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I was emailing with a group of friends about the Grangemouth situation. For those that don't follow the Scottish news Grangemouth is an important manufacturing area of Scotland and the company there that own the Petro-Chemical plant and the refinery were reporting that they were losing around £10 million a month.
The Chairman of the company detailed how the feed stocks of gas from the North Sea were well down and that meant they could not run the plant at an economical level. Likewise stocks of North Sea oil had less ethane which again impacted their productivity. Added to that the US due to cracking were now selling gas at much lower prices. So all in all to make the refinery and chemical plant worth running they needed to cut costs and invest in new plant.
The Union refused their terms and so the company went direct to the workers to ask them to make the decision. Almost all admin staff accepted the deal but the Union advised the workers not to accept it so they didn't. As a result the company announced the closure of the chemical plant and said that liquidators would be brought in within a week with a corresponding loss of some 800 direct jobs and some 2000 lost sub contractor jobs.
So with the Scottish Parliament now involved and other parties we heard today that the Union on behalf of their members have now accepted the new terms and conditions.
More about this can be read at http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...from-the-brink
My point on this was that the company had said they needed to reduce costs and if they couldn't then the plants would need to be shut down as they couldn't continue to lose money. Despite that the workers still voted not to accept the deal and seemed astonished that the company then announced its closure and as a result they lost their jobs.
I mean how intelligent do you need to be to see the writing was on the wall?
Anyway.. one of the people I was emailing on this came back with quite an astonishing reply which I thought I'd copy here and here it is...
Scotland will make no progress in any positive sense until the Labour Party has been totally extirpated from its political system, and even then the rot it leaves behind will take generations to clear up. I had plenty of experience of these left-wing activists who corner the power in the trade unions for true benefit of the Labour Party and/or themselves.
The Scots are simply not ready for independence. They are intellectually and in every other mental sense totally unprepared for it. The quality of the present debate, if it can be described as such, is so utterly provincial as to beggar description. It is so intellectually downmarket that in most cases there is no point in even responding to it.
Extending the vote to 16-year-olds reminds me of what I was told by the SDA, that it was time for an older generation to move out and let the younger generation take the reins - a younger generation that has not the slightest clue about how an independent state of Scotland’s size is run, has no conception of how it would fit into the global political system, and hasn’t a clue as to why it is necessary.
It is slowly dawning on me that we are facing a repeat of the devolution situation, when a second run at it will be necessary a generation later. I just hope that enough of Scotland will survive that long to be worth saving.
The role of the media reflects the general situation. Its journalists are a parade of mediocrity at its best, with few notable exceptions. Even the mass tabloids could take a lesson from the Vienna Kronen-Zeitung, which sells three million copies a day by presenting news and current issues condensed to their understandable essence by top-class journalists. The Daily Record with brains, in other words.
I was at the British Embassy last night, in the company of the present Austrian Ambassador to the UK, who on account of a broken leg had to delegate attendance at the SNP conference to a deputy. I had a personal blether with the UK ambassador, whom I told that I was having no association with any organisations from now on, and that I would be restricting myself to personal comments on the Scottish situation.
At the Cyber Security conference in Hernstein Castle last weekend, where I had my accident (broken shoulder blade etc.). I was seated next to the First Secretary of the embassy, evidently a security appointment, whom I told the story of my run-in with the Labour Party in Scotland that had roused me to rebellion. He was not at the meeting last night, and I understand that he was in London, which may turn out interesting. We’ll see.
Anyhow, I’m not giving up just yet, and even after a Yes vote there will be a long way to go.
So that's what he said and to be frank there is a lot of sense there as Scots are just not learning anything in this debate and to be frank most aren't even interested in learning. As the Chairman of the Grangenouth plant said the world has changed and we need to embrace that change if we are to be successful.
It's also now obvious to me that an Independent Scotland should not be in the EU and yet there is no debate about whether we should be in or out. All the debate is about is whether Scotland can stay in and negotiate their position or would need to apply from outside. Nothing on whether we should be in the EU in the first place.
