The Fire Service: When Wokeness Equals Danger

The fire service is in the firing line – if you’ll pardon the pun, but very much intended. Between you, me, and the Martians, we’d think their job is to rescue us from danger, especially of the burning kind. Whether we are black, white, man, woman, fat, slim, tall, or short, they come to our rescue. Without hesitation. So far, so good. But wait. Now I hear that before some of them can do that, particularly the crew of Kent Fire and Rescue Service, they want to know what’s your preferred pronoun.

Imagine this. Your house is on fire. The fire brigade shows up. A representative from the brigade says, ‘Hello, I am here to rescue you from this fire. How would you like me to address you: he, him, she, her, they or them? Or is there another pronoun you would prefer?’ I would be screaming: ‘To hell with that, my house is on fire!’ This protocol of wokeness in the name of being inclusive and embracing diversity is not only stupid but highly dangerous. It is also a case of pandering to a tiny minority. A tiny minority of 0.26 per cent of the population.

To swap the singular ‘he’ or ‘she’ for ‘they’ or ‘them’ would confuse 99.74 per cent of us, thereby suggesting there is more than one person in a burning property. If ‘they’ or ‘them’ can mean any number, how will the fire service know how many people are in the building that need rescuing? In addition, imagine a family of five trapped inside their burning home: the firefighters will first have to ask how each person needs to be addressed. Imagine again, you yourself being on fire. You call the fire service. You risk being told by the dispatcher, ‘You’re on fire? You will have to fill out a pronoun form with the fire crew before they can put you out.’

Today Kent Fire and Rescue Service, tomorrow the rest of us. Woke policies are just causing confusion and misunderstanding and if the 99.74 per cent of the population takes exception to being told what terms we can use and stands up to the 0.26 per cent, we might see some common sense in all this craziness.