• Chief Fire Officer D.A Cotton QFSM and the Intriguers;

• The Plot Thickens;

• The Plot Unfolds;

• Prescott the Practical Misogynist;

• Cotton and the LFB Price?

• The Broken Thin Thread of Cotton’s Professionalism;

• The Stark Lessons;

• Et Tu Brute;

• Misandrists Claws;

• The Bugler’s Experience;

• The ‘Quota’ Lives on;

• The Final Professional Verdict.

For all the predicted, and predictable, fall from grace of Ms. Cotton one has to wind the clock back to 1969 when she, and her colleague/associate/political mentor/, Dr.Fiona Twycross PhD were born.

Born in London, Cotton’s biography including her parentage, childhood, and educational background, both academic and professional, remains firmly vague.

This seems odd given that having made it to the top of her discipline, particularly if from an ‘umble or economically deprived background, one would surely wish to proclaim these disadvantages which she overcame.

If only to encourage other women to follow her path into the London Fire Brigade which was her perpetual mantra, but oddly she does not avail herself of these opportunities.

This after all, seems to have been her raison d’etre, driven by others with their own political and misandrist agenda.

But which was to the professional exclusion of her other Fire Service responsibilities, including the necessity to acquire senior command operational experience.

A capability which she clearly failed to address as she rose artificially and with unseemly haste through the ranks, once this promotional ‘game’ became fully engaged. 

Also born in London, Dr. Fiona Twycross PhD’s biography seems slightly more transparent.

If only a little, which leads, after following her academic trail from London to private school in Oxford(though it is careful not to describe itself as such), which one would assume was a natural Socialist entry point to Oxford.

 Instead of which she chose to go to Edinburgh University (Gordon Brown’s alma mater) ultimately to acquire her PhD in contemporary Scandinavian literature which no doubt would be useful in the future for running a major city like London. or indeed the Nation.

Who knows where her ambitions still lie?

Personal career modesty never concerns such amoral folk.

To follow Twycross’s  academic path requires private financial support ~ and/or privilege, patronage, or merited scholarships, or a combination of all four, though lacking in transparency, as a publicly elected official Twycross, fails to explain, or claim, the socialist meritorious route to her first employment and thence to the Deputy Mayor of London which also makes one wonder how, and then why, this was so well managed and choreographed, and by whom?

Perhaps she is a natural master of manipulation?

It is curious that Twycross fails to use her academic post nominal titles in her daily work.
Could it be that she concludes that to do so would naturally make her a less appealing Socialist politician, for example, to the economically challenged residents of Tower Hamlets, but tolerably acceptable to the denizens of Croydon where she lives bordering on leafy Surrey?

A Socialist at heart but not at hearth…

The Political Master…

Lord Prescott,

Baron of Kinston-Upon-Hull.

Born on 31 May 1938 (age 81 years) as ‘umble  John Leslie in Prestatyn Wales.

A Welsh Celt, formerly a master of many words, mostly colourful, and fisticuffs.

Known for his athletic prowess in his high office at the House of Commoners; you cannot get more common than this…

In, or around, the early 1990’s Twycross joined the Labour Party though again failing to tell us when.

In the process collecting (she seems an inveterate ‘collector’ of organisations) of radical Socialist ‘blessings’ like the Fabian Society, etc, etc., all prior to the Labour Party’s apogee of the Blair/Brown era, is there a link here with the latter Brown, Tywcross, and Edinburgh University?; including its Blair Babes in 1997.

Twycross a below the radar Labour manipulator/advisor/facilitator with ‘talents’, culminating in her early  career by acting as an electoral agent for Tony Blair’s replacement in Sedgewick after his resignation in 2007 and then presumably moving into the Brown camp.

The political opportunism of …The King is dead long live the King…

Today’s Twycross’s London Deputy Mayoralty is clearly a Labour Party reward for all those hidden years as a ‘loyal trooper’.

Nevertheless someone who likes to air her bigoted misandrist views in the NewStatesman under the omnipotent title of … “Boys will be boys” while girls are “pretty pink”… a rather turgid piece of prose filled with male loathing which undermines her objective credibility in her Messianic drive to change ‘society’,  and in particular London Fire Brigade.

