Wings Over Scotland

Click bait… no other eplanation.

Euan McColm can’t count up never mind countdown. McColm claims there are 1600 jobs under threat.

Whenever I come across this kind of thing I just donate some money to YES Scotland. It’s my way of fighting back as I have no power over the MSM.

The article takes the claim by the company that it is losing £10m a month rather too much at face value. In other versions it is £50m a year. However that aside the article has a point. The accompanying picture is presumably because the Spectator wasn’t able to find a picture of Grangemouth. Ratcliffe, Deans or Len.

Worth reading Eric Joyce on Unite activities.. and Scottish Labour out of its depth
link to ericjoyce.co.uk
Quote
As I wrote in my last blogpost (below) Unite’s convener at Grangemouth, Stephen Deans, put an enormous amount of time and effort into trying to sort the local parliamentary selection – effort which should have been put into planning for the crunch talks which Ineos has been signalling for months.  Trade union organisers all over Scotland can see that.  Pat Rafferty, Unite’s dimwitted Scottish Secretary, stressed that the proposed strike was not about pay, the future, jobs – no, none of that stuff.  It was about Deans himself.  Now Rafferty is trying to argue the wider industrial case but he’s missed the bus.  And, by the way, that bus was probably made during a period when Unite (under Rafferty) for once wasn’t on strike at Falkirk’s other main industrial employer, ADL the ‘Olympic’ bus-maker who puts Falkirk on the world map.
 

Just had a peek at the BBC website.
 
link to bbc.co.uk
 
Its “subtle” innuendo implied the Grangemouth fiasco is the fault of Alex Salmond/SNP/Scottish Government because… err… well, they didn’t do something they have no power over. According to the BBC chap in London, this puts into question the whole independence issue. [wee smiley where I bang my head agaist a brick wall]
 
If anything, Grangemouth highlights the need for Scottish independence.

Mr Rafferty & Mr Deans will have to eat some humble pie and attempt to get all the staff back to work.  They have little wriggle room and will have to accept some reduction of their terms and conditions.
 
If their lucky they can regroup at a later date and move on again.  I’ve been on the wrong end of a serious strike once and when your family is involved you don’t cut your nose off to spite your face. The management at the plant are ruthless and unfeeling, but on this occasion, had bigger testicles than the Unite union who always had a weak hand.

Sometimes you just have to accept it.   The SG will revisit this in the future if the referendum is a YES.  AS will make sure that this situation will not happen again and do the best for Scotland.

Actually, he said he’d “just walked through Perth”, and while he may be wrong about the reason for it, SNP activists in Perth at the weekend were certainly in a jovial mood.

Lamont on Scotland tonight now, without a script.
 
Can’t bear to watch..I am against blood sports on principle.

Yup JoLa went off script and said that the SG should nationalise Grangemouth!!!!
She said that when we are independent the SG is going to renationalise the “Royal Mail”
and suggested we could do the same for Grangemouth.
Does that mean she thinks that Yes is going to win….
By the Way, AS was Statesman like, Lamont and the the one who replaced moore whatever his name is were numpties..

She appeared cool, calm and collected..  So what have they done with the *real* Johann..c’mon red coats..Fess Up !!

Eric Joyce on now, looks like he’s just snorted something live on air ! lol

kendomacaroonbar says – @wee Jamie
I am fully aware of the MSM black arts, I merely answered Horace’s question
 
And thank you for doing so. 🙂

The ridiculous Ponsonby spinning for scottish labour and trying to sweep aside questions about Stephen Deans. Even Joyce calling him out for his stupidity.

She appeared cool, calm and collected..  So what have they done with the *real* Johann..c’mon red coats..Fess Up !!
 
I’m not watching it, but earlier this year I came to the conclusion that she’d been taking lessons in “cool, calm and collected” which hadn’t totally taken effect.  Maybe she’s had a refresher course.

You could see the ‘Scottish Establishment’ squirming there.
When is Joyce going to have his Eureka moment and come out the closet as a ‘Yes’?

