James O'Brien's Scathing Take on Fire Brigade Cuts
20 September 2016, 11:43 | Updated: 20 September 2016, 12:21
Every single frontline firefighter in greater Manchester is facing the sack. James O'Brien brilliantly explains how the right-wing media will try and turn the public against them.
James O’Brien was talking to Lucy Masoud from the Fire Brigades Union about the plans to sack 1,250 fire fighters in Greater Manchester. They will only get their jobs back if they agree to new terms and conditions.
James explained how the media would try and weave a narrative to turn the public against the people we depend on to save our lives.
"How do you, as a firefighter, feel when you see the public being successfully turned against you? We've seen it during most rounds of industrial action.
"We all start off, I imagine, from a position where the people who run into burning buildings as we're running out of them have nothing but our admiration and respect...and then the little drip of right wing rhetoric.
"The Sun will print a story about someone commuting from Ibiza, columnists will start writing stories about Spanish practices and second jobs and then slowly you see the pendulum - as the doctors possibly are seeing at the moment - the pendulum swings from support to animosity and yet you still have to go to work, every single shift, knowing that you could be risking your life to save these people."
Masoud told James about the ‘devastating’ impact that this round of cuts to fire service in Manchester will have.