Alastair
The Chairman of the company detailed how the feed stocks of gas from the North Sea were well down and that meant they could not run the plant at an economical level. Likewise stocks of North Sea oil had less ethane which again impacted their productivity. Added to that the US due to cracking were now selling gas at much lower prices. So all in all to make the refinery and chemical plant worth running they needed to cut costs and invest in new plant.
The Union refused their terms and so the company went direct to the workers to ask them to make the decision. Almost all admin staff accepted the deal but the Union advised the workers not to accept it so they didn't. As a result the company announced the closure of the chemical plant and said that liquidators would be brought in within a week with a corresponding loss of some 800 direct jobs and some 2000 lost sub contractor jobs.
So with the Scottish Parliament now involved and other parties we heard today that the Union on behalf of their members have now accepted the new terms and conditions.
More about this can be read at http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...from-the-brink
My point on this was that the company had said they needed to reduce costs and if they couldn't then the plants would need to be shut down as they couldn't continue to lose money. Despite that the workers still voted not to accept the deal and seemed astonished that the company then announced its closure and as a result they lost their jobs.
I mean how intelligent do you need to be to see the writing was on the wall?
Anyway.. one of the people I was emailing on this came back with quite an astonishing reply which I thought I'd copy here and here it is...
Scotland will make no progress in any positive sense until the Labour Party has been totally extirpated from its political system, and even then the rot it leaves behind will take generations to clear up. I had plenty of experience of these left-wing activists who corner the power in the trade unions for true benefit of the Labour Party and/or themselves.
The Scots are simply not ready for independence. They are intellectually and in every other mental sense totally unprepared for it. The quality of the present debate, if it can be described as such, is so utterly provincial as to beggar description. It is so intellectually downmarket that in most cases there is no point in even responding to it.
Extending the vote to 16-year-olds reminds me of what I was told by the SDA, that it was time for an older generation to move out and let the younger generation take the reins - a younger generation that has not the slightest clue about how an independent state of Scotland’s size is run, has no conception of how it would fit into the global political system, and hasn’t a clue as to why it is necessary.
It is slowly dawning on me that we are facing a repeat of the devolution situation, when a second run at it will be necessary a generation later. I just hope that enough of Scotland will survive that long to be worth saving.
The role of the media reflects the general situation. Its journalists are a parade of mediocrity at its best, with few notable exceptions. Even the mass tabloids could take a lesson from the Vienna Kronen-Zeitung, which sells three million copies a day by presenting news and current issues condensed to their understandable essence by top-class journalists. The Daily Record with brains, in other words.
I was at the British Embassy last night, in the company of the present Austrian Ambassador to the UK, who on account of a broken leg had to delegate attendance at the SNP conference to a deputy. I had a personal blether with the UK ambassador, whom I told that I was having no association with any organisations from now on, and that I would be restricting myself to personal comments on the Scottish situation.
At the Cyber Security conference in Hernstein Castle last weekend, where I had my accident (broken shoulder blade etc.). I was seated next to the First Secretary of the embassy, evidently a security appointment, whom I told the story of my run-in with the Labour Party in Scotland that had roused me to rebellion. He was not at the meeting last night, and I understand that he was in London, which may turn out interesting. We’ll see.
Anyhow, I’m not giving up just yet, and even after a Yes vote there will be a long way to go.
So that's what he said and to be frank there is a lot of sense there as Scots are just not learning anything in this debate and to be frank most aren't even interested in learning. As the Chairman of the Grangenouth plant said the world has changed and we need to embrace that change if we are to be successful.
It's also now obvious to me that an Independent Scotland should not be in the EU and yet there is no debate about whether we should be in or out. All the debate is about is whether Scotland can stay in and negotiate their position or would need to apply from outside. Nothing on whether we should be in the EU in the first place.
Alastair