Just listened again to jola she said that in the event of independence, not when
sorry was getting carried away with my self!!!!

Just listened again to jola she said that in the event of independence, not when
sorry was getting carried away with my self!!!!

Even so, it’s a pretty pointless remark considering that Scotland ain’t gonna be independent in time to do diddly-squat about this present fiasco.  All she has done with that one is agree with Alex’s point that if he had the powers of an independent country he’d have a lot more options open to him.

What was she thinking of, coming out with a line like that?  Just knee-jerk sneer?

Would you?
 
Wear shiny lipstick?
 
Only if I had the right shoes.

Yup Morag. It was a heck of an acknowledgement from JoLa.

Heard Carmichael on Newsdrive this p.m. He was hopeless. Perhaps he comes across as bluff and full of bluster when he is on a prepared script of sorts but faced with a live situation he was as full of waffle as Flipper.
it does seem odd though that Joyce is being held up as the voice of reason – surely it is too late for him to redeem himself. If he does make a comeback as an independent he could split any Labour vote but I doubt if he’ll get enough suport after all his misdemeanors to be able to get a nomination.

Eric Joyce might have his problems, might not live up too a lot of folks expectations of someone who works in the public life thing. But do you know what, I will take Eric Joyce any fuckin day of the week before I have anything to do with 90% of the sleazy career polititian types who are rolled out on the TV, the Murphy, Alexander’s or Mundell types. I know who the people I work with or seem to be around would trust. Ok Eric’s been caught up in some shit in his life, who hasn’t. That’s the working class for you. Shit happens. Everyone I know has a story to tell about run ins with the polis, or bumping the taxman, or when they got a good deal of the wee guy in the pub for some knocked off Armani jeans in the pub. Folk can knock Mr Joyce if they wish, but I think that the folk that are the don’t know/ don’t care at the moment voters, who everyone that comments on political blogs is so desperate to reach out to would say , do you know whit , I’m going to listen to him. He seems pretty normal to me compared to that knob in the £1000 suit telling us we are all In This together.

Scottish Secretary  and World’s fuggliest fish   separated at birth?

kendomacaroonbar
Lamont was in full Kabuki* mode
(*Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by its performers. Kabuki can be interpreted as “avant-garde” or “bizarre” theatre. The expression kabukimono referred originally to those who were bizarrely dressed and swaggered on a street.)
 

@Edward,
 
That could equally apply to Helensburgh on any given Friday night ! lol
 
Domo arigato !

TMIJ, I found out exactly how much good a union does you as an apprentice with Renfrew District Council in the early nineties, they are all self serving wankers. I might get a raw deal at work now sometimes, but after my experience of unions as a boy I would rather stuff raw steak down my trousers in a room full of starving pit bulls, they are less use than an ashtray on a motorbike, and I feel sorry for the people still sucked in by them. I have never known anyone who involved their union in a dispute who could say they were a winner. It just doesn’t happen. It’s just a job creation thing nowadays. Bit like health and safety in my opinion, cost you plenty, but try to get anything out of them, well there’s not a chance.

Paxman v Russell Brand tonight on Newsnight

Well worth a watch…

link to youtube.com

He does Westminster down brilliantly and reinforces why we want out…

Maybe he could be persuaded to do a Billy Bragg and come out in favour of Yes an aw

TMIJ, well you understand my experience of unions, and why I could never bring myself to trust them. In my apprentice days, the union man was always, to be blunt, a fucking idiot. To be a union man you needed to be half a rain behind someone with half a brain. They were, for good reason, a figure of ridicule. Ever since then, as a seventeen year old getting disciplined, I have never trusted them. I can always remember walking out of that meeting, totally raging at him. Saying wullie your a prick, you just sat back and let me get slaughtered there. And him turning round and saying, aye yer saying that just now Alex, but we have the right tae appeal, we will get them then. 
 
When i I look back on it now it’s frightening, there was me as a raw laddie, not in any way innocent. But putting my faith in that type of arsehole. So that as I say is my reason for taking nothing and having zero sympathy for unions.

