In beginning my first ever blog (and, when the editor reads the copy, probably my last), I am reminded of a fire consultant, an ex fire officer. When told he could become a registered engineer through the IFE (a route open to many fire and rescue service personnel), he mused with modesty: “Last week I couldn’t spell engineer and now I are one”.

Well, a few weeks ago I didn’t know what a blog was and now I write one. As in all 21st century things, to understand it, I asked the kids who explained it all to me. As the daughter who did the explanation once had her contract with a Pizza joint terminated rather suddenly after serving American tourists with a special offer of six beers in a bucket by pouring six bottles of beer into a rusty bucket and throwing some ice cubes in for good measure, I may have it all wrong. No doubt, for a long time, I will be overshadowed by my neighbour on this strange cyber world, Graham Ellicott, whose talented writings I have always admired, and who once managed to weave a story about my mother into a piece on Approved Inspectors.

I begin my inane ramblings (that’s what the kids told me my blog would be) in interesting times. Even today, the dust of the new fire safety legislation continues to settle. Does the dust represent the cleaning up that occurs in the snagging phase of new, innovative construction, or does it represent the early crumbling of a badly designed structure put to uses never envisaged by the designer? (I’d say answers on a postcard, but they’re old hat in the modern electronic age.) Time will tell, but a new government is unlikely, in this respect, to tinker too much with the legacy of their predecessors.

Villain of the piece

So we can look forward, for some time to come, to the existing postcode lottery in England and Wales in terms of not just interpretation of technical requirements (something we have always lived with under previous legislation), but in the form of enforcement action ranging from a view of one fire and rescue service that every enforcement notice is a failure because most people will comply if deficiencies are explained, to the view that every Responsible Person is a villain who will do nothing unless subject to enforcement!

We can also look forward to the continuation of the prosecution lottery in England and Wales. (I love the situation in Scotland where decisions on whether or not to prosecute are filtered by the Procurator Fiscal). The government told fire and rescue services that they were the new fire safety police. Some fondly remembered Dixon of Dock Green and Bert Lynch from Z Cars, so go for the clip around the ear approach. Others immediately thought of the Sweeney, so metaphorically kicking doors, and with pick axe handles at the ready, telling people “you’re nicked chummy”.

Some days I find it all rather depressing. Enough already, it’s time to reach for the Talisker bottle and spin a few Proclaimers disks.