Veteran coastguards sacked for rescuing car from cliff edge

Unfortunately, you've remembered the tabloid newspaper version.

They did not stand and watch a person drown. The person had already drowned and was out of sight under the water in an urban pond full of junk. They took the right decision not to risk their lives to recover a body, location unknown, from a frozen lake.

One small correction: the lake wasn't frozen. Otherwise, you're spot on. Trying to find a body out of site in a deep gravel pit without training or equipment would have been extremely dangerous.
 
According to today's Times the two Coastguards involved in the motor car incident were actually paid employees. There is a quite separate incident where two volunteers were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in their own car but using a Coastguard stretcher.
Better start the whole thread again!!!
 
According to today's Times the two Coastguards involved in the motor car incident were actually paid employees. There is a quite separate incident where two volunteers were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in their own car but using a Coastguard stretcher.
Better start the whole thread again!!!

Or better still move it to the Lounge.
 
According to today's Times the two Coastguards involved in the motor car incident were actually paid employees. There is a quite separate incident where two volunteers were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in their own car but using a Coastguard stretcher.
Better start the whole thread again!!!

Pick a newspaper, pick a version. :)

Richard
 
According to today's Times the two Coastguards involved in the motor car incident were actually paid employees. There is a quite separate incident where two volunteers were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in their own car but using a Coastguard stretcher.
Better start the whole thread again!!!

;)
 
Errrrrr ..... The Lounge is officially for "non-boaty views" so that would be entirely the wrong place for my thread as the MCA is most definitely a boaty subject. ;)

Richard

But the bitching, and whinging is more appropriate to the lounge.
Edit: Come to think of it it is prevalent throughout this forum, perhaps why I am tiring of it.
 
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According to today's Times the two Coastguards involved in the motor car incident were actually paid employees. There is a quite separate incident where two volunteers were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in their own car but using a Coastguard stretcher.
Better start the whole thread again!!!

No, they were members of the Hope Cove Coastguard Rescue Team.

They are paid a small call-out fee, but the MCA is always very anxious not to class them as employees as then they'll have to worry about employment law, pensions, NI, etc - yet they want to give them none of the independence a voluntary organisation would have.
 
And I'm guessing that you've never worked in an organisation that actually requires you to read things properly, given your comments. :rolleyes:

Richard

I've done OK so far. I started with the post where you said "Let's hope that Minn gets the assignment to run the MCA asap as the organisation is clearly totally incompetent..." and read on as it got even more surreal, although you weren't the only one to be fair...
 
Unfortunately, you've remembered the tabloid newspaper version.

They did not stand and watch a person drown. The person had already drowned and was out of sight under the water in an urban pond full of junk. They took the right decision not to risk their lives to recover a body, location unknown, from a frozen lake.

Mea culpa, though how anyone knows a person has drowned in very cold, if not frozen, water is debatable as survival time can extend to 10s of minutes. It is notable that both the boy's stepfather and a police sergeant did enter the water in an attempt to effect rescue. The inquest stated it was 'highly unlikely' that a successful rescue could have been made. Low probability Vs very high risk (death) is not a basis for inaction. Nevertheless, setting aside the complex legal arguments which have developed in this thread (the law is there to serve the people, not the other way round) there is, IMO, an expectation for emergency response teams to actively respond to emergencies. Of course, legislaters and weak managers engage in covering their backsides: they don't want an hysterical family member confronting them over the death of a relative, however willingly the deceased intervened at the time. More robust managers recognise the dichotomy which exists between maintaining an effective rescue service and protecting the welfare of rescuers and are prepared to action what they, and invariably the vast majority of the general public consider to be morally right. They are not cowed by the possible consequences for their career path. That's why they are managers and not administrators.
 
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The contortions some people are putting themselves through to support their view is quite astonishing.

I understand they they were sacked because the land rover wasn't returned immediately, thus possibly putting at further uncessary risk someone in actual danger who needed and the two guys were still busy rescuing the car.

So people supporting the "sack the buggers" argument want to believe that if a shout had come in, the two guys involved would have carried on rescuing the car?!?!

Jeez. Anyone with any sense knows they'd have said - "sorry old boy, someone is in deep shit, we'll be back later to finish the job" or words to that effect.

This is "small man in authority" syndrome, and I don't mean necessarily physically small.
 
The contortions some people are putting themselves through to support their view is quite astonishing.

I understand they they were sacked because the land rover wasn't returned immediately, thus possibly putting at further uncessary risk someone in actual danger who needed and the two guys were still busy rescuing the car.

So people supporting the "sack the buggers" argument want to believe that if a shout had come in, the two guys involved would have carried on rescuing the car?!?!

Jeez. Anyone with any sense knows they'd have said - "sorry old boy, someone is in deep shit, we'll be back later to finish the job" or words to that effect.

This is "small man in authority" syndrome, and I don't mean necessarily physically small.

None of us knows what happened. All we have is a one-sided story and a couple of Daily Mail sadfaces, albeit in the Torygraph. And as usual, the healthandsafetygornmad gammon has erupted, which is interesting because normally they would automatically take the management side. Can you imagine how they'd be creating if a couple of Muslim railway workers had left work to pray?
 
None of us knows what happened. All we have is a one-sided story and a couple of Daily Mail sadfaces, albeit in the Torygraph. And as usual, the healthandsafetygornmad gammon has erupted, which is interesting because normally they would automatically take the management side. Can you imagine how they'd be creating if a couple of Muslim railway workers had left work to pray?

Actually, some of us do know what happened, and the very fact you use the pathetic term “gammon” shows you’d decided long before you could be troubled by any facts.
 
But the bitching, and whinging is more appropriate to the lounge.
Edit: Come to think of it it is prevalent throughout this forum, perhaps why I am tiring of it.

True but with RichardS and his ilk on ignore the whinging quotient drops below "RAF officer who's been told he had to walk" level. If only people would stop quoting him ;)
 
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As has been said, my mates who are 'coasties' get a call out fee everytime the buzzer goes off and they tip up. They may get paid for training as well for all I know. I think they're classed as 'casual workers'* rather than employees due to the nature of the role and that they can choose not to respond etc.

Regarding emergency services doing stuff they're told not to. My old man was a copper. He was told not to do something, but in the interests of the public he did it anyway. He was then 'uninsured' when he got injured and neither the police force nor the federation wanted to know.... OK injury was unlikely in the case of these chaps with the car, but there were other risks. What would have happened if in rescuing this old chap's car they'd cocked it up, dropped it off the cliff, caused a marpol incident etc etc. Who would have picked up the tab then?

Having looked at the pic of them, I'd have let them both go ages ago anyway - the first for having 'shit tats' and being a bit on the porky side and the second one for his (lack of) dress sense... ;-)

* I could have that wrong, that's as I remember it.
 
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