The next step was to find a suitable in-Service female London Firefighter, someone not too bright, but  ‘umble’, malleable, and ambitious; and who better to find such a candidate than the ever eager Twycross the Facilitator  with

ultimately the resultant  ‘apple of her eye’, Cotton.

The plot thickens…

Along their respective ways one wonders when the first personal contact occurred between these two society changing acolytes Twycross and Cotton , where, and on what basis?

Perhaps on a stone wall somewhere, and, to this day, what were their shared passions?

One also wonders who the original author of this little piece of ingenuity was, this particular ‘equality’ drive(which was a Labour policy) and why it was targeted almost exclusively on the London Fire Brigade?

Perhaps it was that clown Prescott who was hostile to Labour’s natural supporters, the serving members of the Fire Service, just like Callaghan.

Because he and Blair viewed the Fire Brigades Union (which the Bugler is still a Member of) as the last bastion of Union power which might during Labour’s term of office provide them with ‘difficulties’ with the public services.

So without further ado Prescott decided to ‘dismantle’ the Fire Service.

Firstly buying off its Chief Fire Officers(they came cheap in bulk) especially those who were willing to be personally and individually bought off with gongs and premature retirement (most of them) and of course the ultimate replacement of London’s Chief Fire Officer with a female, which was a natural target, and object of this hidden agenda.

Reasonable speculation, which is always encouraged by lack of candour, might conclude that these three joined-at-the-hip intriguers set off with their Labour Party instructed ‘brief’ just as the Blair era was emerging at the same time in the mid 1990’s because it took time to achieve a revolution inside the LFB, as these things do.

There is little doubt that Cotton on her incipient bandwagon during this early developing male pogrom, identified and collected her additional coterie of female chums both internal, and for external for senior appointments, as she climbed the ladder whilst exercising her own form of positive discrimination(you are either with us or against us) by the use of ill-disguised political patronage(much like its male counterpart) and  then having politically neutered a forgettably compliant CFO of the day (Brian something or other) they then paradoxically  threw the equality employment rule book out the window, as a tiresome inconvenience, because the end justified the means.

All to attain their stated ‘quota’ of female Firefighters in the LFB and Service nationally, but always preferably at the top.

Have you ever noticed that these ‘society changers’ always want to be ‘equal’ at the top; not halfway up or down like Wellington’s(a Dublin man) troops, nor shovelling the manure at the bottom like the rest of us …

Cotton and her external political supporters were ever eager to claim female ‘firsts’ for this, that, and the other on their Agenda as justification for this emerging Animal Farm.

A ‘first’ which  included the first female Firefighter to be awarded the Queen’s Fire Service Medal, which anyone who has ever served in the UK Fire Service knows, is only ever exclusively awarded by Freemasons to Freemasons.

It was not until the 2004 ‘award’ of the Queen’s Fire Service Medal to Cotton that Twycross and company could rightfully claim ‘success’ was within their collective grasp.

An ‘award’ which was greeted with much adulation by misandrists in the popular press; this ‘proof of the pudding’ which in reality was an unbridled policy of actual anti-male discrimination which they believed was justified by the small numbers of female Firefighters in the Service nationwide.

A revolution, their exclusive revolution, which was now well under way within the LFB , except when it came to operational duties…the dirty end…the unequal at the bottom end …where it seems until the unpredictable Grenfell Tower, when ‘males’ were once more vitally needed for senior operational command as the proverbial hit the fan in this appalling human tragedy where  no amount of  Cotton’s false personal claim of PTSD will escape a final public accounting by her, her political chum Twycross, and the guy carrying the can.

So in respect of the QFSM, Cotton and her political partners, plus their external powerful political allies did indeed break through this particular glass ceiling.

An award which not only alienated female Firefighters but which had ignored, for decades, non-handshaking male Firefighters since its inception in 1940.

Unfortunately Cotton’s Award was not well deserved being originally awarded for Gallantry thus in this ‘example’ further tarnishing an already tarnished Queen’s Medal, and not remotely awarded for any form of meritorious/gallant service, but just because she was female and  it would be a nice little pyric victory, and equally, a nice little trinket to hang on the Cotton uniform to reinforce the point publicly that this perception of LFB male domination was at an end.