@ Ian brotherhood , what I’m saying is, give the working man, without many political views a choice. Eric Joyce (nutted a tory), or Jim Murphy, or Dougie Alexander, or Tony Blair, or Michael Moore, or Danny Alexander, or David Mundell, or even Johann, Wendy, magrit, you see where I’m going Ian. The fact he is what he is goes in his favour. No one I know now really gives a fuck about the Iraq war, yesterday’s news. In fact no one I know gi es a fuck about Syria now. It’s all about stereotypes, Joyce is the dude wae a swally problem, that rapped the nut oan a Tory and done a weekender. Simple. 
 
And me and you are not going to fall out about this, we can have an argument, then I will buy you a pint mate.

Gaavster – really lked the Russell Brand v Paxman vid. Russell won the argument by a country mile, in my view. And that’s the kind of fire we need to have leading us into indy.
 
Even if we could get Russell to speak at an indy event, and why wouldn’t he as we are having our own quiet wee revolution here,  I think he might be a bit too strong and frighten the horses, well the Morningsiders anyway but appeal to the young?
 
It would be good to have Duncan Hamilton speaking at public indy events a lot more in the lead up to the referendum, as he’s forceful and funny too.  Link to a wee vid of him below.
link to t.co

Tjenny I loved the vid of Duncan Hamilton. Where is he now we need to hear more of his factual humour and confidence.
 

Keef,
 
I loved the vid of Duncan Hamilton. Where is he now we need to hear more of his factual humour and confidence.
 
He left politics to pursue his desire of a career in law:
link to chambersandpartners.com

Mr McColm, about as subtle as a case of athlete’s foot. He and the rest of today’s literati can go take a flyin’… to themselves. My trust and patience where the media is concerned is fully used up. Don’t know if he personally chose the image to go with the story, or some semi conscious sub, but I wouldn’t put it past him on current form.
 
Missed the news articles last night with Johann et al so I’ll need to catch up, but it sounds as though somebody’s had a quiet word that she may be out of her depth on this one so play nice. I’m not actually surprised that Eric Joyce came out hard on this issue though, it literally hits him where he lives. He’ll know plenty of folks connected with Grangemouth and its very much a local issue regardless of ward or direct constituency. God this issue is going to have ripples across the country. Every MP and MSP regardless of rosette should be concerned. Ineos are going to do what they’re going to do regardless of any governmental action. They’ve already made their mind up.
 
The job in hand is to ensure the continuance of the site. Ineos can make this a brutal departure or with the right arbitration as smooth a departure/turnover as possible. If the collective parties of the Scottish parliament can actually for two fucking seconds put their differences aside and put people before politics. If they can actually all get behind the FM on this, then maybe, just maybe a huge chunk of Scotland’s infrastructure and God knows how many jobs and families throughout Scotland can avoid disaster.

blunttrauma says
“Whenever I come across this kind of thing I just donate some money to YES Scotland. It’s my way of fighting back as I have no power over the MSM.”
ah’ll no be askin you fur a len o a fiver then
yir bound tae be skint
  

kendomacaroon bar says
“She was wearing shiny lipstick too.   Ah’m feeling queasy now.”

Mibbe’s she’d jist been oot fur a swally and was verrrrry relaxed

I know my comments are a bit ill -informed at times , but I see L.F.I are backing a call to nationalise, although it has been said the Scottish gov don’t have the power to do this.Someone suggested in a post that the workers occupy the plant, and keep it running in a similar way to Jimmy Reid did with the U.C.S . I think this would be a good idea, especially if the S.G backed them up. The rev , and most of the contributors to this site are pretty clued up on what’s what, so can you tell me what you think on this ? I  like reading your opinions and comments, as they teach me so much.

Unions should have a place in every working person’s life.
That place is ensuring basic and fair rights on working hours, health and safety, pay and other general conditions.
That place is certainly NOT getting mixed up in petty political power struggles over the quality of the toilet roll in the workers’ loos or defending the indefencible actions of individuals.
I have to say I’m not completely sure which of these (or both) the unions actions at Grangemouth fall into.
In my experience of unions, they in some cases have lost their way.

