UK Top 10 News

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has declared that the UK’s fire and rescue service is in a ‘state of emergency,’ demanding an immediate recruitment of 5,000 new firefighters to address the current crisis in public safety.
The union, aligning with other groups like the CWU and TSSA, points to a devastating loss of one in five firefighters since the austerity cuts began in 2010.
FBU leaders argue that this reduction in personnel has critically undermined the service’s ability to protect the public.
General Secretary Matt Wright contends that workers in Britain are ‘paying the price for a broken economic model,’ where the ‘ultra-rich continue to reap the benefits of a rigged system that rewards wealth not work,’ while public services are ‘on the brink of collapse.’ The union’s campaign is not only about reversing the decade and a half of austerity measures that have stripped resources from the service but also about a fundamental shift in economic policy.
To fund the immediate increase of 5,000 firefighters and the necessary investment in public services, the FBU is urging the government to act decisively by introducing a progressive wealth tax.
This tax, they argue, would be the mechanism to rebuild public services, create jobs, and offer crucial support to struggling households, providing a sustainable solution to what they describe as a crisis in the public sector.