Scotland’s last oil refinery is to close with the loss of more than 400 jobs despite assurances from Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, giving the lie to claims about Net Zero jobs and a “just transition”. The Telegraph has more.
When Sir Keir Starmer visited Scotland days after becoming Prime Minister, he sought to reassure workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery by claiming that saving their jobs was a top priority.
What has happened since then, however, has been far from comforting.
After learning their jobs were at risk in December 2023, employees at the PetroIneos refinery in Falkirk – which produces 80% of Scotland’s petrol – were told last September that the site would close with the loss of more than 400 jobs.
Bosses blamed the decision on the costs of operating Scotland’s last refinery, as well as Britain’s plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035.
Still, many employees were left stunned. As well as Sir Keir, both Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, and Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, had given strong assurances they would seek to save the sprawling facility, which has been a fixture in Grangemouth since 1924.
“I think everyone was shocked that the announcement came when it did,” says “Jack”, an employee who started as an apprentice at the refinery and has been there for more than a decade.
The worker, who does not want to give his real name, adds: “The refinery has been around for more than 100 years and it’s part of the community.
“There are people who are the third or fourth generation of their family to work there, others who have been there for 40 years.
“Lots of people here saw it as a job for life, and Labour had said that oil and gas was still going to be around for a long time. So it’s been very worrying – and there’s a lot of anger and frustration.”
The episode has raised troubling questions about the Government’s repeated promises of a “just transition”, where no workers in the oil and gas industry will be left behind as Britain phases out fossil fuels in favour of green energy.
Sir Keir has repeatedly vowed that Labour will not repeat the Thatcher government’s “callous” decision to shut down Britain’s remaining coal mines in the 1980s without ensuring workers had alternative jobs to go to.
“The effects of that are still felt in communities across the country and never, ever again must we make that mistake,” the Prime Minister said in a 2023 speech.
Yet if Grangemouth is the first big test of this policy, local people say the Government is failing badly.
Cliff Bowen, a union convenor for Unite who has worked at Grangemouth for 30 years under Ineos and the site’s former owner BP, is furious about the failure to prevent the refinery’s demise and the lack of action to provide it with an alternative future.
What particularly angers his members, he says, is that the closure will not even dent overall global carbon emissions, of which the UK makes up less than 1%.
Now, Ineos and its partner PetroChina have said the site will become an import terminal for bringing in refined fuels from abroad.
“The reason we ended up with final closure is because there’s not been any political will to get behind it,” says Bowen.
“If you can’t get a just transition at Grangemouth, you have no chance elsewhere. No chance. Because what else is it you’re looking for? We’ve got the skills, we’ve got the geography, we’re blessed with the resources.
“But what we’re going to do is just completely and utterly give all that up on the back of some campaign, this altar of net zero that they all seem to worship in government – with no plan for jobs.”
He adds: “Why would you continue to import from foreign regimes and prop up their economies, to the destruction of your own communities?”
Worth reading in full.
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Labour lied! Who knew?
The lies are not anything of much concern these days, in all honesty when Kneel or one of his gnomes issues a statement containing a modicum of truth will be the day I worry. What is disturbing is the blatant way these bastards are operating to someone else’s agenda and yet they continually pretend that they are running the shop.
Treason through and through.
What worries me even more is that apparently roughly 25% of the electorate would vote Labour if there were a general election tomorrow. I guess a lot of those people are people whose votes they bought with generous public sector pay rises, but the rest are surely idiots.
Do you notice that this is probably somewhere near the recent immigrant percentage in many city areas? I suspect that they all vote Labour, probably because of the generous subsidies. 2TK really seems to be buying votes with Public money, our hard earned taxes. One of these days he is likely to start a civil war, it has come close already with the lies and coverups of “unfortunate” events.
I’m sure the immigration helps Labour though recent immigrants are unlikely to have citizenship I would think. But there are plenty of native Brits and established people voting for suicide by woke globalist socialism.
Third World immigrants DO NOT NEED UK CITIZENSHIP TO VOTE in UK elections, an outrageous state of affairs which Lord Green, founder of Migration Watch, has been warning about for years, campaigning to
ABOLISH COMMONWEALTH VOTING RIGHTS IN UK ELECTIONS.
All immigrants need to send in a postal vote from anywhere in the world is an ADDRESS in the UK, easily provided by the UK mosques and their Communist Allies.
