In addition to the forthcoming closure of Police stations in the Boro and and hospital A&Es nearby , the London Fire Brigade are to close 12 fire stations and strip appliances from others. A total of 18 fire engines will go along with 500 jobs.

Despite the LFB's persistent failure to reach their own attendance times in Hillingdon borough, Hayes fire station is to loose a fire engine which is bound to make things worse.

Don't worry though, its clear that the chief officer is a fan of the Italian job, as he is planning to introduce minis carrying first aid kits and extinguishers to go out first and check the incident is real (at which point the mini crews can call for a proper fire engine). I don't think we will see these cars in Hillingdon as they will be mainly used in busy inner city areas - but who knows??

If you think minis as fire engines is mad, the LFB are also considering a system where you can call them to emergencies via Twitter. I am not sure why this is useful as the vast majority or Twitter users access the site via their mobile phones (which you can dial 999 from for free).

How ironic that it has taken 72 years to come around to using a "mini fire engine" again. While serving in the AFS.( Auxillary Fire Service) in Hayes in 1940, I remember we had 6 outlying stations ,manned with 2 trailer pumps, Coventry Climax or Dennis and 2 five men crews . Towing the pumps mounted on a frame with 2 wheels were Taxis, or vans

At times a crew was despatched to join a convoy of pumps proceeding to a large fire such as the docks in London during an air raid.

The gap at the station was covered by a crew from the next town moving a crew in to cover for them .

Was nothing learned by the LFB from that period of fire fighting.

Incidentally those AFS/NFS firemen were paid less than the "regular firemen" who rode the red engines

What they obviously fail to realise is that firemen sat in the station doing nothing is a good thing. That means there is no emergency and no one is in trouble. It's the times when they are needed and there are not enough to cope.

Typical short sightedness in my opinion.

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Lets be careful out there !

Folk trapped in high rise flats, will be invited to jump into a hankie held tight by women with shopping bags who happen to be passing through.

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Its not always the biggest and the bestest, its them that make the least mistakes.

Not once you understand that public safety, well-being, and the protection of property are NOT the top priority of those in ultimate authority.

Widespread fear, anxiety, losses and disasters, do make a population more compliant and obedient to dictatorial government – which is the aim. This is the whole purpose of the economic crash engineered by the politicians and the banksters. They are deliberately crashing the system in readiness for a one-world pseudo-democratic government

The constant official warnings of man-made extreme weather disasters fits the same program. Hardly a day goes by now without some warning of an approaching extreme weather event – even when most of the warnings turn out to be within the bounds of normality – as in the recent heavy rainfall.

The constant official nagging about 'health issues', wrong food, over-weight, too much this, insufficient of that, are also part of the official program to convince the people that only the 'experts' know what is best for us. They simply want us to become fully compliant and obedient to their dictates.

Disasters, threats, warnings, etc. are also 'good reasons' for the political elite to dream up new ways of taxing us into submission. First they create the problem, then they come up with the preconceived solution – which usually amounts to increased taxes, reduced freedoms, larger government, and reduced quality of life for ordinary folk.

And there's the irony. The UK fire service has completely changed the way it is operated in recent years. The National Audit Office has pretty much always praised the fire service as being a good model of public service efficiency, and as a result of new ways of working, the fire service is even more efficient now.

One controversial area is that fire crews have changed the work they do between incidents from 'incident preparedness' (training and inspection of commercial premises) to what is called 'community fire safety' - CFS- (directing their time to prevent fires in homes - where the significant amount of their work comes from. The CFS has been a huge success and call rates are down as a direct result. This low call rate seems to have provided an excuse for the cuts

The Govt do not seem to understand that people need fire crews to arrive in minutes despite how busy they now are. Politicians treat the fire service like a bus company. They think if fewer people are using a bus route, then it should be scrapped. The fire service cannot be seen in such a way.

Yes there is huge swathes of fat than can be cut from London's fire service. Like the Police, they have lots of trained uniform staff sitting behind desks pushing bits of paper around that could be done by admin type staff on a hugely lower salary. They have huge departments that do not directly help in emergencies that should be cut, such as a large equal opportunity dept. Perhaps procurement of kit and uniform could be done by a single UK dept rather than scores of separate fire brigades - the list goes on. There's £millions of savings possible before a single fire engine or station is cut

When you dial 999, you can wait 60 mins for an ambulance (I did last year). You can wait longer for the Met. But you are quite likely to get a fire crew in under 10 minutes - I reckon most people are pleased with this arrangement. Its sad that politicians see this amazing rapid service as 'inefficiency' and seem to be striving for the fire service to join the other exhausted 999 services, which run flat out almost all day with not system of dealing with unexpected demand.

Lastly, the fire service were nearly at breaking point during the London riots, and were stretched during 7/7 and during numerous severe weather events. With more civil unrest, terrorism and poor weather on the horizon, it's important the fire service have spare capacity to cope with high demand periods. This may involved appliances and crews not being always operationally busy 24/7. This is good planning and not inefficiency.