Dear Scott Rennie

I see you're a member of the Unite trades union. I was a member of a different union - the EIS - for 28 years before I changed to a UK wide union. I disliked our union leaders because they were never prepared to take on the politicians but I stuck with them because they were all we had. Now things have changed so much that you and I as trades unionists are pretty much relics of a bygone age. It's impossible for most people to join a trades union at all these days.

However, despite the fact they are mostly pretty powerless, the trades unions can and do get the blame for just about everything that goes wrong in UK industry (what's left of it) these days. In the case of the fiasco at Grangemouth, the anti-union talk in the press and on TV, radio and the internet has already started. I heard a BBC Scotland reporter tonight say the Unite union refused to 'lift its threat of industrial action' at Grangemouth. That's not exactly what happened. Unite members didn't provoke the confrontation with Ineos. They got an ultimatum from management and voted 2 to 1 to reject their employers' demands to change their working practices and give up their final salary pension. That's their right as employees. They didn't at any time threaten the company with industrial action in the future.

By the way, nothing I've read or heard suggests a change in work practices or an end to final salary pensions would help Ineos recoup the £50 million it claims it lost in the last financial year at Grangemouth.

Bottom line: Ineos is not interested in petroleum refining. The owner (note that's what Jim Ratcliffe is) has said he wants to import US economic and industrial processes into the UK. He means dumping old-fashioned industry like refining and taking up fracking instead. His business is based in Switzerland. Nothing wrong with that. Plenty of businesses are based overseas, but it's interesting that Ineos bought a 'failing' business, arguably made it worse and moved its HQ overseas to avoid paying VAT in the UK. You can read about all it here:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/robin-mcalpine/whats-really-happening-at-grangemouth-and-what-it-tells-us#.Umf_BzHLUZ4.twitter

Ian Bell's column today in the Herald is also informative: http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/could-public-ownership-be-worse-than-refinery-farce.22488035

He suggests we take the refinery back into public ownership. This is the only refinery in Scotland and it supplies Scotland, northern England and northern Ireland. There's even a wee hint here that what Ineos was trying to do was blackmail Unite and the governments of Scotland and the UK to give them a subsidy. Fat chance, guys: bigger employers than Ineos have gone to the wall in Scotland and the government in Westminster - the one with control of the cash - hasn't turned a hair.

If I can give you a bit of advice, Scott - and I'm so old now I do that at every opportunity - maybe you should stick with Unite, encourage other people to join a union and be a bit more cynical about the triumph of capitalism. It's worth remembering capitalism has no moral dimension - just a love of money.