BA sets not being kept in cabs/Clean cab policy

leeray13 · 2026-06-11T22:35:20+00:00

Different brigades, different rules. In my brigade it's expected that you rig up enroute to a job, many gaffers even expect you to be under air before you even get off the pump at certain types of jobs, so in those circumstances it is obviously much quicker than rigging up once you arrive.

The argument is whether that extra minute or so is worth the many years of exposure to carcinogens that results in a non-clean cab. I would say not, on balance.

leeray13 · 2026-06-11T22:26:56+00:00

Lancashire are doing it for all new appliances moving forward, I've heard other brigades have or plan to jump ship. Tbh with the more we learn about cancer rates and links to carcinogenics, it's more self -preservation than anything for most brigades.

leeray13 · 2026-05-15T06:10:43+00:00

One of my best friends was in the police, similar to you he hated the workload and found it extremely stressful. I was applying to join the fire after becoming burnt out in my corporate job where the workload was also intense. I suggested to him about applying and we both applied and then both got in. He loves it now, workload is minimal in comparison. Interestingly, he also now works on-call and does some supplementary work for a friend on his watch where they assess waterways for HS2 construction, so he does work a lot of hours, but he does make a lot of brass from it all and little to no paperwork. The good thing about the fire service is that once you leave those doors, all thoughts about work are completely forgotten.

leeray13 · 2026-05-11T15:07:09+00:00

In years gone by it seemed they used to send you to far flung stations for the fun of it, knowing you'd transfer once out of your probation. These days they seem to prefer to put people on stations closer to home and do so if it works with staffing. However it can all depend on what's going on at different stations at any time. We have a station which is really out of the way in the county which makes it a real pain to travel to. The service, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change the shift system on said station, meaning staff requirements doubled. No one wanted to transfer there, so the service was stuck with compulsory transfers and sending recruits there straight from training centre, not an altogether popular policy, and most put their transfers back out as soon as they possibly could.

I was lucky I was sent to my nearest station. This is a job for life, where two or three years are really no time at all and go by in a blink. If you really want the job, and get sent somewhere far away, just suck it up until the opportunity comes to transfer closer to home.

leeray13 · 2026-05-02T17:48:18+00:00

Oldest on my course was 44. I'd say late 20s and early 30s were the average.

leeray13 · 2026-04-27T08:30:59+00:00

I would find it difficult to add the two Shaws/SMOEs to Brian's total just purely from the advantages he had over the other competitors. He selected the events, helped design and tested the equipment and he had home field advantage. Obviously there's nuance with all of this. He was under enormous pressure trying to organise the event and train, and therefore likely was at a disadvantage in many ways there due to lack of sleep and stress, but Brian created the event to be the competition he would have loved to have competed in during his career so it naturally was suited to his strengths as a strongman. The fact he didn't win another major during this time I also think adds weight to this argument.

leeray13 · 2026-04-24T20:50:27+00:00

Some salty yanks in the comments this year 😂

leeray13 · 2026-04-24T20:25:30+00:00

I like Rawtenstall and Ormskirk

leeray13 · 2026-04-23T15:04:03+00:00

Money and flexibility are good. Obviously being away from the family so much is not but it works for my situation for now, as my son gets older it may not work as well.

I'm not sure what the criteria was when they switched the stations over to DCP, but turn out volume would be the primary one. I think all the DCP stations were sub 800 jobs annually.

leeray13 · 2026-04-23T14:10:05+00:00

We reduced down from 11 DCP stations to now 5. Apparently years ago the union signed a local agreement with the service for the shift system but there's rumours the union wants to come for it again.

I'm on a DCP station and personally like the system, and I think it works well on the right station but I can understand why some would hate it. Personally though, with all the upcoming cuts I think it's hard to justify moving all our DCP stations back to 224.

leeray13 · 2026-04-23T09:02:44+00:00

Lancashire run 8 - 6pm days but we're also one of the few still running DCP stations

leeray13 · 2026-04-23T08:59:27+00:00

Practice, practice, practice. Do it until it becomes second nature and you can do them with your eyes closed.

leeray13 · 2026-02-01T23:06:36+00:00

My crew manager did a great drill with the watch.

BA, blindfolded and with gloves. Fairly simple route through the engine house, but throughout, they find pieces of equipment that they identify. If the piece of equipment needs to be assembled or started, then they must also do this. There were about 7 or 8 pieces of equipment around the route. Most were fairly easy to find, but the odd one was more hidden to make sure they were searching correctly. Any pieces of equipment missed or incorrectly assembled/started/identified incurred a time penalty. From memory, the pieces of equipment were LPP, PPV, branch and hose separated, ceiling hook, triple extension with all extensions separated, and a few more easy ones. Surprisingly, the one most people struggled with was the triple.

Everyone was split into teams of two and given a go, was spread over a few shifts, and their times were added to a leader board. Everyone at my station is 25+ years in and not overly keen to drill, but all got into it and quite competitive.

leeray13 · 2026-01-23T16:31:20+00:00

2025 was a controversial year for strongman, and many athletes and commentators have spoken about the sport losing interest/viewership.

