It was by mere happenstance that I chanced upon you website and read with growing interest your article “A Star is Risen” I only write to say that your excoriating picture and criticism of corrupt politicians, incompetent councillors and conniving, self serving Chief Fire Officers destroying a once fine public organisation, aided by an FBU that had lost sight of it’s very reason for existence, rings many bells with me.

Your identification of 1995 and the publication of “In the Line of Fire” as the crucial time at which the Fire Service began it’s decline is well argued , it seems to me that the then Tory Government, was bitterly disappointed that their own inquiry had failed to deliver the required predetermined conclusions to attack the Service but with an oncoming election they tired of this and left the predictable next Labour Government to do the dirty work.

What a disgrace and crime that an organization of which I was once proud to serve has fallen so far and has not yet hit bottom.

It says a great deal that I look back at my career, not with fondness but a profound relief that I am no longer a part of it.

You put more cogently than I could the desperate demise of The Fire Service as a public institution and I will not go on writing save for two anecdotes which you may find amusing or sad.

At the end of my career an officer, desperate to climb the slippery pole,(and he succeeded , now being a CFO) declared that the FS should recruit managers direct from private industry as they would have the competence and experience to “put the business ethic into the Fire Service”.

My riposte, that in my view we should try to return the “Service Ethic to a public Service” was greeted with howls of derision and cries of “dinosaur”

The other was during a recruits course when a team of HR persons were dispatched to check the progress of the new and improved ( and subsequently dumped) recruitment procedures.

Trying out a simulated ladder dismount from the appliance the Head HR honcho, failing to move the lever more than a few inches, exclaimed “Good God, I didn’t know these things were so heavy!”

This from someone who had, not 6 weeks previously, recruited twenty people to the Brigade with no apparent knowledge of the job they were required to do.

Best wishes I shall continue to drop into your website to read your interesting articles…

Dear Sir,

Although I have only just written to you expressing my interest in your website I then noticed that the face of Peter Holland staring from the page.

I feel compelled to regale you with one further anecdote and will trouble you no further.

To my Brigade’s great misfortune Mr Holland resided as CFO for a number of years where he set about undoing the 8 years good work and progress initiated by his predecessor.

At his leaving I was most surprised to see virtually the whole typing pool waving a fond farewell.

I approached a lady I knew well, a most likable woman, hard working, competent, polite, demure , thoroughly respectable and a valued member of the Brigade.

Why I asked, had she made the effort to bid goodbye to a CFO who was, after all, only progressing his own career?

“Oh”, she said, “We were just making sure he left, as soon as he has gone we are going to change the locks so the f*cker can’t come back!”

By now as a regular and valued Reader of The Morning Bugler you will be well aware of who  Ramblin’ Syd Rumpo actually is, who in between his well reported  sexual predatorily escapades for which he received a criminal conviction, was to its misfortune, the one time Chief Fire Officer of Lancashire FRS.

A natural Leader who took a little self-relief now and again when taking a breather from his rumbustious escapades when he occasionally actually attended, in between gong and bong  huntin’, to his mundane job which primarily involve fiddling his LFRS expenses claims in association with his old chum…

CC David (Fiddler) O’Foole.

Ramblin’ Syd set to work piously thrusting himself upwards to attain these ‘standards’ in all the ‘qualities that we admire and value so much’ and which the denizens, the male beginners at the House of Commons, are no doubt envious of.

So envious are they in fact that they will not give him a knighthood like ‘daddy’ Sir Ken. How could they be so mean?

Ramblin’ Sid Rumpo is currently the Conservative’s Fire Advisor at the Home Office though one has to ask why, if that role is now duplicated by the newly created and expensive Inspectorate of Police & Fire Services in May of this year, what need or role is there for Rumpo other than his expensive triple dipping salary and his 3rd pension?

Perhaps he has unique operational experience in the trenches, so to speak, to expound to the Home Office ‘Fire Minister,’ Hurd, perhaps he acquired this knowledge on the front red line?

Well, speaking from the Bugler’s first-hand experience Ramblin’ Sid Rumpo would have had to have been found there in the first place, would he not?

In the days of yore the Bugler, as a former farmer with 4 commercial apple orchards, in Armagh, Ireland’s Orchard County, one of the great challenges was, as in parenthood, by the repeated husbandry of good example to ensure that the fruit your particular family tree bears should good respectable fruit, but alas that does not always happen.

It is much too late if the apple which falls close to the tree of origin is infested with wire worms or apple canker a hereditary form of fungal disease for if this is the case then rot in the barrel will surely follow.

Ramblin’ Syd Rumpo is clearly not a grower of good apples even those he is probably unaware of?

There are now 3 Hollands of ‘interest’ in the Fire Service all Freemasons…Sir Kenneth(the Harpist or the Shoveller)…Peter(The Rumpist)…and now Paul(The Stumbler and Mumbler)…and fortunately no Mary… at least that we, or they, might know of…

One of  Ramblin’ Syd Rumpo sons, Paul, had risen to eminence, no doubt with Rumpo’s and the Brethren’s assistance, to be an area commander(manager) (formerly Divisional Officer) with – as it is described in the local press – Bucks Fire & Rescue Service.

Now there is an unfortunate turn of phrase, or a Freudian  mistypo, waiting to happen here which leaps into a troubled mind at this point  which the Bugler might use, but which self discipline, decorum, and noblisse oblige  rules out.

