In a tragedy that has left the cobbled streets of Antwerp smouldering and its citizens weeping, a ferocious blaze has claimed five souls, reducing a block of flats to a blackened, skeletal ruin. The fire, which erupted in the dead of night, has sparked a Europe-wide shudder of safety concerns, and who should come waddling to the rescue but the British fire service, armed with nothing but a plucky attitude and a thermos of lukewarm PG Tips.
Yes, dear reader, as plumes of acrid smoke billowed over the Scheldt, His Majesty’s finest hose-wielders offered their ‘expertise’ to their Belgian counterparts. Expertise. One can only imagine the scene: a crisp, professional briefing where our boys, with their magnificent handlebar moustaches and red braces, explained the finer points of knocking on doors and shouting ‘Fire!’ in a calm but urgent manner. Because, of course, Belgium’s own firefighters are mere novices in the art of water and ladders.
But let us pause to mock the absurdity of this theatre. Five people are dead. Their lives extinguished in a hellstorm of flame and smoke, and the British response is a cargo plane of technical advice. What next? Sending our world-renowned queue experts to sort out the crowds at a funeral? Offering seminars on the correct way to look sombre and shake one’s head?
Let us not forget the context, that backdrop of ‘Europe-wide safety concerns’ that has become the Brussels bubble’s favourite hand-wringing headline. Every time a spark catches a curtain, a committee is formed, a directive is drafted, and a dozen bureaucrats with clipboards descend like fireflies on a corpse. They will pore over building regulations, fire escape routes, and the tensile strength of foam mattresses. They will produce a report the size of a small car. And nothing will change, until the next blaze.
Meanwhile, the British firefighters, bless their hearts, have offered to send a delegation. A delegation. One pictures them landing at Zaventem airport, stepping off the plane in full uniform, looking around for a stiff gin and tonic, and then standing around a Belgian fire station, nodding sagely while the locals show them how to operate a hose. Because that is the British speciality: advice freely given, often unsolicited, and always delivered with the unshakeable conviction that we know better.
I propose a new initiative: Crisis Expertise Exports Plc. We dispatch experts in every disaster. Floods in Venice? Send the British plumbers to explain the concept of high tide. Earthquakes in Italy? Our structural engineers will arrive with a pamphlet on tectonic plates. It is the perfect solution: it makes us feel terribly important, costs the taxpayer a fortune, and achieves absolutely nothing.
But let us not forget the dead. Five families will never see their loved ones again. They will receive condolences from a phalanx of officials, and perhaps a visit from a British firefighter who will tell them, with a serious face, that ‘we are doing everything we can’. What that means, in the cold, cynical light of dawn, is that a committee will be formed, a delegation will be sent, and the gin will flow freely in the press room. The real fire, the one that consumed those five lives, will be forgotten in a fortnight, replaced by the next outrage, the next tragedy, the next opportunity for a photo op.
So let us raise a glass to the dead, and another to the British firefighters, whose expertise is as bottomless as their charm. But let us also demand something more: not advice, not expertise, but action. Real, meaningful, unglamorous action that stops buildings from becoming infernos. Until then, the only thing on fire is our collective sanity, and I, for one, am reaching for the nearest extinguisher. Or perhaps just another gin.