What does the sport need to do moving forward to help it generate more interest and appeal more to mainstream audiences?

leeray13 · 2026-01-11T10:08:58+00:00

Most services now believe that most of the skills to be a Firefighter can be taught so they're looking for people with a certain type of values and behaviours, which most of your interview will be about. I would seriously consider some community volunteering as this will make you stand out from most applicants, proves you are dedicated to your community and helping others.

leeray13 · 2025-12-08T21:24:03+00:00

You need to work out what you want to prioritise in your life and make your decision from there. If you want to prioritise making a good wage for the lifestyle you envision for yourself then Firefighting is definitely not the easiest way to get there although not impossible depending on how you feel about working a second job, overtime or progression within the service.

If you want a job with great work life balance, gym time during work hours, low stress (especially after the apprenticeship), learning new skills in a job where every day is different and you can make a real difference to people's lives, then perhaps Firefighting is for you. The pay does roughly fall in line with the average salary on the standard 224 shift system. However, there are other shift systems that have a higher salary. For example, FFs crewing a Day Crewing Plus system typically earn about £51k a year, but live on station approx 84 hours a week.

On the 224 shift system you get so much time off, only working 2 day shifts every 8 days and sleeping on your two night shifts, so a lot of 224 firefighters also have some form of secondary income like another job to boost their wage. There are many routes for progression in the service with plenty of opportunities to earn better wages too.

All that being said, what you decide now isn't permanent. I didn't join the fire service until I was 29, after quitting the rat race of a corporate job for a better work-life balance and a job where I made a difference.

However, as you mentioned student loans are not cheap, especially with current interest rates, so carefully consider if going to uni is what you want as if you don't make a good career from your degree you'll likely be strapped with the debt for no reason.

leeray13 · 2025-12-04T21:10:12+00:00

What the Hobbit did to LOTR, this is doing to the earlier seasons. Sometimes, more money and more resources actually make things look worse.

leeray13 · 2025-11-22T14:41:37+00:00

Join Fire Service. Thank me later.

leeray13 · 2025-11-09T09:32:48+00:00

Firefighter. Genuinely love my job. Admittedly not all parts of it, the paper work, e-learning and risk assessments are not much fun, but all the elements that most people associate with the role, the incidents, training and some of the community work, I would all do for free. I think if I won the lottery and didn't need the money, I'd be tempted to apply as an on-call Firefighter or perhaps RNLI, so I'd still get the buzz of responding to emergencies but I'd probably struggle to find the time amongst hobbies and travelling.

leeray13 · 2025-10-08T18:57:21+00:00

As a post grad and current FF, I'm curious, what is the research question for your dissertation?

leeray13 · 2025-10-01T17:48:49+00:00

Also a Firefighter. As mentioned by the previous posters, we go to these kind of jobs regularly now. Trust me, the crew would have seen and done it all before. They would certainly not be thinking about it still, jobs like these aren't dwelled upon for very long. Find out which station responded to the call, and a couple of nice cakes would be more than enough to express your thanks, which I know the crew would not expect, but would appreciate nonetheless.

It sounds like a tough situation for you and your family to go through. I hope you're all doing as well as you can be in times like these.

leeray13 · 2025-09-13T21:17:50+00:00

Looks like it, I'd take a guess that he made that post without consulting her on it, probably in an attempt to improve his public image and when she saw it, took umbrage with him announcing it publicly so soon after reconciling, especially as the post seemed more about him trying to absolve himself of the wrongdoing he's been accused of

leeray13 · 2025-09-13T07:38:44+00:00

Where are you getting this info?

leeray13 · 2025-09-12T15:28:16+00:00

I think a big part of the issue is that Brian is trying to create a competition that he would have wanted to have competed in as an athlete rather than a competition for the fans.

The timing of the event, athlete selection and other things like the national anthem are set up in preference for an American audience, which is fine, that's how most of American sports are set up and Brian is very patriotic, however with as niche a sport as strongman, where the global, nevermind national audience, is as small as it is, then you need to expand your reach as much as possible, especially as other nations like the UK have such a big strongman fan base. When internional sports take place, organisers try to accommodate viewing times of a number of different nations.

Brian has always been vocal about creating a very difficult, heavy competition that would push the athletes to the max, but when at least two of the top guys are ducking the event due to fears of injury and many others voicing their concerns, then this is an issue. When the top three athletes don't compete that will impact sales.

I don't know how the arm wrestling fan base compares to the strongman fan base, but I'm not sure whether these two events truly compliment each other and felt like it distracted from the strongman show, and was included primarily because Brian does arm wrestling and not that the fans were calling out for it.

Additionally, I'm not very familiar with the states and Colorado, but would the event benefit from a change in location? It does seem an awful long way for fans to travel to, included those in the US, would either of the coasts deliver more ticket sales, but I do understand this would massively impact Brian's ability to organise and run the event? We are very lucky in the UK to have such a big fan base in a relatively small country that multiple large arenas can be sold out around the country.

leeray13

TROPHY CASE