So his next move will be to publish a closure programme due to falling demand in the fire industry adding that any firefighters

So his next move will be to publish a closure programme due to falling demand in the fire industry, adding that any firefighters we do need can be imported from Poland. Then the news will be full of angry pickets shouting “There’s enough flames in them warehouses for three generations”, and we’ll all be wearing yellow stickers saying “Sliding down a pole, not dole”.Prescott’s speech about job cuts makes marginally more sense than his interview after the failure of the peace talks, when he said something like: “I had this dumped on my lap and I’m expected to say why do you asking?” How can anyone do a deal with demands that are grammatically impossible to fulfil? If the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) accepted Prescott’s terms, they’d be committed to fighting fires in three different tenses at once.Some of the other complaints against the union make even less sense. Prescott often cites the firefighters’ “generous” pension scheme, but they have to pay into it in the first place. You might as well say: “And they receive generous supermarket benefits. They have a scheme with Tesco whereby, as long as they pay money to a cashier, they are entitled to take away bags full of household items.”Or, with its usual logic, The Sun complains that “long-suffering army wives blasted striking fire-fighters and demanded ‘give us back our men’”.

Apparently one mother said her daughter no longer recognises her dad because he’s been away so long That’s six days so far. So presumably The Sun’s line on war with Saddam will now change to “Bomb Iraq, but not if it’s going to go on all week”.Similarly, the Government maintains that the FBU refuses to work with part-time staff This is simply untrue. If they want to make things up, they could at least be imaginative, with stuff like: “They refuse to go anywhere if they have to tread on cracks in the paving stones.”Then there are the daily stories of where fires have taken place each day, as if no fires ever happened until the strike started. So, as they’re hosing down your house someone will say: “While you’re waiting to see whether your husband can be rescued, why not try some of our wide selection of delicious Belgian chocolates?”
More from Mark Steel. Dr Geoffrey Eley’s definitive text, Home Poultry Keeping, has just supplanted the Rothmans Football Yearbook on my bedside table. As much as I have entertained myself during bouts of insomnia by committing to memory Everton FC’s biggest-ever FA Cup victory (11-2 vs Derby County in the 1889-90 season), I am now a home poultry keeper, with even more important stuff to learn. For instance, I learnt that if an egg-bound bird is given some olive oil, “she will usually expel the egg within a couple of hours”.

Whether ordinary olive oil or extra virgin, Dr Eley does not say. Either way, I take very seriously my responsibilities to Babs, Ruby, Ginger and Marigold. During our journey home with them on Sunday, they were, at various stages, named Amber, Bunty, Edwina, Poppy, Daffodil and Treasure. We let the children decide, although if one of our birds had been a cockerel, I would have pressed strongly for Egbert. When we came to live in Docklow in July, we quickly became very fond of an old Muscovy duck who waddled imperiously – if a waddle can ever truly be described as imperious – around the old cider press outside our back door. The kids christened him Egbert, which seemed to me a wonderful name. But then one day I found myself chatting to Mr O, our predecessor here, who has converted the old barn into a splendid new house Egbert waddled by and we both looked at him fondly “The children call him Egbert,” I said Mr O’s smile slipped slightly.