UK: Politically correct brigade demands one woman on each fire engine

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | December 29, 2008 | Ben Leach

[Stoat]

The Local Government Association (LGA) has said that at at least 15 per cent of those in operational roles should be female.

That means they will fill one of the five or six places for crew on each engine.

The LGA said an increased number of firewomen is necessary "to meet the needs of local people".

But critics warned that political correctness was being put above the ability to save lives.

Susie Squire, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Introducing this sort of quota to the fire service is a big mistake.

"If ever there was a job that should be awarded on merit and physical fitness, it is that of a firefighter.

"This quota system will not only cost taxpayers money by introducing additional and unnecessary administration, but could risk the safety of all of us in the long run."

At present fewer than one in ten firefighters are female.

In future local councillors who are appointed to serve on the fire authorities will be asked to sign up to the "diversity charter".

One of the pledges they are expected to make is to "work to achieve recruitment targets of at least 15 per cent for women in operational roles".

Anthony Duggan, head of fire services at the LGA, said: "The fire service needs to be representative of the area it serves.

[Stoat]

That’s reality, and reality doesn’t care about diversity, political correctness, or feelings.

That's why Socialism, along with it's attendant ancillary cancers such as Diversity! and political correctness, has as one of it's primary goals the elimination of reality.  An economic system that fails because it's most basic tenets conflict in profound ways with the very most basic elements of human nature must forcibly  construct it's own artificial reality in order to survive. 

[Stoat]

There are no women that I know that could get me out of a building or a foxhole if needed.

The number of women that are able to do this are in a very small minority. and mandating such an extremely high number of women in the fire service tends to overlook this rather obvious fact

[Stoat]

But of course women like that are very rare. If those wacky Diversity Committee people think they can find one in five, they’re going to be looking for the rest of their lives.

They won't be able to of course, and so the solution here, just as it is in every other situation around which the cancer of Diversity wraps it's toxic tentacles  will be to expand the size of the crews responding to each call in a pathetic effort to make up for the lack of ability of some of it's members.  This will translate into mammoth tax increases alongside a huge spike in deaths of the public as well as fire service members.

[Stoat]

In fact shes for stronger qualifiers for both sexes.

All firefighters I've worked with share that view, although they won't say so publicly....only in private.

[Stoat]

Laugh or cry, I’m not sure.

I'm for the latter, because this policy will instantly translate into dramatically higher taxes and needlessly lost lives.

If the typical track record on such things is any judge, the Diversity Gauleiters will never admit that they are wrong regardless of how many reams of hard data they are presented with.  They will ram this policy down everyone's throat, and in order to meet the new quotas the entry qualifications to the fire services will have to be dramatically lowered.  This will cause the responding crews to be far less effective as well as more injury-prone than before, which will necessitate significantly larger crews being mandated for each response.  A non-collision car fire with no entrapment and no injuries that would normally be responded to by one engine and a crew of five?  You'll get three engines and a crew of fifteen.  An overweight patient who has suffered a stroke and a fall and needs to be brought down a flight of stairs on a backboard?  You'll get twenty-five or more.

[CodeToad]

It could make the annual firemans calendar a little more interesting. :>

[Stoat]

It could make the annual firemans calendar a little more interesting. :>

That would be the only positive aspect of this that I can see, although the militant-feminists would most likely make a fuss (can they do anything else?) and demand that the calendars be banned altogether.

[CodeToad]

I’ve seen the beefcake calendars the firehouses produce for profit. I bet those won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

[driftless2]

I can’t believe Hollyweird hasn’t addressed the problem of not enough female firefighters. Every cop show, CSI for example, has females as the lead investigators or body disectors. I don’t know what the real ratio is, but according to Hollyweird, females now make up about fifty percent of big city police forces. It’s now time to give fire departments the same treatment, the facts be damned.

[smokingfrog]

anyone need to be rescued?

[CodeToad]

I think I could manage to throw myself into a fire!

[JillValentine]

Well, the physical requirements for a police officer are somewhat different from those for a firefighter. But getting to the point about TV shows, most cop shows have a format where they focus on one partnership of two people, plus a cast of supporting characters. It makes sense from a ratings point of view to have one of the two main characters be female, as female viewers will want someone to relate to and male viewers will want something nice to look at (most men love girls with guns). And of course for the people in charge, ratings are everything.

In real life, about 10 to 15 percent of big-city police forces are female. Reality is what it is, and Hollywood isn’t going to change reality, it just provides entertainment. I don’t know anyone who looks at Hollywood as an encyclopedia of facts.