Indeed, recently in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service a former female Firefighter received Royal recognition of an MBE for being just this; the first female Firefighter in Northern Ireland. How divisive and pitiful is that?
Everyone male, and now female it seems, has their price…

Is every female Firefighter in the future to receive a medal?

All of this could only have been achieved as a consequence of the Labour Party’s equality policy directed by Prescott and Twycross, in conjunction with Cotton at the LFB, who ironically a misogynist  himself which he demonstrated so vulgarly and luridly in Parliament no less, was not above a ‘little bit of skirt’, coupled with obscene acts of pure misogyny himself; all to break the back of the FBU and London Fire Brigade with its perceived male domination, a victim of its own illustrious history.

One wonders, as a fly on the wall, if Prescott ever explained all his antics to Twycross and Cotton? Probably not.

As we have concluded during the early ‘reign’ of ‘Teflon Tony’, a malleable Cotton was identified by one of his little beavers Twycross, as potentially one of Tony’s minor non-political ‘babes’ who would be shaped and elevated in unapologetic haste by the ‘babes’ to carry his equality message to the Fire Service.

Following which Cotton was boringly and repetitively rapidly elevated from her rank of female ‘One bar Wonder’ Firefighter sitting in the front seat of a single fire engine, when her operational ‘firefighting’ career effectively ended, through rapid advancement via a series HQ based ‘soft’ staff posts which were created for her to, at all costs, put her in a position to implement this political ‘equality’ policy and thence to the starry heights of CFO.

But during which, in ‘achieving’ so much in a short dizzy span of time , she consequentially chose to ignore the necessity to train and equip herself, if only mentally, for envisaged senior operational command,  by accruing senior major incident command experience on the ground for the envisioned post of CFO.

Later Cotton was to falsely claim that she possessed these critical qualities courtesy of a single large scrapyard fire in East London of little account, thus confirming both her flexible honesty and questionable integrity when it suited.

It is a fundamental duty and a requirement for any UK Chief Fire Officer whether good, bad, or indifferent that they have had hands~on senior operational command experience. How do you fly a jumbo if you have never been trained to fly an aircraft?

It is the equivalent of asking a plumber to carry out brain surgery?

Command experience forms the bedrock of front red line major command, a prerequisite for ending at the dizzy heights of senior rank, or CFO/Fire Commissioner(What

happened to the Rescue part?); an inescapable and inevitable professional failure which ultimately led to Cotton’s predicted fall from grace when the horror of Grenfell Tower fell at her feet to directly challenge her personal courage, her credibility, and her competency to command.

To command active service personnel at senior rank requires that their respect(not popularity) has been earned by repetitious and demonstrated capability inculcating confidence in those subordinate personnel that their lives are in safe hands which allows them with confidence to address the task before them rather than to keep looking over their shoulders all the time in self-preservation.

It was a failure of this essential ingredient at Grenfell Tower which inevitably led to such a catastrophic life losing fiasco.

Meantime, it takes little imagination to consider the impact this running sewer of rapid corrupt ‘promotion’ had on the morale of those with healthy ambitions preparing to advance themselves by ‘normal’ promotion including, it should be added, those by-passed female Firefighters who did not qualify to be one of Cotton’s Clique…

They all knew, or ought to have known, particularly Cotton in conjunction with Twycross what this careful career choreography was meant to achieve which was to fulfil their brief which was to break down ‘gender boundaries’ within the London Fire Brigade, whilst setting the example to her backward cousins out in the country north of Watford.

For all this indecent political haste and personal professional ambitious greed there was a bitter price to be paid. The questions were only when, and by whom?

No one in this puzzle called life could ever have predicted the tragic manner and the simply awful price innocents would have to pay for all this corruption in public office at the LFB for which a public accounting will have to be given  by the individuals carrying responsibility for it.

Then one early morning on Wednesday 14^th June 2017 @ 01.05.41 hrs came Grenfell Tower…

Cotton arrived on a blue light from Orpington in Kent where she lives at 02:49hrs, a short distance of some 20 miles at that time of the morning, 1hour~44minutes late, after the initial call, to meet her dreaded Nemesis at the ground floor of a 24 floor high rise block of flats ~ Grenfell Tower.

In an expletive ridden arrival comment, surely the product of contagious panic, she stood shocked, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights, at this unpredictable (or was it?) catastrophe which she was now duty bound to Command.

