February 7th, 2022Just Sayin’…

I HAVE been watching a fair bit of TV lately. Just relaxing a little, staying at home, breathing deeply – without fear. You know the drill.
It’s been nice. I don’t even mind the adverts. Well, some of them are hard to watch. I don’t like the ones where the blokes yell – selling ladders that flip into all sorts of shapes, and cookware that you can throw in a handful of nails and they still don’t get scratched. Not sure who is doing the cooking at his home but if I found Kyle throwing in a few nails under the spag bol I would be a bit worried, scratches or not.
But the advert that is really getting under my skin is the one for Fire Rescue Victoria. I Googled it a bit and I think it is put out by the United Firefighters Union. I did email them but got nothing back but it sort of makes sense because do you remember the argy-bargy between the union, the state government and the CFA – that’s the Country Fire Authority for all you newbies to our region. And welcome.
Back to the advert, which I find rude, galling and an insult to the many, many, highly trained, caring, always professional, CFA volunteers. Yes, that’s right, volunteers. As in, do this in their own time. For no money. And no glory. Walking away from their businesses, or waking up in the middle of the night, to help both their communities and people they have never met. Many all their adult life.
Yes, the FRV operates mostly in metropolitan Melbourne but some of their 85 stations are in places like Bendigo and Wodonga, Ballarat and Portland. And I have nothing against career firefighters. A number of them saved one of our dogs during a house fire in Frankston many years ago. But have a read of the advert’s wording and see if you don’t feel a tad annoyed:
Ready for a house fire or emergency? Ready to free a passenger from a car? Ready for a medical emergency? Ready to tackle a toxic warehouse fire? You don’t have to be because your new Fire Rescue Victoria is. Find out if your community is now protected by professional firefighters from FRB with four years of specialised training, state-of-the-art equipment and guaranteed rapid response. Professional fire fighters are ready for anything.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like there is an underlying hint of volunteer or professional. You can’t have both. Which is rubbish. We live next door to a CFA station and those volunteers are there every Sunday from 9am, training, making sure everything is ready to go. They not only attend bushfires but also housefires, accident call-outs, searches for missing people. In 2009 they were sent to Kinglake and Marysville to look for bodies. Doing that is the meaning of “ready for anything”.
Look, I am sure there is room for both services, just not these adverts. And what about the idea you don’t have to be ready for any emergency. Nice thought but we saved ourselves and one dog before the firies turned up at Frankston. And Kyle gave some pretty good first aid when a bloke on Stradbroke Island suffered third degree burns after the generator in the shed he was in blew up. Surely we need to take some responsibility for ourselves. So just take the adverts down and get back to the core business of saving lives and property. It’s not a hard ask.
Final thought, not on firefighters, but on local businesses. I know we are meant to be “living with Covid” after “letting it rip” but with Omicron being so contagious, it is like we are in a little bit of a self-imposed lockdown. Which is fine if that makes you feel safer but if you can support a local business in any way, please think about it. They are doing it tough again – and with no government support this time around. Just sayin’…
(Oh, you can watch the ad at www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4F4ToblVOM)