It appears a couple of years ago that the son of Rumpo, Paul the Stumbler and Mumbler, found himself, as one might expect, a cosy little niche far way from the front red line as such functionaries do; in a training role for the ‘whole of’ BFRS.

Whilst stumbling, mumblin’ and bumblin’ along no doubt he came across an advancement ‘opportunity’  into a role  which would have brought career fame and fortune with time in which he was to act as lead for the BFRS in developing  this excitin’ notion of putting all the ‘bluelight’  eggs or apples, good or bad, into one basket,  or barrel.

This is a silly political notion which is that all the blue light ‘emergency’ services, which by legal  definition the Police are not, will be all chummy and work so much better when housed together.

In digressing…so you thought Dear Reader that nuclear submariners whilst groping each other and grasping their spliffs whilst holding the nuclear button was bad enough can you image what use the unused cells in this great new Blue Light Bordello(perhaps red might be better) could be used for? ..the mind shudders…

This new discovery of Stumbler Paul(we are all very chummy and casual in this ‘new’ fire service) is apparently the equivalent of discovering the political Holy Grail but to be a little sagacious about it, it has all been tried before, and failed before, and whilst it is a natural development (done before) that the Fire Service and the Paramedic Ambulance Service might coalesce  this ill judged troika with the Police co-joining this   wobbly  triumvirate   simply will  never get off the ground, or if it does, it will never work.

The greatest loss to the FS and the PAS will be in Public confidence, or lack of it, in any new hybrid organisation

which becomes an arm of the establishment because as the forgotten experience of Belfast proved, as soon as the FS and the PAS lined up behind the Police, they became viewed as part of the oppressive regime of the ‘establishment’ .

If you thought that the weirdos came out of the woodwork for just one blue light fire engine wait until you see the effect this groupie of blue lights will have on all and the very sundry.

It was the refusal of both the FS and the PAS to become identified as an element of the establishment which kept their personnel alive and free from harm in the most fraught of street tribal jungles in Ireland.

All of this brilliant thinking will be enough to drive people to drink…

But the Bugler digresses…

Perhaps when Paul the Stumbler got involved with the Bucks Police, or like ‘daddy’, cast more than his glance about, he sowed the seeds of his own destruction?

When it suits, the Bobbies have a way of looking after their own. In a manner which hardly troubles them where the actual law is concerned…that is why a healthy relationship with the Police is always best at arms’ length. Is this what happened here?

It seems earlier this year Stumblin’ and by this time Mumblin’ Paul over indulging himself on the old apple juice like ‘pop’, who was renowned for never actually buying any, and in a routine stop, which you can bet your last bottom dollar was anything but routine, he blew twice over the legal limit…

The reported circumstances are these…Go Here.

But then if you have repeatedly been set a bad example of such abuses which you have seen officially ‘excused’, can that be used as a justifiable excuse for being dismissed from any employment, least of all from that which is meant to bring perpetual succor to all victims?

The answer must surely be no.

Then of course there is the inevitable brass necked ‘Appeal’.

How can anyone in these reported circumstance have the gall to ‘appeal’ especially when knowing and seeing the horror of such consequences of the criminality of Drink and Drive on the working streets and yet as we have seen reported this ‘illustrious’ family swung into public action to defend the indefensible?

He ought to have been jailed, Go Here.

But once more when you have been raised in circumstances where ‘establishment’ criminality is the ‘excused’ example and brass necked the order of the day there is always the aspiration that someone as stupid as elected members on any ‘external independent investigative’ committee will have sympathy and see it your way, or, they are given the ‘mason in distress’ signal, or the glad hand of promises before the proceedings.

Just how ‘independent’ was independent? Was it beyond the reach of Freemason Holland who resigned from Freemasonry so that he could honestly state when applying for Deputy Chief of Lancashire that he was not a Freemason and then promptly ‘rejoin’?

Perhaps cynically times have changed, though one doubts it, where in the Bugler’s day as a former Statutory Discipline Investigation Officer of 20+ years standing, it would very unusual to be dismissed for a drinking offence for which there would be a salary reduction sanction applied for the period of the driving suspension because of contract failure of being unable to drive oneself to an operational incident…and probably a Reprimand…

And in the old days daddy would have fixed it anyway with a phone call to BFRS- Jason Thelwell – as will already have been the case for his son’s promotion to this managerial level which is usually described a being promoted above the level of one’s own incompetence…

Nevertheless it is rather surprising that this has happened.

It all rather smacks of score settling among Freemasons who have not the slightest honour among themselves which draws the inevitable conclusion which is that there is a larger hidden story of gross misconduct in this dismissal yet to be found in the undergrowth?

Now before anyone reaches for their handkerchief and ‘fills up’, perhaps it is best to reflect that those of us who spent a large part of our lives up the front red line cutting out the innocent, the consequential victims of Drink and Drive offences, simply know there cannot be any other answer to the charges than to plead ‘Guilty’.

When, with strident urgency, as we have all worked, to hear the warm breath gurgle to a whimper, and up close, to see that special light ebb away from the hurt eyes of an innocent victim there cannot be the slightest justification for taking a single drink, never mind blowing twice the legal limit.

Perhaps the Biblical sins of the father are indeed visited on a rather stupid son?…

The Bugler will reserve a space to allow for the next evolution of more corruption as the House of Holland rumpos, stumbles, and mumbles their crashing way to its inevitable implosion…