The rest remains history until all the truth is extracted from the personnel and their ‘managers’ who attended this catastrophe, and the deep exploration of their viewpoints.

Who will, in some cases, act in self-preservation, or feel a misplaced sense of loyalty to their Brigade and their colleagues, rather than identify where their moral duty lies which is with the bereaved families.

It is only after such detailed formal scrutiny that a true picture of what actually occurred from the LFB operational standpoint will emerge and which will be presented in accountability to those who failed to serve, and presented to those they failed to serve.

Nothing less will suffice.

Cotton knows that she stands at the beginning of such an accountability path. But for which she has yet to pay the moral price, though she seems prepared, up to a point, to pay a career price, not that that mattered in the slightest but for others, 72 innocent victims at least, who have paid the ultimate price with their lives due to her complete lack of ~ on that morning ~ on the ground ~ competency lacking ~ unqualified by practical experience ~ ‘Command Leadership’.

And, if it is possible, is there worse?

Indeed there is, which was her complete lack of moral fibre and personal courage in not taking command from a subordinate senior rank Deputy Commissioner~Operations Tom George with the famous hand-over words… “I am taking  Command”… which she did not say… in fact, if she made a command decision at all, she may have said … “ You are to remain in Command”… after which she has described herself as ‘monitoring the incident’.

A total abrogation her duty is the actual substance of this  latter phrase.

But whatever these words “monitoring the incident” might mean to the general public to a host of former accomplished Senior Operational Incident Commanders in the UK, given these catastrophic circumstances, it can only have meant one thing.

Because when any operational senior command Officer of note hears that latter expression used, it does not necessarily mean it is vote of confidence in them, it usually means in these appalling circumstances that the incident is well beyond their senior colleague’s experience, capability,

or competence; an incident which ‘sorts the men from the boys’ in Command terms; an expression which no doubt will cause disfavour among  the Bugler’s misandrist Readers.

Cotton’s lack of personal moral and physical courage and her complete abrogation of leadership at that moment in time would in wartime call for a firing squad.

In those days it was called cowardice.

This is an appalling self-indictment at such an unspeakably unnecessary unfolding tragedy which simply passes comprehension.

The expectation of all those Firefighters present was, if only for the sake of the good name of their Brigade, that their Chief Fire Officer in demonstrating absolute leadership would take Command.

The fact that she did not will have been transmitted around the incident in seconds, compounded with the knowledge, that she was prepared to take shelter behind a subordinate senior rank who ‘will carry the can later’, as indeed Deputy Commissioner~Operations Tom George will, because he was legally in Command and there for the moment stops the buck, as Cotton well knew.

Especially when moral fibre and duty demanded that she took charge from that moment forward.

A series of cynical professional calculations, or miscalculations, which will immediately have damaged the dynamic of morale terminally on the ground, and materially affected the ‘rescue attack’ into the building.

Lest there be doubt.

To take command at such an appalling incident of such rapidly growing magnitude was what Cotton was paid to do.

One scene which is forever imprinted on this great and unnecessary tragedy at Grenfell Tower was to later witness Cotton ‘genuflecting’ before her political masters in her spotlessly clean firefighting uniform; she had not even the common decency to get dirty leading her Firefighters, if needs be, to their calculated (risk~against~return) doom in sacrificing all their lives for those in such peril.

This was her and their duty…

For Firefighters across the UK, Europe, and the world, that tunic said it all…

This was also a political lesson, if such a disastrous one was needed, a depiction of the ‘end~game’ reality of political interference, in the mismanagement of any public organisation, including the London Fire Brigade.

But it never crossed their minds in this abuse of power and authority that this might all end in a disaster for an individual Firefighter, or a group of badly led Firefighters, or more importantly for 72 innocent lives which had been mistakenly placed in all their wilting corrupt hands.

Thus none of them deserve the slightest sympathy either as  Politicians, as career ‘Firefighters’, or as human beings.

The lessons are stark.

You take the badges of rank; you wear the uniform correctly(which includes tucking your hair up properly under your helmet); you take the helmet markings and return the salutations, the privileges of rank, and the pay,  and thus you stand up to be counted at the bitter end when you get it all wrong, from beginning to end.

