Firefighters angered over council plans.

It seems that St Helens council and the town's fire brigade are at loggerheads over proposed new working conditions.

The men and women of the brigade are angry at what they see as the council's meddling.

But the council are adamant that savings have to be made - 'It's simply not cost effective', council official Kevin Slimey-Git told our reporter 'we pay these firemen and women a good bloody wage yet they actually attend a fire once or maybe twice a week. The rest of the time they spend sat around the station cooking their meals and watching TV, they even sleep on the job at nights, and as for the amount of 'naughty' calender shoots they attend, it's a scandal.'

The council's chief auditor Steve Ooze also believes that change is inevitable 'The taxpayers of St Helens are getting royally ripped off by the fire service' he insists. 'It's simply a question of maths, St Helens has a large poulation of work-shy scruffy twats and unemployed single mothers who are much more deserving of the taxpayers money, all we ask of the fire service is that they consider our new working conditions, a strike would be counter-productive and could damage the brigade's reputation.'

So far though the council has been vague concerning the exact form of the proposed new conditions. But the fire brigade claim to know why.

'We've seen a leaked report of the proposed changes' says Jack Handsome of the fireman's union 'and frankly it's a ***** scandal.' He continued, 'basically their plan to cut our hours and therefore our wages is simply this - they don't want us to come into work if it's raining, they think it's a waste of money to have men spraying water all over the place onto fires when the stuff's falling out of the sky.'

Leading Fireman Sammy Biceps of Parr station had this to say 'my lads simply won't put up with it, they don't want to stay at home on rainy days and sit in with their wives and girlfriends, they need to be here at the station, polishing the engines, rolling the hoses, practising sliding down the pole and posing topless in their yellow pants with braces on.' He goes on 'the council seem to believe that we don't put out enough fires or something, which is a load of bollocks, only last week we had 2 plastic bins set ablaze in Haydock, one of my lads is still off sick with burns to his shaved chest after one of the bins did one of those backdraught things. And when we're not out fighting fires we have to install smoke detectors free for the grateful housewives of the borough'

If the council doesn't come clean with it's plans for non-rainy day contracts then this reporter feels that it might be a very long, very hot summer.