REGARDING Eric Leaver's insulting article (LET, October 23), I am a serving firefighter of 15 years. I joined the service after 12 years in industry as a tradesman in engineering.

At that time, pay of a qualified firefighter was comparable to that of a tradesman. I did three month's intensive training before I could set foot in a fire station. This was followed by two years of constant assessment. After that, two more years of on-going training before I eventually passed my qualifying exam.

I was now on nearly equivalent to the wages I left four years previously, despite working longer hours; despite working nights and weekends. Since qualifying nine years ago, I have received no increments in my wage. I am £8,000 behind a police constable with the same amount of service.

Since qualifying, the job has changed beyond recognition. Sure we still put fires out and attend road accidents, but I qualified as a EFAD driver, in order to drive the appliances (no extra pay). My licence is on the line if I make a mistake when I am transporting a firefighting crew to a persons-reported incident.

We have changed from a fire brigade to a fire and rescue service. This brings more tasks to be learned, waterside incidents (no extra pay), rope rescue, aerial ladder platform operators (no extra pay), swift water technicians, power boat operators, community fire safety, mass demonstration, etc. All for no extra pay.

Nights and weekends for the basic hourly rate. Local works fire brigades earn between £26,000 and £30,000 even though they may never attend a serious incident. If they do, invariably we take over the incident. Why shouldn't local authority firefighters who will deal with any major incident earn the same sort of money.

The so-called independent review into pay is just a farce. Tony Young, who represents the union side, stated before the review even met that we would not like the outcome. How is that independent?

We have had eight reviews in the last five years. The last cost the taxpayer millions of pounds. It involved fire cover and change from the property-based cover that had served the country since 1935 to a life-based cover based on health and safety and risk assessment procedures. Needless to say the government shelved the report due out last spring as it recommended a 100 per cent increasing in the funding and staffing of the service.

We have our own independent reports that form the basis of evidence to suggest we are worth a take home pay of £8.50 per hour putting our lives on the line for strangers. This report is from the Labour research department, the same people who recommended a 40 per cent increase in MP's pay last year.

Before getting on your high horse and berating us for waiting for a call in stations, just realise! that whilst we are waiting for calls we are involved in many other tasks on the station. To suggest we play snooker all day is to go back to the 1960-70s

May I suggest Eric Leaver spends a day or night with the crews at Blackburn or Burnley. I am sure he earns a lot more than we do and is not in need of working family tax credits or has the need to take a second job out of necessity.

Please gather all the facts before slagging off professional workers who, for once, are not defending the public against cuts to their service, but are thinking about their own families for a change.

IAN McGILL, Singleton Way, Fulwood, Preston.