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Just as you begin to think the truth will be heard and fairness will find a way, what with the nation waking up to the scandalous profiteering of the energy companies and realising that the nation’s assets really shouldn’t have been handed over to an unscrupulous free market that puts profit above lives, along comes a familiar blow.

Jimmy Reid! Billy Connolly! Robert the Bruce! Jimmy Maxton! Wee Jimmy Krankie! Rabbie Burns! Your boys took a hell of a beating! And so they did, at Grangemouth.

You could barely pinpoint Scotland on a map for the vibration caused by dead socialist legends like Reid and Maxton spinning in their boxes as the Scottish government and the beaten leaders of Unite backed down to the crude bullying of a tax-dodging billionaire.

Did the press report that a union had capitulated rather than see a community hurt and jobs lost? No. They rejoiced that they’d been beaten. Did the press reflect that the tax-dodging billionaire had given not an inch and was perfectly prepared to see a community hurt and jobs lost in the interests of his and his shareholders’ pockets? No. Of course not. Instead, the TV and radio obediently broadcast Jim Ratcliffe trotting out that tired old cliché about the trade unions living in the 1970s.

But in this place, brothers and sisters, we do not use the Daily Mail goggles issued to the masses; we consider the truth. Here is the truth of the Grangemouth dispute.

• Ineos is the largest privately run company that operates in Britain. It is difficult to be clear about its affairs as they are secretive, complex, and based in up to six foreign tax havens.
• Jim Ratcliffe is the majority shareholder and the decision-maker.
• Ineos left Britain and that inconvenient requirement to pay taxes – you know, the one we all have to observe – in 2010. It is based in Switzerland but operates in up to six tax havens.
• It made up to $2bn profit last year.
• At Ineos Chemicals Grangemouth Ltd, last year, sales had grown by more than 50 per cent, and there was a gross profit of nearly 20 per cent.
• The company is reportedly saddled with debts from take-over bids. It seems Ineos had saddled some external debts on the Grangemouth plant for tax purposes, worsening the situation at a plant which has seen a decline in North Sea gas over recent years. This is remarkable at a time of difficulty in supply.
• Labour costs represent just 17 per cent of the Grangemouth plant’s total costs.
• Unite asked Ineos to negotiate at the independent Acas conciliation service, and offered a guarantee of no strike action if Ineos would do so. As this would have involved scrutiny, independence and fairness, Ineos refused.
• On any of these issues, it was suggested they could be resolved if Ineos enabled independent scrutiny of the facts and figures. Naturally, this has not happened and will not happen.

As you can see, it is Ineos that has behaved appallingly over Grangemouth and the union that has tried to fight fair. The union has surrendered when it must have stuck in the craw to do so, rather than risk the welfare of members and the wider community. On the other hand, Ineos would have sacked 800 people rather than make one concession which might hit the pockets of Jim Ratcliffe and his shareholder friends.

The hope is that Grangemouth represents a battle, not a war, and will in future come to be seen as another staging post on the road that leads to the people of Britain reclaiming their national assets, their vital services, from the clutches of greedy, selfish, arrogant, unaccountable, undeserving people like Jim Ratcliffe and his soulmates on the boards of the energy and water utilities.

Polls show that now, overwhelmingly, we want our country back. Soon, we’re not even going to say please.

Cheers!

A splendid day yesterday with a few thousand apples and a wonderful hired hydraulic press. But for the hydraulics and the electric chopper-upper, Brother Fiddle, Brother Bertie, Fiddle Minor and I  might have been relics from the past observing the time-honoured countryside ritual of brewing up thee zider come Autumn time.

In houses over a small zone of Cornwall now sit 25-litre barrels bubbling merrily away, and yes, we made some non-alcoholic apple juice too. Very nice.

Brother Bertie was the prime mover here, as you know, my organisational skills having failed us all, and thanks to him we reckon we pushed through more than 230 litres of apple juice. I’ll drink to that!

The Little Sparrow

I cannot now remember the reason why our conversation, at Tuesday’s evensong, turned to Edith Piaf and bacon baguettes, but I do know that the consumer of the comestible was very much enjoying his purchase, and this led The Brother Who Must Not Be Named to utter the immortal words: “Je ne baguette rien…”