It continues to be predictable that Cotton would jump before she was pushed by her ever ‘loyal’ Mayor Sadiq Khan and her chum Deputy Mayor Twycross who have now chosen to throw her to the wolves to deflect some of the ‘heat’ that is to come in the second stage of this Inquiry next January.

But this move is far too early, showing as it does, over anxiety to wash their guilty collective hands of the whole tawdry and shameful guilt filled business.

But life is never as simple as that.

Justice will grind on, and grind as it does, ‘exceeding fine’.

They all share the guilt for these lost lives…

Now in brass necked and shameless gall, in claiming ‘leadership’ courage at the last moment, Cotton informs ‘her staff’ she will lead them through the ‘maelstrom’ that is to come.

This is another  falsehood because Khan will have insisted, dangling her pension over her for an extended period, that she is to remain if only to provide political cover for himself and Twycross up until Tyburn because if they do not ‘hang together they will surely hang alone’.

That is the price of selling your Soul; your Integrity; and your Dignity as a person, all for personal gain.

Perhaps on the basis that it ‘takes one to know one’ Trump has Khan and Twycross bang to rights?

Khan’s syrupy nauseating tributes to Cotton simply drip with Brutus’s blood from his back stabbing dagger with Twycross standing by ready and willing to wipe it for him.

But then if Cotton is not monumentally stupid she knows enough to know how it all works, having practiced it herself on others, and thus should expect nothing less when her turn comes as it has now, and next January at Phase II of the Inquiry.

Now, Cotton is cynically flagging up(she has learned from her political masters’ duplicity) an extended sick leave based on PTSD still acting under the direction of these masters who need the time to move the ‘men’ around on their respective squares to make room for the next CFO.

The problem Cotton will have, with this usual self-serving strategy, ironically, as a ’92 Pension Scheme Member herself with the prospect of an ill-health(Rule B3 pension), plus a ‘qualifying medical injury Award (a Rule B4 pension), will firstly be proving this ‘injury’ was generated at Grenfell Towers when she was not in Command?

Secondly getting her own Ms. Budden another talentless minimum qualified female LFB finance clerk imported from Norfolk as Director of Corporate Services to pay her, her generous but normal pension because pensions are one of Budden’s references. A duty which she failed to fulfill for thousands of ex-LFB disabled Fire Service Veterans including disabled FSV~RT(The semantics recorded in the Bugler) whose life she made a misery of until stopped in her tracks and running for cover; presumably because they were all males?

Her route to the LFB resonates with the same local London politics…

“Sue began her career at Coopers and Lybrand (now Price Waterhouse Coopers), in Norwich, as a public sector auditor(bean counter clerk) at the start of their development of public sector work.

Interestingly Cotton makes not a single claim for a single professional qualification nor for that matter does her Operations Deputy.

One would have assumed that at the very least they both  would have attended the alma mater of the Fire Service College because it was still available to them in their early days, and if not, why not?

Probably because at that moment in time neither of them  had made the minimum rank required for Fire Service College entry, that of Station Officer rank.

Incidentally, the rule of thumb of the instructional staff at the College was that London ranks could in equanimity always be reduced by one if not two ranks, given London Officers’  academic inadequacy.

Cotton was politically naive and knew little of her Brigade’s history and frankly cared less.

Who would not jump at the chance to be made Commissioner bypassing all those who were more deserving and who had continued to dutifully serve their apprenticeship in advancing their professional careers?

This was a pure example of political corrupt cack handedness where the ends justified the means which was to mount a political attack on the historically male dominated LFB, through no fault of its own.

Though even today merit based female promotion is now as a consequence a greater problem than before all these shenanigans commenced.

An attack by a shrill screeching political army of misandrist London females, and for those of you who do not understand misandry (OED) try ~ an irrational hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men, or boys.  

In this respect Cotton made not only a fool of herself publicly but unforgivably of her Brigade, ‘her staff’,  as she egotistically likes to put it, implying as though she owns them.

She sparked a hilarious national debate as ‘her staff’ hid themselves under their helmets away from the media’s cameras because according to Cotton ‘Fireman Sam’ and ‘Pippa Pig’ encouraged gender stereotyping which discouraged women from joining such a bigoted Fire Service.

Utter tripe the product  of a deluded power crazed  ‘mind’.

