The destruction of the British Fire Service is gathering pace. Guido has learned that the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has decided unilaterally to abolish Ranks (nasty elitist things suggesting Upper Class pretentions!) and adopt the ludicrous “Role” titles which now make “Officers” into “Managers”. There is a catch to this, of course. Anybody can be a Manager, no previous experience is required, you apparently can apply as long as you can produce a “portfolio” to show you are competent.

Before all you potential “Managers” start sharpening your quills and grinding the ingredients for the ink to fill in the application forms, you need to be aware that this initial step is for existing uniformed personnel only. The other catch is that two ranks are now combined into one role – so everyone who is an existing Station Officer and everyone who is an existing Sub Officer is now a Watch Manager. The Station Officers used to manage a Station and several Crews, but the Station Management role is now a civilian one so the Station Officers’ roles are to be downgraded. Given that there are now around three times as many post holders as there are posts, the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has come up with a magnificent wheeze.

All existing Station Officers, all existing Sub Officers, and any interested Leading Fire Fighters or Fire Fighters can apply for the post of Watch Manager. Every candidate will undergo an assessment of their qualifications, portfolio, and their attitudes – the flyer stresses that the Authority are seeking to appoint “people with the right attitudes to modernise and move the Service into the new model” – which means in effect that experience and real ability will not be high on the agenda. Ability to speak “New Speak” and toe the party line will.

On a more dangerous note, the self assessment form contains a question which is in clear breech of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – it requires the candidate to answer the following: “Are you a member of any organisation not open to the public, which has secrecy about rules, membership, or conduct?” Clearly, by implication, a refusal to answer will result in the applicant automatically being denied consideration for the post.

Equally clearly, this has nothing whatever to do with the person’s ability to do the job, and everything to do with the Labour Party’s “Class war” agenda. The target is obviously the Free Masons in their ranks – but would also apply equally to the Knights of Columbus – and it is a breech of every person’s right to privacy where that has no bearing on their job. Can you imagine the outcry if you were to have a question on this form asking about your sexual preferences, fetishes, and peccadillos? Exactly so! Guido is not, and never has been a Free Mason, but, if this is a supposedly free country – and I am constantly told it is – it is none of my employer’s business if I were!

That said, the result of this monumental piece of crass stupidity – and let us not forget it has its origins in Whitehall – is that a very large number of very well experienced fire officers are now to be demoted, degraded, or shoved out of their jobs. The circular that accompanied this process makes clear in the final paragraph that,

“Staff retain the option to seek either, re-deployment to a different role within the organisation, voluntary severance or voluntary redundancy.”

In other words, we can shove you in anywhere we like in any role we choose, or you can resign and lose pension, job prospects, and career. You can opt to take redundancy – and there is a big difference in what you get if you volunteer for it and what you get if they force you out. In short – jump or we’ll push you anyway.

Alongside of this is the alarming news that more and more of the lower rank officers – in the Sub Officer to Assistant Divisional Officer categories (Guido is informed these are now retitled as Watch Manager, Station Manager and Group Manager – about as informative as to what they actually do or manage as the old titles!) – are all looking at alternative career options. The loss of so much irreplacable experience in any organisation has the potential to leave it seriously weakened – and in Guido’s eyes he would rather not have to rely upon a fire service which has had its entire leadership decimated and replaced by people who have limited experience, limited qualification and quite possibly lack the support of those the purport to lead!

An informant on this matter pointed Guido to two links which lead to some very interesting reading. The first is to be found at the website of UK Fire, entitled “Training? What training?” and the second, entitled “Modernising a public service.” The shattering revelation for Guido was that this second story is NOT about the “modernisation” of the Fire Services – but what has actually happened with the application of the same model to the Ambulance Service! Nor is this all; a quick search of the Fire Brigades Union website turned up this item on Control Centres which it is proposed to turn into little more than Call Centres. Anyone with an understanding of mobilisation and the communications that underpin that evolution will understand the difference – but apparently the politicians and Civil Servants pushing this don’t!

Further enquiry amongst Guido’s various sources has turned up the fact that at least one other large Brigade has plans which would reduce its uniformed “management” to a minimum, by simply civilianising the majority of posts currently held by persons holding the ranks of Assistant Divisional Officer up to Assistant Chief Fire Officer (which embraces, I am told, such titles as Divisional Officer and Senior Divisional Officer, Group Fire Control Officer and Principal Control Officer [these last two equate to the Assisitant and Divisional Officer ranks but are specific to Control Room staff] as well as the two already mentioned) on a ratio of something like 3 to 1. That is three civilians to one uniform. Clearly this restricts the career opportunities open to the professionals in uniform while creating wonderful new opportunities to those who know nothing at all about anything they manage – except how to irritate and obstruct the operation of a professional service. You need look no further than the Health Service to see what that means.

Quite apart from everything else, how is this supposed to motivate and encourage the uniformed staff who are called upon to deal with dangerous and extremely difficult activities? It strikes me that this is actually nothing to do with improving efficiency and everything to do with ideology and a political agenda to parachute “our kind of people” into a service which has always served the public extremely well.

A South African blogger posted a comment recently on a post Guido made concerning Mr Blair’s inflated pension prospects, suggesting that politicians deserve this sort of payment. Guido could not disagree more – especially when they are destroying the services that we, the public are paying for! Remove these inflated pensions, remove their inflated perks – and put the money into real services which the politicians are barred from altering!

When all of this is finished and the service fails to turn up at a fire, or a fire fighter is killed due to the incompetence of their “managers” – it will not be the cretins who have created this mess who stand in the dock – it will be some poor ill-trained, ill-selected junior that they will have lined up for the fall.

Take a look at the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004; there is nowhere mentioned a “Fire and Rescue Service” or a “Chief Fire Officer”. All the references are to a “Fire and Rescue Service Authority” – a purely political committee – and to “employees” of the Authority. In other words, no competence, no knowledge, and no experience required. Equally, no service and no structure required, either – as long as you have some big red fire engines and people on them to send out when required. No wonder the London Fire Brigades fire fighters are now dressed like the refuse collectors operating in the Boroughs.

The appalling thing about all this is that the rest of the world once looked upon our Fire Services as being the model to which they should aspire. I rather suspect that in the not too distant future we will be wondering what became of it. Well, perhaps we shouldn’t wonder, perhaps we also should not wait to see what happens. Maybe, just maybe, we should be demanding a public meeting on this and haul the members of “our” Fire and Rescue Authorities onto a public platform to explain themselves and their stewardship face to face!

The Health Service and its “managers” mis-managing should have sounded a warning; the Ambulance Service was next and that should have warned us of worse to come; the Police have been hit with the same agenda and the results are starting to show. Now it is the Fire Services which are being destroyed by this control freekery of the incompetent “bottom line management” brigade. It really is time to stop them dead in their tracks before they destroy anything else.

It is time to expose the incompetence and the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of Whitehall. It is time to call them all to account – and make them pay for it.