Four firefighters are due before a disciplinary hearing over their refusal to hand out leaflets at a gay pride march in Glasgow
When did the ‘enthusiastic participation’ become compulsory?
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Gay pride – with North Korean characteristicsAugust 28th, 2006 |
 24 comments to Gay pride – with North Korean characteristics |
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Sounds like constructive dismissal to me.
Best regards
I have to say, I’m having trouble believing the evidence of my own eyes.
Not April the First, is it?
The firefighters message should be ‘put out your fags’.
The firefighters message should be ‘put out your fags’.
I am sure those with an agenda were put out.
This is pure Thought Police. It clearly shows how the Sociofascitic mindset functions. They want obedience. They have no concept of “volunteer” or “free will”.
This is where unions should step in and defend members’ rights. If they do not, then they are just a collective bargaining organisation and shame on them.
It became compulsory when wearing a “Hetero Pride” T-shirt was deemed hate speech by the courts…
This is scary in so many ways…
Correct me if I’m wrong but aren’t they being disciplined for ‘not working’ as opposed to being disciplined for ‘discriminating against gays’?
Wouldn’t they face a disciplinary hearing for say not pitching up for work, or failing to attend as marshalls for a local fair?
This link was posted in a comment at the Guardian today
http://www.secularism.org.uk/theextraordinarycaseofthepaganan.html
I’ve never seen firemen handing out leaflets at “T in the Park” (a big music festival in Scotland). Even though T has a similar demographic to the gay pride events. Are homosexuals somehow more inflammable?
According to the BBC news story dated 18 July, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5192976.stm) the leaflets that the firemen were told to hand out were “fire safety literature”. So it’s not like they were expected to support the march.
Distributing fire safety leaflets at a venue where large numbers of people can be expected to turn up sounds like a legitimate part of a fireman’s job to me.
One would rather like to know what was the nature of the “leaflets”.
Were they the usual don’t-smoke-in-bed stuff that you get from the Fire Brigade, or were they something a bit more political? Something – this is just conjecture – more in keeping with the nature of the parade in question?
Just wondering….
As far as I know it became compulsory in October/ November 1917.
I suppoose at the age of 32 (and still remembering my first Spectrum) I’m appallingly old-fashioned… But I was under the imprssion that firemen (sorry, firefighters) were supposed to put out fires, rescue cats from trees and do consideerably better than me at pulling birds in nightclubs.
I do forget at precisely at what point their job description included “promoting gay-pride events”.
Certain jokes about large hoses are possible here but I shall refrain.
Nothing to do with “not working” – the homosexuals were not on fire and the firemen did not refuse to put them out.
Freedom of association must include freedom not to associate.
To shun someone is not aggression. And it is the nonaggression principle that was the basis of the old Common Law – not J.S. Mill’s “harm principle” where people are not allowed to “parade their shunning of others” (J.S. Mill was not a homosexual, but some people did not like his close relationship with another man’s wife and made clear their dislike by not talking to J.S. Mill and Mrs Taylor and turning their backs on them in public – and he did not like it).
This is one of the sources of the modern doctrine of anti “discrimination”.
Of course if people are not free to “discriminate” (to decide who they wish to talk to, or to trade with) then they are not free – period.
A bigot who will not have black people in his store is an arsehole (and he will cost himself money – both from the black people and from white people who do not like his action), but this not a crime (whatever the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or other statutes may say).
Positive (i.e. state enforced) law may have never stuck to the pure nonaggression principle (after all homosexual acts used to be against both statute and case law and they are not against the nonaggression principle), but these days the concept of the nonaggression principle is not even understood by the legal-political elite.
As for the argument “as long as fire protection is a government service the government has the right to make its employees do anything it feels like” that sounds like a good argument for getting the government out of putting out fires.
It is a myth that there used to be only commercial fire fighters (companies that would only put out fires that threatened property that insured with them), there were many voluntary fire fighters also (both unpaid and paid by voluntary fund raising).
If the government can not understand that the job of firemen is to put out fires (not to build a multicultural-multisexual utopia) then the government should get out of this field.
There are some nice photos of this happy day on Pride Scotia.
I particularly like this one, as it includes a fire engine, as does this one, presumably they are ensuring fire safety, as they would for any street/march event.
Best regards
I must just add another couple of photo links, to those that are currently with “Smite Control”.
the first one
Best regards
And the second one.
As an aside, does anyone have an email address for the Glasgow City Auditor? [This be on the grounds that disciplinary action for non-performance requires the business to be official business, and are all these guys in the photos being paid at the public expense?]
Paul Marks,
Your application of the nonagression principle to this case is masterful.
May I also add to your comment? There is another principle at work here. It is the very simple principle of expecting people to do what they are paid to do and nothing more or less. We employ firemen to put out fires. I fix computers for a living. It’s a useful task which I think I carry out quite well. But it is not the same task as giving PC tirades or delivering milk. I wouldn’t even dream of attempting either – their are Lib-Dems and milkmen (sorry – milk people) who do either task far better than I ever could.