Now where did we hear all that before? Of course  from Twycross in the NewStatesman?

When criticised, what was hilarious, was to see was Cotton hopping on one foot as she attempted to take the other foot out of her mouth whilst attempting at the same time to put the first one back in…

What an opportunity for the next successful candidate for her vacancy, working on the old career adage … always follow a failure.

…and boy what a failure which the Bugler predicts will unfortunately be a male to clear up all this mess, for example,

by CFO Steve Owen-Hughes from Surrey thus, as they say, squaring the circle.

Presumably he will wish to bring back to London the admirable Celt, LFB’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Doctor Sabrina Cohen-Hatton PhD a Behavioural Neuroscientist and Psychologist, currently on loan to Surrey; in order to deal with Grenfell PTSD issues arising, commencing with Cotton?

Now as the Misandrists sharpen their claws, with the Bugler in mind, some unpalatable home truths on recruitment the historical reality of which ought to be spelled out to them by the Bugler, a former Recruitment Officer of a former world leading Brigade, which offered International training to over 64 Nations, including Ireland, and to UK and Irish local Fire Authorities, primarily Recruit training, for decades.

Lancashire advanced carefully to address these sensitive and serious questions of discriminations the Bugler having suffered religious and ethnic discrimination himself regularly throughout his career. If you have been there then you understand.
It also provided an opportunity not only to practice what he believed in but to see it up close in changed practice.

But first a retrospective look at London Fire Brigade and the quality of its Recruits and thus its Firefighters and ‘leaders’.

Lancashire and those it served commercially had ~ after UK Ability Range Tests(ART) ~ a recruitment post induction Recruit fail rate of 3.2%. In spite of efforts this could never be reduced simply because some Recruits were rejected, or because some Recruits unpredictably changed their mind. This career was not for them…

London had/has a perpetual problem of recruitment because of inherent local competition in the labour market and to address this it used to run an unofficial  one month pre UK ART in order to ‘train’ its potential Recruits to pass those Standard Tests.

Those who were successful and ultimately inducted into an LFB Recruits course where consequential LFB Statistics still revealed a dropout rate of some 25%.

One imagines that this situation still pertains today where most LFB Firefighters’ primary employment is not in the LFB but externally within particular areas of casual employment.

This is the ubiquitous reality of the 21^st Century where in the 20^th Century no outside employment was permitted by FS Law/Contract primarily because frontline Firefighters were required to be fit for duty including ‘mental’ health and stability.

It is a matter of fact that the Fire Service was a male dominated workforce but this was for simple historical reasons way back to Sir Eyre Massey Shaw(A man from Ballymore, County Cork, Ireland) and to times beyond; because LMFB Chiefs in those days preferred to employ

former Royal Navy disciplined well ordered seamen capable of working pumps, climbing, working at heights, and capable of tying rescue lines and knots. It was as simple as that.

Today add in the perpetual female Firefighter discriminating Freemasonry, to say little of everyone of any race, colour, or creed, who is not ‘one of ‘them’, and there you have the present day Fire Service…plus ca change?

When the name ‘Fireman’- was changed to the genderless ‘Firefighter’ it failed to address one of the deep physical concerns of male Firefighters who anticipated, with reasonable misgivings, the advent of female Firefighters in their ranks, on the single basis of, when Firefighters were working in compulsory pairs wearing Breathing Apparatus, would the (assumed) smaller female of a pair be capable of rescuing their larger partner should he become incapacitated, for example, in a catastrophic flashover which required that he required to be rescued himself.
It remains a profoundly troubling question.

There was, and continues to be, habitual resistance from Fire Service Freemasonry to the entry of females into the Service because it raised questions of how, with more ‘non-aligned’ non-handshaking  female Firefighters in the promotion pool, they were going to manipulate the short lists for promotion?

A solution which they addressed by manufacturing a series of ‘glass ceilings’ and setting artificial barriers to female Firefighters’ God given rights of personal ambition, but not only for them, because today religion and ethnicity still plays a major role also.

Well exercised bigoted racism which continues today but most particularly and currently in the, leaderless, Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.The CFO is suspended.

