I have always treated the Public, those who paid my  wages, with courtesy and dignity regardless of race, colour, or creed.

Indeed, I have always identified the person I have served as an honourable pensioner who has always paid their way and met their bills, including mine, by counting the pennies, taking the cheap cuts of meat, and generally living frugally because their natural decency has demanded it.

They also had the right and expectation that when an emergency arose in their lives that those whose wages they have ‘done without’ to pay would arrive speedily to their aid prepared to pay the ultimate price in rendering any succour they may require.

It is a reasonable expectation….

Because of the vocation which I chose, which is to serve others, regularly when the occasions demanded, I have treated all members of Public with sensitivity and compassion because of the circumstances, often beyond their control, which Fate has decreed will be their destiny.

I have never expected gratitude nor medals because this is the life I decided to dedicate myself to, with occasional good humour and mostly pragmatism.

Medals are divisive and it has been suggested, in typical Fire Service humour, are like haemorrhoids every so often every bum gets one…

When the time comes naturally to retire or through injury received in the service of others we all accepted our fate with a mixture of relief and sanguinity.

As the French might say… C’est la Vie; C’est la Amour; C’est la Mort…

By now we believed we had earned the special right to be treated with dignity, respect, and pastoral care, especially by those junior in service who are generationally destined to carry forward their Torch of Service to their Fellow Man.

It is a reasonable expectation and product of Duty and Self Discipline, but it seems in this present age, that all which we held dear is now to be trampled on and denigrated in the stampede of personal greed and ambition.

But this does not mean that individual self-respect has grown old or that it is acceptable for some Johnny-come-lately, who reeks of self-service with the perpetual whiff of corruption is allowed to trample on our collective dignity.

The steely will and courage of this glorious band of brothers and sisters, these Firefighters, who carried others to safety while all about them ran for their own lives, ensures that we will not allow these knaves to treat us so…

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For my Fire Service Beginning (NIFA & Belfast Fire Brigade); the Middle; and the End; Read Here.

And then to the enduring and perpetual Pension Mugging Protest which commenced in September 2007…and continues…

The British Establishment, with all its grand panoply and posturing, have no idea of simple Justice, especially for those who serve them; who are killed; injured; or maimed in their service and who they, with cold cynical amusement, then cast on the scrap heap of life…

But they can still lecture the world on how it should be in their ‘colonies’ where they still have a greedy but tenuous and expiring hold …an anachronism  in this 21st Century…

From the Lancashire Evening Post,

“Former Firefighter, and now a disabled Fire Service Veteran, launched an angry protest against his former employers the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service. Paul Burns pictured with colleague Reg Berry, standing outside the LFRS Headquarters in Garstang Road Fulwood Preston Lancs UK in protest against repayments demanded of injured crew members. Scores of Firefighters were asked to re-pay DWP benefits after getting letters from the LFRS that due to their maladministration, their benefits had been overpaid. Paul said the protest was organised to coincide with a Fire Authority meeting which was taking place where the issue was to be discussed with County Councillors.”.