Dorothy Devine says
“Well done indeed to that young fella ,and  wouldn’t it be” luverly” if he could address an independent rally!”
I think yes and no,
his passion is unarguable but his stance (not voting) while I get his reasoning still think the arguments are better made from the inside not the outside
in his current form he is nuclear fusion, now if he could be coached into the opposite (nuclear fission) then you’ve got yourself one hell of a weapon
  
 

Michael Kelly putting the boot into Unite Union in Hootsman
link to archive.is
Why has Call Kaye got Michael Connerty on as Eric Joyce is the MP for Grangemouth?
After his performance on STV last night the BBC won’t risk having Eric Joyce on to express his views.
 

Another London Dividend, your right of course London Dividend, which is why I have now officially stopped reading the posts that they publish, I suppose that it is only natural that when you conduct yourself in the way the Scotsman has done for some time now that these are the kind of folk you are going to attract!
I can’t think of any paper that has fallen as far as this one has, sad really.

The S TV News discussion is  not availble, have they pulled it?

BP got rid of Grangemouth to INEOS because they were unable to make it profitable due to the high cost of North Sea oil and gas compared with supplies coming from elsewhere in the world. There is also a glut of fuel and petrochemicals in Europe which are leading to closures if plants there. 
 
INEOS faced the same problem and were making losses of £millions each month on the plant, but to their credit came up with a plan to save the plant which involved importing shale gas from North America at much lower price than North sea gas. They also planned to upgrade the petrochemical plant and build additional bulk storage to facilitate the storage of the shale gas with an investment of £300m which was helped by a grant of £9.5m from the Scots government and underwritten to the tune of £125m by the UK government. However the costs of importing the gas by sea to Grangemouth were so high that further savings gad to be found to make the project viable. Hence why INEOS went to the trade unions with their rescue plan including savings to come from changing their terms and conditions of employment.
 
You would have thought that the trade unions would have done their research first and ascertained these facts before they advised the workforce to reject the INEOS rescue plan.
 

Who cares about the f***ing Spectator? With someone like Nelson at the helm and columnists like Rod Liddle and McColm, they’re always going to be on the side of the Union with their snide unfunny pieces about Scotchland. Influence over the vote: 0.

Just had to listen to JoLa on Scotland Tonight. She was actually asked:
 
“Do you agree with fellow msp Elaine Smith that the plant should be nationalised?”
“The Scottish government has already nationalised Prestwick and they have said that in the event of independence they would consider re-nationalising Royal Mail, so it may be an option…”
 
Well, well. All said with a straight face and. like, normally, as if she thought that independence was a reasonable prospect.
 
Flash!!! SLAB Leader relaxed about independence!

New tax to hit Ineos – is this the real reason?
 
link to falkirkherald.co.uk

@faolie

Imagine how surprised you would have felt if she had actually managed to answer the direct questions covering Unite and the Labour Party?

Sadly she went straight into “Paint a sad wee picture of a nice wee grandad with 3 years to retire being told jings crivvens he might need to work on and its just no fair no it is, what this nasty business man is daein” mode.

As @DougDaniel noted, as soon as she cried DEBATE! it was clear nothing had really changed.

Im still smiling at the Tory candidate for Dunfermline saying “I think its clear the people of Scotland are sick of this left of centre attitude in Holyrood!”.

He and his party couldnt be more wrong.

@Atypical_Scot
 
Re the article in the Falkirk Herald.
 
First thing that struck me was that this is a tax levied by the EU and it might result in Ineos moving operations to France. Strange I always assumed that France is part of the EU! I must be mistaken! 

Also £61m. over 10 years is chicken-feed.

