The Official Nonsense Thread

[Caspin]

Ah well, that production of Ibsen's "Ghosts" was bloody brilliant so it deserves all the stars available. The set design was amazing.

Speaking of fear of the gas bill, with all of the energy companies' rates shooting sky-high right before winter when people need their lights and heating on, I'm just in the process of switching provider and locking my tariff for a year. I'm going to try to beat these price rises.

[Minty]

Hey Caspin, as a Mac user you might be interested in this:

http://www.macxdvd.com/giveaway/giveaway.htm

Not sure if it's one of those limited time to use before you have to pay a licence fee, but perhaps worth checking out?

[Caspin]

Ta, Minty.

I noticed an article in the new yesterday about your favourite spiders, the now infamous false widows. It seems there are now so many of them appearing in schools that they are closing them for fumigation! It makes it sound like an invasion of epic proportions, but surely it can't be that bad.

[Minty]

It isn't - the schools in question admitted they had to do this because parents had been told by their kids, they freaked out & told the local press, who made a big deal of it. A wasp's nest is a bigger danger (a common problem for schools in older buildings with wooden eves) but that can be taken care of after hours.

Fumigate a school & there's no guarantee it will be truly safe to go back into 24 hours later - all it will take is some asthmatic kid to collapse from an allergic reaction to lingering spray odours & they'll have more to worry about than spiders. It's what happens when you allow newspaper scare stories to dictate how local authorities behave.

The Grangemouth issue (the owners closing it) is deeply worrying, & I can't believe the way the press have completely got the wrong end of the stick over it (never mind the way it has been accorded such a low priority by newspapers south of the border). It's been portrayed as all about the usual union vs management fight about pay & conditions, but wages only account for 0.5% of the plant's turnover, & the proposed cuts will only "save" the firm 0.1%. Wages themselves only amount to 1.6% of the site's running costs - something most firms could only dream of.

How this all really started is so bizarre it stinks. A shop steward working on the petrochemical half of the plant was disciplined for misconduct: using his work e-mail account to do work for the Labour Party (primarily running up dubious new local party recruits as part of a scheme by the trade union Unite to fiddle the selection process for the party's candidate for the nearby Falkirk seat, which always returns Labour candidates no matter how bad).

The union Unite threatened to strike if his suspension wasn't lifted. The owners Ineos promptly closed the petrochemical half of the plant in response, & the union promptly backed down, but now Ineos said the strike that never was had cost the company a fortune & workers would have to accept mass pay & pension cuts as well as signing away any right to strike ever again.

The shocked workers refused & Ineos now say they're shutting the entire Grangemouth refinery because it costs too much to run & doesn't make enough money. An American economist on Newsnight last night called "bullcrap!" on that claim: he said all refineries worldwide aren't making much right now because the Americans have flooded the market with excess oil based product.

The real problem is that refineries used to be regarded as part of any oil company's operating costs, not something to make money with. But in the 1980s, financial speculators began buying refineries looking to make a fast buck - the oil companies let them, knowing they'd all need upgraded with modern equipment a decade down the line & were glad that someone else was going to pick up the tab.

They thought wrong: all now want out & are trying to blackmail oil companies & governments to take them off their hands by brinkmanship - buy it or we knock it down (the French government has already been stung twice). Grangemouth needs £150 million of upgrading - a lot of money, but a drop in the ocean compared to its £1 billion value directly & to the British economy at large. What the speculators want is someone to take it off their hands so they can buy something else making lots of money, & buy back the refineries after someone else pays for all the improvements needed - same as the oil companies thought.

80% of Scotland's fuel comes through Grangemouth and one in five Scottish jobs depend directly or indirectly on the place. The AA has already warned fuel prices nationwide will rocket if Grangemouth goes - a big chunk of North Sea oil goes through it.

But what do the English newspapers talk about today? The Royal Christening and Ruby effing Tandoh. It's in Scotland so it doesn't count, even if it is going to screw it up for everyone big time. It's frightening to think so much is a stake & most of the country is completely unaware of it.

[Caspin]

Scotland exports lots of refined stuff from Grangemouth doesn't it. I read that currently they export refined oil and chemicals but that without Grangemouth the country would become net importers. I feel sorry for all those folk losing their jobs but the loss to the economy overall is huge. Do you think Scotland will survive financially if people choose independence?