Paul,
There remain many private and volunteer fire fighting units here in the states, and I can guarantee you that if some busybody town official tried to make them pass out gay pride leaflets, that town would be short a number of firemen.
By the standards of the tolerance types, the state can make firemen hand out literature advocating the use of non-flammable sexual lubricant at gay pride events…
“. . . aren’t they being disciplined for ‘not working’ as opposed to being disciplined for ‘discriminating against gays’?”
Ah yes, “insubordination”.
If we’re to allow employers, Government or otherwise, to use the insubordination charge to the point of dictating their employee’s (non-mission related) behaviour and opinions, perhaps we should re-visit the Nuremberg Tribunal verdicts. After all, gassing Jews, shooting prisoners, blitzing Brits, and generally trashing the European continent was done at the direction of Nazi Supervisors, and was, apparently, relevant to their organizational goals.
Whatever else the Nazis may have been guilty of, at least they couldn’t be accused of “not working.” And we can’t have the Nuremberg precedent interfering with some Lefty bureaucrat’s authority to dictate their employees thought processes. A Fireman with an opinion of his own? Horrors.
CFM
Mike Lorrey,
Outside the big cities our firemen tend to be volunteers, too. Only a big city can provide the quantity of fire and accident to support full-time professionals.
That in itself is a clue there may be something more to this incident. Big-city professional firemen are a notoriously awkward workforce. It might turn out not to be the content of the leaflet causing problems so much as insufficient extra pay for the event.
One should be careful of government comming to “help” – even in small town U.S.A.
For example, in a town in New Hampshire (no I can not remember the name of the place) a nongovernment group was the fire service – but they made the mistake (long ago) of accepting taxpayer money.
So the “selectmen” of the town tried to take them over. Of course most New Hampshire towns are not supposed to be governed by politicians they are supposed to be governed by the annual town meeting – but the “selectmen” have slowly mutated into town councilors and (surprise surprise) they are often scumbags.
Of course, it sometimes does not make a difference if selectmen, or councilors or State legislators are not scumbags.
Take the example of government education. In New Hampshire (as in so many States) the courts have decided that X amount of money must be spent on education in a given area whether the voters agree or not.
In State after State such judegments have been made, indeed sometimes it has been held that an area (because it is poor or black or whatever) should be subsidized so that it actually spends more than other areas.
Thus making a nonsense of local democracy (which is already made a nonsense of by court demands for uniform spending on “public services”) and of the very “uniform spending” that the courts themselves have been demanding in education.
Some courts have been demaning that spending be increased till education tests results are equal – which means either spending will be increased without limit (as honest tests will never produce equal results) or the tests will have to be rigged.
The only time I have heard of the Statists losing a “there must be more education spending” case was a a recent case in Texas (where the court decided that their was no Texas Constitutional provision for “good” education and no reason that more taxpayers money should produce better education anyway).
Constitutional issues (State Constitution or United States Constitution) should be judged by juries (if a Constitution is not simple enough for ordinary people to understand then it is no good).
However, if such things must be decided by judges the judges should be elected – and subject to reelection every year or so.
As soon as there is a legal establisment liberty is in trouble (this may not always have been the case – but with the control of legal education by the left it is now).
As for Britian.
“Health and safety” regulations (and other such) will soon get rid of what voluntary fire services that remain.
These days almost every line of work requires a government license or “training qualification”.
Paul,
We have an elected State Supreme Court in Wisconsin. I guess I never gave it much thought. But in the last year we have actually sent a handfull of corrupt politicians to jail (or prison). And our state legislatures can (and do) speak out and rebel against anything and everything.
We have a state imposed property tax cap on the local government’s levy. Last year our township exceeded the cap through a clerical error. The state was sympathetic but informed us that we would forfeit state aid (mostly highway funding) penny for penny for every last cent we exceeded it by. In other words, the town has zero more money to spend but we have more taxes to pay anyway. Needless to say, this outcome produces a significant citizen response.
We have something similar for school taxes. To exceed the cap requires a district wide referendum. (Many of us now call them ‘neverendums.’ The boards just change it a little, maybe lower it a few percent, and then put it up again.) I have something to add to Nigel’s idea of requiring taxes to be voted on. You had better stipulate the days on the in which it can be voted on. Maybe just make two specific days a year eligible. School boards have gone to amazing lengths to reduce voter turnout when they schedule elections. Even going to far as to schedule one on a weekend just a few days from a major election. They knew if it was on a ballot that had wide citizen turnout it would be rejected. It was anyway.
Does anyone know how many people turned up at the Pride Scotia 2006? I read on a gay website that it wasn’t a huge turnout. Wouldn’t it have been better for the fireman to go to a shopping centre or was this about high-profile support for a fashionable minority?