Marian- you are kind of half right and half wrong.  Ineos long term strategy is to consolidate its plants in Europe.  Likely they wanted to close GM anyway.  Usual tatic to offer contentious offer to workforce, no agreement then closure.  In addition North Sea oil is expensive to make a profit from.  Therefore regardless of it strategic imortance to the country Ineos exists to make profit.  The only real solution would be to either nationalise the plant and/or reduce the price of the oil or make the production of by products more profitable.
The fact is there is always a risk in private ownership of strategic resources.  As can be seen the implications of this is beginning to percolate the UK thinking public.   Oil, gas, heating, lighting, water, railways, healthcare, postal services.  There was a reason they were all nationalised in the first place and now we are starting to reap the harvest of privatising them.  This whole dispute is part of the wider struggle of between nations and international capital.  Sorry for the rant.

@Bugger (the panda)
Wasn’t that the whole point of setting up “carbon credit” trading?  To enable things like that.

For my sins I went over to Scotsman ( what a misnomer!) website and looked at various postings regards Grangemouth and Scottish Government. 

I have to say I was truly shocked at how abusive towards the Scottish Government and the SNP the readers of that paper appear to be. I say appear as it is so farcical it has all the makings of a few hired folk making up names and posting rants,

This comment summed it up for me.

The SNP is the insult to the Scottish electorate!

This actually re-inforces my belief that YES will win and we can all move onwards and upwards and away from such pathetic mindsets. Someone mentioned yesterday darkest before the dawn. True dat.

On George Galloway’s show for £12: what can you do or buy for £12 or less which is of more use or value than paying this amount to go and see this esteemed political god?
 

I used to work for Burrough’s Computers in Cumbernauld. The union had us out on strike for three months over an ‘equivalence pay’ demand. It was just at the time I was getting married and my wife and I ended up starting married life absolutely skint. The rise we got after those three months was fifty pence (aye, 50p) a week. I never, ever made up that loss in wages.
Very shortly after that the two union guys who had engineered the strike left the Company. One got a job as a full time union official in Edinburgh and the other got a line management position with another company in Cumbernauld.
I only saw the full time official once after that, and he had become disgustingly fat and smug. The one that got a managerial position with another company was such an arsehole and bully that the workers there went out on strike because of him.
 
Unions have there place: no doubt about that. But they only work if there is intelligence at the top.
When I was a young bloke I was moaning to my dad about my manager. My dad said something along the lines of, ”No matter how much you detest him, loath him or hate him of or even wish he were dead, the fact is he is still your boss.”
 
The trade union ‘Unite’ at Ineos obviously never considered that they weren’t the bosses, and stupidly thought they were calling the shots.
And now, because of that stupidity, the whole of Scotland is going to be well and truly stuffed.
Thanks for nothing Unite.

@sneddon
“The fact is there is always a risk in private ownership of strategic resources.”
 
True, especially as the private owners are likely to be ruthless, greedy and amoral people with many of the characteristics of sociopaths, as nice people will not want to get involved in the dodgy, unethical and even sometimes illegal deals that are usually the way to great personal wealth.
 
I am no economist, but I suspect that there are some industrial plants which are necessary to allow other industries to operate, to the point where it would make good economic sense for the state to run them, even at a loss, for the benefit of the economy as a whole, with the operating losses being outweighed by the additional revenue generated by other businesses and increased employment. For example, I believe there that while a country (under EU rules?) would not normally be allowed to subsidise uneconomic steelworks, there is an exception if the steelworks is the only one in that country. I think the Grangemouth refinery could well be an example of this.
 
As others have said already, this shows why we need a Parliament with the authority to do whatever is necessary to protect our economy, something we will never have without independence.

@The Rough Bonds

Similar tales here – 

Worked for Glasgow Council who drew up new values for every manual task..big Union meeting…heated argument as radical changes on proposal…2 Union guys said “We would suggest you Vote Yes!”. The motion passed. Sure enough the workers soon found themselves shafted and within 1 month the 2 union guys had new full time positions within Glasgow City Council! That was enough for me, Union wise.

Now working in Finance and whilst in London heard a mate and his 2 colleagues berating their boss whilst in pub. Theyre going on and on slagging the guy and his short-comings and I said nothing. When they finished, feeling all smug, I said “Funny that, hes such a loser YET hes YOUR boss eh?”. 

