Fire can be the friend of man, or it can be his deadly foe. In the 1600s, fire destroyed London town - along with thousands of people's lives, their homes and their businesses. At the same time, it destroyed the last vestiges of plague as it purged the city of the disease which had killed millions all across Europe.

We were reminded of the ferocity of fire at its most destructive when it gutted the Penhallow Hotel at Newquay recently and killed and injured people as it ran uncontrollably amok.

As a result, feelings have understandably been riding high as the true extent of fire protection in Cornwall has been revealed by the press in the aftermath of this terrible local disaster.

A map, provided by Cornwall county fire brigade reveals that most of the fire protection cover, certainly in the far west of the county, is "retained," which means that our fire fighters are effectively part-time.

We know perfectly well that these valiant men and women are as professional and as brave as any full-time fire fighter, but that doesn't alter the fact that people who are in the middle of doing another job, or a family party or asleep in the middle of the night, are just not physically able to get to the fire station to man the fire engines, and thus to the fires, as quickly as if they were "on watch" and ready to go the minute the alarm bell sounds for a "shout."

And who, we must ask ourselves, is responsible for this? The answer is the Liberal Democrat dominated Cornwall county council who have been pouring our money into their own bureaucracy and its monster infrastructure, instead of into the services they are statutorily required to provide for us.

And it doesn't stop there. The ambulance service, the link and lifeline between our homes and our communities and the lifesaving services at the one and only hospital in Cornwall, anywhere near properly equipped and staffed, is no more than an ageing fleet of converted vans which rattle and bang their way backwards and forwards across the county in all weathers on a daily basis, ferrying people from the West Cornwall Hospital at Penzance to the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Truro, for crucial diagnostic scans and tests - an 80-mile round trip which is a nightmare for ill patients.

As a result, there is a three-hour wait for an ambulance to carry seriously ill patients from their homes to the hospital in circumstances where a firm diagnosis has not yet been made, therefore putting the lives of the community at risk. And once again, this is down to the Liberal Democrat dominated Cornwall county council.

After nearly a decade of Liberal Democrat "rule" and representation in Cornwall, our emergency and social services are no longer creaking, they are breaking down and threatening lives.

If this is an example of how the "unitary authority," so beloved of the Lib Dems, is going to run, then we are quite sure we can do without it. It is time we governed ourselves.

Jeff Mager (UKIP Cornwall committee chairman), Tess Nash (chairman, St Ives and the Isles of Scilly), Dave Parker (chairman, Falmouth-Camborne), Ian Proctor (chairman, Truro-St Austell), R B M Budge (chairman, N Cornwall), John Bass (chairman, S E Cornwall)