[Minty]

Right now the pro-independence camp hasn't a hope in hell of winning, but no one can be quite sure what impact the Grangemouth saga will have as it's something of a perfect storm - the closure of a plant that will devestate the Scottish economy (we're talking what happened to Liverpool in the 70s & 80s on a massive scale); Westminster looking like they don't care; Labour's favourite union being partly blamed for it happening; & most of all people being made aware how an entire country could be held to ransom by a foreign based owner of its major energy source accountable to no one but his fellow shareholders.

If the worse happens, it will be the single greatest financial disaster up here since the Darien affair back in the 18th Century. Ravenscraig, Linwood, the Govan docks & all the rest will pale into insignificance by comparison. Darien led to the union with England because a quarter of all Scotland's wealth had been lost to it. Grangemouth could easily prove the catalyst to the reverse.

The result of all this is a lot of people in Scotland that couldn't care less about the whole independence vote up here are now being forced to care. It's been taken as read that if the SNP lose the independence vote, Alex Salmond will resign & leave politics. There's the catch: most people don't want independence but do want Salmond to remain in charge desperately as the first competent politician in a position of power Scotland has had for well over a century.

Caught between two fires, Grangemouth may make some people's minds up for them, especially if the Scottish government nationalises it the same way they nationalised Prestwick Airport last month (Britain's only guaranteed fog-free airport, which was running at a loss because it was being run by idiots). There's a swing to the left combined paradoxically with a xenophobic mood up here that's the sort populist nationalist parties offering paternalistic government in times of trouble have taken advantage of elsewhere. The SNP reintroduced free prescriptions for all - Labour have vowed to scrap it except for junkies needing methodone: it's been enough to make a lot of pensioners of the "always voted Labour like my father & his before him" types think twice about where their loyalties lie.

There's a by election for Holyrood tonight in nearby Dunfermline, the seat being vacated because the SNP member for the Scottish Parliament who held it was thrown out of the party & subsequently jailed for beating up his wife. Due to this, no one gave the SNP a hope of retaining the seat, but now it is Labour that's getting all the bad press because it was the Unite union's attempts to fiddle the selection for the nearby Falkirk seat's Labour candidate that led domino toppling style to Grangemouth's closure.

Usually any sort of by-elections don't matter, least of all for regional governments, but this one might.

[Tasia714]

Wow what a mess! Sorry to hear that news. I will put Scotland in my prayers.

I have been distracted over here in the U.S with the MORON that we have leading our county. Barack Obama thinks he is a King instead of a President. Now we are all forced to buy health insurance that most of us could not afford in the first place! If we do not purchase it we will be fined and if the fine is not paid we will be thrown in jail. That makes no sense at all.
It is mandatory to have car insurance here in the U.S but if you cannot afford car insurance at least then you have the choice not to drive, take the bus, subway, ride a bike, walk, or carpool.
What really burns my biscuits is the fact that the muslims in this country will be exempt from Obamacare because their so called "religion" bans gambling and health insurance is considered gambling by them.

I tell everyone I know to get off of their lazy butts and get out and vote. And not only just vote but make a intelligent decision on who you are voting for.
Good luck to us all.

[Caspin]

Hello Tasia, how's the story-writing coming along?!

I must say if I was in the US I would be pro-obamacare. Having grown up in a country where everyone can access healthcare at any time is a rather wonderful thing and I would support anything that widens access to healthcare. The NHS has many flaws, but as my parents get older and develop various health conditions, I'm grateful that they can access the medication and assistance that they need without worrying about how we would pay for it. It's true what you say about car insurance - you can choose not to drive a car. But that doesn't apply to healthcare in the same way - you can't just choose not to need healthcare. Even if you are fortunate enough to start out with good genes and you try to live a healthy life, you could still be involved in an accident and need help.

[Caspin]

Yay - now Grangemouth is saved!

Pay freeze for three years is no fun, but better than no pay at all.

[gothika]

Hello!
It's been a while since I came by...
It's gotten pretty cold over here. Fine if you're in high school or something but terrible when you have to walk to class and places in college