This Volume at a Glance:

               • The Political Parties who all pay lip service to democracy;

     • The Political Ages of Decency – The Age of Mediocrity – To the Age of Rampant Corruption.     

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Is doing nothing an option? No!

It is only by democrats standing firm on issues that will underpin, and by defeating those who will undermine democracy, that we are all true to the ‘glorious’ dead of the World Wars and those who died for our freedoms. Those Warriors of Freedom who are frequently alluded to by politicians most of whom have never gone to war or even had their personal courage tested but who vainly hope a little of Warrior's glory will rub off on them.

Later in this Chapter the Bugler will provide a rare and fully documented example of scandalous raw corruption at work detailing how it was used to defeat democracy, natural justice, the laws of the land, and decency and identify those who were involved and responsible for this dirty work at the crossroads.

As a consequence at this time should a finger be pointed at a particular Party or a particular politician ? Or are they all just the same?

The Parties.

All political Parties, are without exception, great instruments of change but what tends to differentiate one from the other is the cultured infusion of venom which they collectively possess in the ideology of their Party and which, if elected to governmental power,  they impose on those they are meant to represent, protect, and care for.

It matters little what the professed ‘principles’ and flag waving pretensions of a Party are, it is this poisonous spirit underpinned with collective ambition and self-interest which drives it forward ultimately to the imposition of tyranny and oppression which are the progenitors of final betrayal and the attempted subjugation of those opposed to their malevolence.

This malevolent spirit attempts to reverse all the decent principles, which lie at the very heart of a benevolent democratic society which is created by the People. A People who possess natural honesty and a sense of all equal natural justice and fair play for all in a fabric of a society comfortable with its own transparent decency within this ethos of democracy.

The ‘glorious’ dead who politicians, regardless of Party,  tell us ad nauseam were sacrificed to preserve this very democracy are the self-same hypocrites who work tirelessly in the darkened rooms and murky corridors of power to corrupt the very soul of it.

Watch closely as they bow their tyrant heads in false humility and then beat their breasts in reverential mea maxima culpas at the Cenotaphs where they have but one thing on their minds, and you can be certain it is not the Glorious Dead, but how best they can serve themselves to the detriment of all those they sent to war never to return, or  indeed those they send out into the grim streets to provide succour to their fellow Citizens some of whom did not return either whilst the burnt, maimed, and disabled, hobble back unrecognised.

There is little recollection in this worshipful group surrounded by the ‘Colours’ and heralded by the panoply of bugles of war of the ‘heroes with grimy faces’ as Churchill described them, the Firefighters who died, wounded, or were maimed  in WWII, or since, all serving the innocents on the ‘Home Front’.

What this high flown rhetoric concludes is that regardless of Party or political affiliations these ‘creatures of the night’ exist and hold power in every single Party. It is their corrupt and corrupting human nature which puts them there and every Party has a duty to discipline and disown them.

Are they all the same? Of this ilk, indeed they are.

They are intoxicated by power and avarice and will perpetrate any conceivable maladroit act to retain their ‘privileges’ whilst fraudulently filling their own pockets from the purses of the disabled, widows, and orphans.

This pension dispute in Lancashire is much more than just a ‘little local difficulty’ it encapsulates, by the very acts that these local politicians of all Parties have engaged in, whilst the Electorate -The People- are entirely disaffected by politicians whom they reject with well-earned and directed scorn.

In the end politicians are simply the authors of their own well deserved misfortune because they choose the option of doing nothing whilst corruption seeps around their leaden feet.

Shortly it will be time to introduce to the Reader these political Parties; their knaves and highwaymen; and their lickspittles who believe they set and control the agenda in this pension dispute using the oil of corruption and then the Reader will make the own judgement.

Its putrescence taints the very breeze from the dim corridors of power in County Hall; Fire Service HQ; and the local Fire Brigades Union.

Soon – Knaves, Highwaymen, and Lickspittles at work but first they came as Magpies, or as Rossini described them, the 'Thieving Magpies'.

The Political Ages.

By 2007, at the commencement of the pension dispute, the political and Lancashire Fire Service landscape had changed beyond all recognition, and it ought to be said for the worse, as the Reader will note.

