Playing With Fire - by David Prowse

Oh, how they love to centralize and, every time they do,
The wishes of the many are negated by the few,
Now, Fire Brigade control rooms are consigned to join the rest,
In that far-off land of fiction that they nominate "south-west".

From Dominack to Devizes, we'll be swept within the net,
At the mercy of a distant voice with targets to be met,
In that fearful, frantic moment when you're screaming down the phone,
You'd better know your postcode or you'll find you're on your own.

For the sake of economics and Big Brother's meddling hand,
We'll be pawns within technology they hope they'll understand,
At the whims of electronics prone to digital caprice,
Dependent on a micro-chip for rescue or release.

All the tricks of local knowledge will have no part to play
Or yet the reassurance recognition can convey,
On the altar of their vanity, we can but summon prayers,
That practice matches theory when there's smoke upon the stairs.

In their cavalier assumptions and their bland officialese,
Our safety and security are tossed upon the breeze
As yet another certainty falls victim to the lance,
Surrendered up to dogma and the fickleness of chance.

We wonder if we matter and we wonder if we rate
In the fluff they manufacture and the empires they create,
It seems our only function in the system they address
Is to look to us for more while they provide a whole lot less.

We have worthy modern heroes in the folk who fight the fires
But, beyond them, Prescott's puppets bow and scrape to his desires
In fireproof little closets where the motto seems to be -
If it all looks good on paper, then it's good enough for me.

When we take a look around us, we can hardly find a spot
Untroubled by the juggernaut that decimates our lot,
We get herded into regions in the cause of cutting cost
So we lose our local voices and identities are lost.

When, down the line, we lose a life because of this affair,
Will they send their deepest sympathies and tell us how they care?
It's sure to be a comfort to a husband's widowed wife
And to know that in the days gone by, we could have saved his life.