These particularly pernicious and odious practices, with their disrespectful denial of human rights and dignities which continue today throughout the UK Fire Service were ‘targets’ which Cotton and her political pals ought to have addressed, but who by her atrocious example, and their supporting corrupt political practices, have perversely set back, for decades to come, the natural promotional advance of female and ethnic minorities up through the ranks in their natural progressive ambition based on merit right to meritorious the top.

Instead the Cotton Company have provided the ‘I told you so’ Freemason Brigade  with endless ammunition.

There is stupid and then there is Cotton.

The Bugler had female Firefighters under his command. At first it was an intriguing prospect but because they were Firefighters, who happened to be female, they were not entitled to special treatment, no more nor no less, than other Firefighters received.

They were not ‘tolerated’, because that would have been disrespectful and a slight on their personal dignity and their entitlement to personal ambition which originally drove them to want to be Firefighters in the first place and as such they were entitled to a level playing field and fair play even though the Bugler suspects their numbers will always be naturally low.

This is because the Fire and Rescue Service life does not appeal to everyone’s taste, but those who wish to join should be driven forward by a vocation which simply wants to serve their fellow man in distress and not because of, salaries leading to ‘Clock~on~Rescuers, nor because ‘quotas’ allow them to. 

Quotas are by their very nature discriminatory and simply replace one artificial barrier with another in an artificially contrived complex human situation produced by bad management and those who like to exert hidden control of their created controlling mechanisms to provide and

perpetuate the scenario where, as always, some are more equal than others in the promotion race.

The question which has always troubled the Bugler is why do certain individuals feel it is a necessity within the Fire Service to join Freemasonry, which is of course their democratic right?

Could it be that they know they lack the human capability to take on the task of a Firefighter, or is it simply because of their base human greed and laziness coupled with  lack of self confidence that they need this helping up handshake?

The bottom line in all this is a rhetorical question.

Would someone in distress prefer to be rescued by an ill-trained lazy uncommitted large male Firefighter of indistinct ethnicity and religion or by a diminutive committed enthusiastic well trained genderless Firefighter?

The Bugler knows, based on experience, that enthusiasm will always win the day, every day.

The Bugler has yet to hear of an entombed casualty refusing to be rescued because the entombed did not like the look or attitude of their potential rescuer…

Finally, it was to hoped that this failed and repugnant  ‘idea’ of ‘quota’ systems had now been consigned to the Fire and Rescue Service  bin of history though it seems that some of the politicians on the Fire Authority board at the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service have been intent on using an experimental 50%/50% measure in recruitment to advance the ambitions of discriminated against Nationalists in a misjudgment and assumption that all Nationalists are naturally Catholics, and vice versa, but this may well not be the case. 

Once more in this failed approach of intrusive political mismanagement they have set back and handed back bigotry and discrimination to the smirking Neanderthal racist bigots on the Fire Authority board who, as the self appointed conservators of the ‘old system’,  will now polish their glass ceilings and promotional procedures to the exclusion of the ‘unacceptable’ for some time to come.

This is not the way forward in a peaceful mutually respectful  21^st Century Ireland…

This was an unnecessary tragedy because had the firefighting of a small fire in a kitchen been expeditiously and professionally carried out, this incipient fire would have been contained and extinguished; and had the usual follow up routine checks for lateral and vertical fire spread identified an incipient external fire spread to the external combustible wall cladding; the resources, which were at hand,  could have been rapidly brought to bear to check this fire spread and this disaster would surely have been averted.

What was the function of these first attending crews if it was not to extinguish this small fire, or to ensure it had self-extinguished or been extinguished, or had not spread further?

This was plain and simple sloppy, lazy, careless, and leaderless firefighting.There are no bad Firefighters per se just disinterested poorly trained ‘leaders’ who allow Firefighters to perform below standard…

The manager of these crews knows it, and is legally accountable; the Firefighters themselves know it ; the Firefighters of the UK know it; and furthermore the Readers of TMB  know it.

This was pure bad practice but apparently Cotton would ‘not change anything’ simply finally confirming her crass stupidity, her wooden insensitivity, and her complete lack of fitness to command…

If she had served her time properly and not been misguided by her ‘controllers’ into male pogroms and political stunts  she would, in the time she had already served, have acquired all the fundamental professional and technical knowledge to command such a fire in such a high rise building.

As the Bugler, and others before us, have experienced it was all there to learn if Cotton had but shown the slightest interest…

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