The Magpies, or as Rossini described them the Thieving Magpies arrived, and proliferated. Later would come the analogous troughs and the snouts of excess…

But before them, as ‘pearls before the swine’, came the decent…

CC Harding CBE was, at that moment, the Labour Leader at County Hall attempting unsuccessfully to follow in the illustrious footsteps of the Four Ladies as the Editor described them earlier to the Firefighters he commanded.

CC Louise Ellman M.P.(Currently Chair of the House of Parliament Transport Select Committee), tough, shrewd, and resilient (before the word was ‘re-invented’), personally, and politically  courageous, and thoroughly decent. Today worthy of any Firefighter’s salute.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Josie Farrington-Former Labour Leader in the House of Lords and Lady-in-Waiting to H.M.The Queen), who even today, true to her roots and political passions is to be seen traveling by second class rail as she proceeds about her duties.

The Labour powerhouse in Lancashire and the essential link to the upper echelons of the then national Labour Party. Tough, shrewd, with a good sense of genuine humility and humour, but exhibited tendencies to ruthlessness when a just cause demanded it and was being obstructed; thoroughly decent.

Today worthy of any Firefighter’s salute.

All this at a time when Thatcher was both personally and politically hostile and promising personal retribution  £50,000.0 surcharges on these Ladies if Lancashire insisted in sending an International Rescue squad to the Armenian Earthquake in the Soviet Union, which they did in any event, supported unreservedly by all the other Party Leaders in Lancashire.

CC Winifred Wynne, sadly deceased, Leader of the Lancashire Conservatives. Wore flowery hats to cover a shrewd politician’s brain but who epitomised all that was decent and kindly in the Conservative Party. Fire Officers of no particular note or distinction thought her sense of humour and 'blarney' came from an ‘air head’ but they were so wrong.

Mrs McQuade(Niece) said: "She loved her council work, especially the work involving the fire service. That is what she threw everything into and that's why she never re-married or had any children."

An honourable politician who insisted in paying the Service for the pumping out of her flooded rose garden to the Editor's personal recollection. Who would not have saluted such a  meticulous Lady of integrity?

Understudied and underpinned by CC Mrs Pat Case who understood all about the disabled; a politician of inestimable personal integrity.

The last of the decent Conservatives of the ‘old school’ in Lancashire.

Today both worthy of any Firefighter’s salute.

CC Anne Smyth, Leader of the Liberals, worked loyally with the other Party Leaders in serving the Citizens of Lancashire whilst holding and maintaining her distinctive Party views, who with all the other Party Leaders came and made a short speech at midnight bidding 'God Speed' to those ordered into the Soviet Union on an earthquake rescue mission.

Her kindly and supportive words and the handing out of US/UK lapel pins were long remembered by these Hearts of Oak. Who needs to say she was a decent politician and person, it was self-evident?

Even today worthy of any Firefighter’s salute.

And then after them came Labour’s CC Harding CBE.

Harding had two class Labour acts (or as Driver puts it in his new LEP Nom-de-Plume ‘ClassAct’) to follow but if that was not difficult enough she could never find the word ‘charisma’ in her political dictionary.

The fact is she had none. Nor did she work at attaining any regardless of the Buggin's turn CBE. Today this short time span after her sojourn, because it could never be described as Leadership, few political pundits can remember anything of note she achieved.

The classical phrases which she publicly uttered over the emerging FSV pension dispute was "I have nothing to do with Pensions – I am not on the Committee and the service is acting on the instructions of the Fire Service. This sums up  her ‘charismatic' approach to her duties to the Citizens of Lancashire and FSVs in particular.

Indeed today the electorate, rather like Harding, gazing vacantly into space when her name is mentioned have difficulty in remembering who she was.

“It’s not the way anybody wants to finish,” said Hazel,..but that’s how it goes. Win some, lose some.”

She was ‘grist to the mill’ for such manipulators as CC Wilkinson;CC O’Toole;Clerk to the CFA, M.Winterbottom JP.DL

So ended the Age of Decency sliding down into the Age of Mediocrity followed by the Age of Rampant Corruption…