I am writing to you to inquire why it is you employ the ignorant ill-informed columnist Mr Eric Leaver ?

Surely you must realise that he is costing you readers. I do not live in East Lancs but if I did I certainly

wouldn't be purchasing your paper

Today I read his article (October 23) in which his comments relating to the region's firefighters left me

speechless. He obviously has no concept of what the role of a firefighter actually entails.

Statistically he says we only attend incidents 10 per cent of the time but even that means we can be endangering our lives for almost an hour a day or an hour and a half during a night shift. How much risk does Mr Leaver's day include? Not too much I shouldn't think, and I would imagine he earns a damn sight more than a firefighter does!

Our days are not simply spent practising our snooker skills. As well as responding to emergency calls we train hard to make our job as safe as possible, we deliver fire safety advice in people's homes ,we visit schools to educate young children on the dangers of fire and we routinely test all our equipment so it can be relied upon whenever we need it.

As for our pay claim, following the last strike 25 years ago a firefighter's wage was higher than the national average weekly wage. Today it is nearly £100 a week less!

As for us having lost public support, I must disagree. All the polls I have seen have been massively in our favour. Mr Leaver would do well to keep his offensive comments to himself in future and I can only hope his article is not read by any of the family of the firefighter who lost his life at a fire last week, all for £6 an hour and ironically on a day when if we really were all "Bolshie" firefighters he would have been on strike !

A HULLS (Mr), South Shore, Blackpool.