I heard an argument that would be best if everyone was just deemed self employed…the older i get, the more sense it seems to make.

O/T Aberdeen council proposing new tram system.
Oh no!

@desimond.
 
Good one Desimond. I got a nice wee chuckle out of that.
”If he is so shite how come he’s the boss and you two are the grunts?”

“They seem to have a knack of taking the old outdated plant, shipping it to India and other low wage countries and ask for a EU subsidiary to set up the old plant as a low carbon replacement for old carbon dirty ones.  I wonder if Ineos is up to the same trick?”
 
Interesting. A google search for Ineos and Vitol comes up with this company
 
link to icecapltd.com
 
In March 2004, ICECAP launched one of the world’s first private sector aggregators, the ICECAP Carbon Portfolio, which raised commitments to source and manage a portfolio of 15m tonnes of carbon credits
 
ICECAP counterparties include: Investec, Enel, PPC, Marubeni, JFE Steel, KEPCO, Ineos, Vitol, Nuon, Noble, HVB Bank, JP Morgan, Fortis, Barcap, Shell and Dresdner.

@ Cath – Thats a good couple of questions and ones I have mulled over. It seems to me that poker players would be needed in all of this. No wonder that Rev Stu enjoys his games night.
 
It seems that Westminster holds the best hand as energy is not devolved, therefore the SG has to pass. However current policies show that nationalisation is not flavour of the month for Westminster and I am sure in the middle of an Independence debate it would be a big NO NO.
 
As an aside, I was somewhat encouraged that Mr McLuskey is meeting with AS today and I would love to be a fly on the wall. I would hope that AS would be giving encouragement with carrots for a total Unite support pre Independence. No doubt the CWU will be looking on with interest as they carry on with their proposed workforce meetings.

O/T. Seems that Fife Council’s IT system for checking return for postal votes has crashed.
Is this another rigged by- election in Fife.

daughterofevilreindeer
 
‘I would imagine that INEOS would be just as happy as Vitol to see large scale fracking going ahead in Scotland? ‘
 
Well this is the peculiar thing. The problem with Grangemouth Petro Chemical plant is the lack of gas coming in from the North Sea. This £300m investment is to build a gas storage tank so that cheaper imports can be brought in. 
 
It is precisely because of the lack of local gas that this facility is having to be built. If there was fracking in Central Scotland, this could provide Grangemouth.
 
In which case it could be argued that Ineos’s investment could actually be helping to keep fracking away from Central Scotland.

Daughterofevilreindeer
 
More likely that Intl investors are pulling out of UK as they know economy is going to go tits up. The best the UK govt can hope for is that they manage to steady the ship past Sept 18th next year, then we will all be in it together.

@ Cath – Funny you should say that. Is it the island of Gigha THE place to be? Seaweed muching sheep and high speed broadband with views of Ireland and Newfoundland on a good day. Bliss.

My main gripe is that one very rich and influential man is holding Scotland to ransom while his management teams are toothless in decision making. As the INEOS head of the onsite management stated earlier [paraphrase] ‘I will have to run this past the decision maker’.

Don’t get me started on ‘decision maker’ taking R & R on a yacht while working on a mulitple spreadsheet with the ‘what if I do this’ button. I am packing my backpack for Munroes aplenty.

“Fracking”-BT support – VITOL – INEOS ??? Tories yes to Fracking. MMMM!

More interesting reading on Grangemouth and how it’s falling victim to US shale.
link to reuters.com

Archie[notErchie] cc JohnKing

@ John King – Do not encourage him [Braco], he did have designs on my windae hingin earlier but now he knows about my cellar of single malts, he’s probably going to get really creepy and stalker like.

All fixed!

Alba4Eva and Gaavster,

Great watch that! Have you seen Paxman returned to his younger pimple faced prep school self, blustering away but who obviously still does not have his homework? If not, it’s well worth the five or so minutes (snigger).

link to youtube.com