellor, not even had shirley williams wrecked the uk education system with comprehensives that somehow belives that they can make everyone more clever than average, and ideal that they still won't release as statistically impossible.

 

[tcm]

Oh no you aren\'t a simple soul!

A complex set of emotions besets claymore. At once he is beholden to reasonableness (40% is too much) and yet simultaneoulsy gripped by the allure of passive opportunitism (if they get 40% with a strike, what's the chances of 25%? alright 22% Oh alright 5% plus a ball of string) and so he tests the mood of the board...

 

[ccscott49]

Re: Rethink.

For my 4000th post, I will say this, our politics are obviously very similar, you are obviously well read, I can sympathise with your views on Hitler to a certain extent, he did in the beggining do a hell of a lot for a Germany on it's knees and bring them their pride back. But he left the door open in his own party, for the loony element to take over, not to mention his own illnesses and drug addictions. This country needed a Maggie at the time, we were also going down the gurgler kicking and spitting, you may have noticed the "Labour" party bought and paid for by the unioins (not anymore) didn't reverse any of Maggies policies, not any important ones anyway. Education! Don't get me started, media studies!! Ha! some young people today see this as the way out, become a journo or a TV presenter, Wow Wicked man, bollox! How many jobs do they think there are and how many have the talent fopr the job anyway. I'll stop ranting now, I'm beggining to sound like my father, may be no bad thing! See ya' later! I've only two more 12 hour tours to do, then it's beer/cider/wine/nooky/good food/good company time! Apart from good company here of course!

 

[claymore]

Re: Rethink.

Well - I waited all weekend in vain for a response to what I felt was a reasonably provocative post. I'd begun to think that I'd landed on stoney ground - surely, I felt, he cannot resist the Bradford Poly reference and then it came. With all the measure, balance and brindled venom of old.
Excellent work, well done Matts. I'm so glad you chose the social history module of the course - it could have been written for you. I've decided to award a distinction for this piece of work, generous I know, but deserved. You are an imaginative writer and sometimes tread a fine line between fact and quasi-fiction - which is fine so long as you are ready to substantiate your comments - a requirement which such incisive writing will almost certainly provoke. If you would just tidy up the bibliography and get it to me by the end of the week?
Many thanks and again, well done.
I'm having a small gathering in my study at 19:00 on Thursday - it would be lovely if you could attend - nothing too formal and christian names
yours aye
Alphonse

regards
Claymore

 

[jimi]

Socialism, Fascism, Education & Investment

One of the first things a dictatorship does is get rid of the thinking and chattering classes. Could it be that the current trend to restrict serious education to the privileged few, ie those with enough money to afford it, rather than being merely an extremely shortsighted lack of investment, actually marks something much more sinister?

Could it be in reality an attempt to dumb down the masses and perpetuate the current establishment's grip on the financial,educational, governmental, political and military systems?

 

[tcm]

Blairism, Education

In UK, I think (as I think you do) that whatever is happening isn't actively being done as part of a grand plan. There doesn't seem to be any plan at all really.

Education-wise, there used to be an 11+ which is now roundly condemned as being far too arduous and horrid, partly cos the curent MPs and cabinet ministers were too dim to try it, failed it, or did easy peasy common entrance. Within a few years of avoiding 11+, tho, they line up and compete for jobs. Success at 11+, regardless of ability to pay, used to win grammar school place or similar, this ladder now kicked away so as you say, poor people have poor eductaion, rich can have the best.

 

[jimi]

Crap Government

Agree, I do'nt actually think that there is a grand plan, the current executive is too obsessed with image to come up with a grand unified stategy of any sort! However the potential results of this lack of vision are extremely dangerous. Constitutionally the door is wide open for abuse, its just that whilst people have shuffled about on the doorstep occasionally no-one has yet had the temerity to enter. Given the correct circumstances it is inevitable it will happen.
Educationally what is quite appalling is both the lack of investment and the culture that proper education is seen as a privilige rather than an absolute necessity for the future prosperity of the nation. Proper education does'nt mean everyone gets university degrees but that they get an education which is a appropriate to their ability and motivation,not their parents finacial status! Some of this may well be vocational training or at a higher level it undoubtedly wo'nt. The ability to learn & problem solve is more important than what you've actually learnt for managers, whether it be governmental,business, manufacturing, media etc, where the ability to think outside the box is of prime importance.
Economically money is getting poured down the drain in all sorts of ill considered, badly managed, poorly controlled projects. Take the Apache helicopter project ... fiasco from start to finish ..
Should never have been started in the first place, the UK should have integrated military forces, not a Navy developing an army and an airforce, or an Army developing an airforce, or an Airforce developing a navy.
Once it had been started, the cost should have been properly controlled, and a project plan put in place to ensure that they could be flown!
Take transport, railways! M6 at Birmingham? Intergrated transport policy? Just a complete joke!
I'm off for my calm down pills!

 

[claymore]

If I say I am...I AM

Its my post.


regards
Claymore

 

[Twister_Ken]

Crikey

You're getting very territorial - next you'll be peeing on the lamposts to warn us off your patch.

Still, I suppose that's only the behaviour we should expect from a man who has named himself after a big sword!

 

[NigeCh]

Sorry. But I\'ve got to ask a question ...

From acturarial evidence it would seem that it's cheaper to let buildings burn down that to have firefighters douse the flames. Also, more peoples lives are lost in road accidents than in fires.

I'm sorry, but the question that has to be asked is "Do we really need a Fire Service at all?"

 

[tcm]

Re: indeedy

I alluded to this before, but I was er, shot down in flames. And the army seem to be doing pretty well (er what do THEY do when there's no fire strike?) and soon with a nice proper lorry will be even better, especuialy there's a terrorist attack when they can attend the fire and deal with the culprits, by shooting them down in the flames (again)

 

[claymore]

Yes I\'m sorry too...

That you had to go and ask such a daft question.

regards
Claymore

 

[claymore]

I think its my hormones..nm

.

regards
Claymore

 

[jimi]

Re: Sorry. But I\'ve got to ask a question ...

What do other european countries do? Do'nt they have an emergency services which is like a combined Fire , Ambulance and Coastguard service?

 

[claymore]

Re: Sorry. But I\'ve got to ask a question ...

Not sure Luxembourg has a coastguard service.

regards
Claymore