YET more strike action by firefighters should underline to any competent politician that these well-respected public-sector workers are not going to take their Tory-led pensions punishment lying down.

These brave men and women regularly put their lives on the line for others and rightly have no time for slippery right-wing politicians’ attempts to attack their terms and conditions.

Rather than sitting down to discuss a reasonable resolution on ridiculous proposals to strip early retirement rights from these hard-working and life-saving men and women this rabidly anti-union conservative coalition has done everything in its power to provoke strike action.

News that Fire Minister Brandon Lewis is playing political games by withholding information that could resolve this long-running dispute and instead spending time whipping up the conditions that have forced the FBU union into fresh walkouts speaks volumes about this odious individual’s priorities.

Far from sitting down to resolve the issue he has done completely the opposite.

This macho agenda smacks of being more about vilifying trade union members to lay the groundwork for the Tories’ stated agenda of yet more draconian anti-union laws on “day one” of a potential 2015 re-election than about seeking a solution that will allow firefighters to get back to their main focus — keeping us safe.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack has underlined time and again that the attack on pensions is a step too far for professionals whose physically demanding job brings them regularly in contact with some of the most gruesome scenes anyone sees in peacetime.

He’s explained that the government’s plans will leave these critical workers facing the boot from the service on fitness grounds but without access to a pension — possibly for years.

Lewis’s actions beg the question — just what does he believe the role of a fire minister actually is?

Surely part of it is to maintain a decent relationship with the people who actually deliver the service and ensure that they are backed to the hilt to be able to save lives.

On both of these basic tests Lewis has failed.

Failed by overseeing the worst industrial relations in the service for decades.

Failed by spending time provoking rather than negotiating away a strike that firefighters do not want and which could put lives at risk.

It is patently clear that the minister is not up to the job. Lewis must go.

US bullying

THE US State Department’s ridiculous insistence that Cuba is somehow a state sponsor of terror tells us all we need to know about the hypocritical priorities of the world’s biggest bully.

There’s not a shred of evidence that the socialist country has done anything to justify this claim.

Unless, that is, in the bizarre minds of US imperial bureaucrats the donation of thousands of lifesaving Cuban doctors overseas to help deliver care in poor communities somehow constitutes “terrorism.”

The plain fact is that this is just another vindictive act in the long list of hateful policies aimed at snuffing out its plucky neighbour’s decision to plot a path for itself independent from US power and money.

It’s past time that the US caught up with the rest of the world and reversed its hostile stance.