AS a serving firefighter who has recently voted for industrial action to take place, I feel that I must make the general public aware of our role as a firefighter and extinguish the words "40 per cent" and "greed".

I joined the fire service nine years ago knowing exactly how much my salary would be, but not knowing exactly what shift pattern I would work and for how long.

I work 48 hours over four days and six Saturdays and Sundays over an eight-week period, covering both days and nights, inclusive of any Bank Holidays that occur in that time period. This year I will work on Christmas Day and New Year's Day.

I do not receive any shift allowance. My previous employment was shift working in a local engineering company. The shift allowance was worked out around 25 per cent to 45 per cent of your salary depending on when you worked.

If you broke our current salary down to say that 40 per cent of it was shift allowance, we would earn around £13,000 per year still for 48 hours per tour. The European average working week is 37 hours! We are only asking for what other workers receive. Give us a shift allowance and we could earn between £27,000 and £31,000 per year.

During my time in the fire service I have attained professional skills such as fire fighting, trauma training, community fire safety, road traffic accidents and chemical incidents.

Basically, whenever the public needs our assistance we are there for 100 per cent of the incidents and we resolve 100 per cent of the incidents.

I am, along with all of my work colleagues, prepared to put my own life in danger by entering a burning building, crawl under an overturned car or HGV to rescue other people -- but for what price?

I believe £30,000 is a fair reflection for a professional job, other professional people earn this money and even more with overtime, for example police, train drivers, etc. We are not asking for more, nor are we asking for less.

As for Tony Blair saying an increase in mortgage payments and taxes will have to be made in order to fund the increase is ridiculous. An FBU independent review has found out that a weekly 41p increase on each householder's council tax would find the rise for the fire service, and I could ask the public would they object to this? I think not!

The Government is saying lives will be put at risk when the fire service is on strike. We don't want to go on strike, but if they are aware of lives at risk, does that not say enough about the value of the fire service to this country.

We are trained to save lives -- support your fire service and God forbid you will never need us.