That’s why The Independent journalist Jerome Taylor was beaten up by a Muslim gang in Tower Hamlets, after he went there to ask why 18 Muslim Pakistani men were registered to vote at a single ONE-BEDROOM FLAT.
‘The first punch came, landing on my nose, sending blood down my face’ | The Independent | The Independent
“ABOLISH COMMONWEALTH VOTING RIGHTS IN UK ELECTIONS”
Either that or extend voting rights to everyone legally resident in the UK, apart from students. Maybe if you are not a UK citizen you can only vote if you pay tax.
It seems many in the UK will vote Labour no matter what happens, reality plays no role in their decision.
Just like a lot of Americans will vote Democrat, no matter how bad they are, or have been.
Trump’s recent address to Congress has shown anyone who cares top see or listen, just how unhinged and callous Democrats really are.
We don’t have anyone who is likely to do what Trump is doing. Farage appears to be showing his true colours more and more.
Yes, Farage operating as per the Farage Handbook. Set up a party and then destroy it by smearing and undermining anyone who looks more competent than he is and that is hardly much of a challenge. He will not develop any policies as evidenced by his total failure to create an EU exit plan but then much like the other celebrity politician, the Lying Oaf Johnson, he does not do detail. He only outscores him by not being a proven liar.
Check every Labour policy and action against the WEF Agenda – tick, tick, tick…
The majority of voters in this country must, at some point as children, have had a ‘dot to dot’ book which slowly revealed a picture as you joined the dots together. Unfortunately they now seem incapable of applying that technique to politics.
Labour busy burning bridges.
More votes for Reform?
Even then whether Reform get the votes or not, once the refinery is closed and cold, it will be difficult to resurrect it again.
Kneel will ensure the facility is destroyed in the same way that coal burning power stations were destroyed.
That’s the trouble with everything the bastards are doing.
Once it’s gone it’s gone.
Time to fight back, any means necessary.
“Once it’s gone it’s gone”
That was their objective all along I presume.
They are standing in front of you and making you watch their destruction of your future.
The refinery is to be repurposed as an import terminal for the product no longer produced. That’s a big increase in national security (not).
His question: “Why would you continue to import from foreign regimes and prop up their economies, to the destruction of your own communities?”
Partial Answer: They did the same to Britain’s coal industry, running it down, saying it was no longer viable, then forcing taxpayers to heavily subsidise EU coal industries in Poland & Romania, which are still thriving, while we are forced to import coal from them, and Russia.
Short Answer: Their aim is the Total Destruction of the West.
Even Shorter Answer: They want us to freeze to death.
They have brought a murrain and a curse upon this country. Everything about us now suggests death down to the smallest detail. Look at insect decline over the last decade or the beautiful birds that you no longer see. Our goblin overlords live in the same country as us. They would see it if they had eyes to see. Evil isn’t always a matter of conscious decisions it is far more destructive when it manifests as blindness to reality. Think of the nasal voices of Starmer and Reeves and consider what that really means.
Another Labour Party triumph on behalf of the “working people” Sir Two Tier claims to strive for.
Tough luck Grangemouth – wind and solar are Tier-1, oil and gas are Tier-2 and those coal mines closed decades ago are forlornly gone for good.
I’d be surprised if Two Tier even knows where Grangemouth is
It could be that he has noticed that they are not proper ‘working people’ as they actually have some savings and assets.
There is no carrying on in this demoralised way. If you do then you are admitting that you want to be abused and annihilated by this lot, probably the most squalid and miserable ruling class in human history. It might not be too late. With a lot of effort we probably could get a lot of things switched on again.
It is likely that farmers will be his Waterloo. He has started the wrong battle, and the enemy has the resources to finish him. Farmers are very resourceful (they have to be) and are equipped.
The first crack has come with a group of rural MPs realising they are toast come the election and are now questioning the policy of closing down family farms.
This is criminal – there will be a reckoning.
Where do we go from here? That is the most fundamental question and yet there is nothing in the way of an answer. What does that say about us and our predicament? Just grind your teeth on it and come out with at least an understanding of grim reality. That is the only way we find a way out of it. These are the questions asked in the psalms and the old negro spirituals. They say that freedom is a constant dying. We’ve been dying so long we must be free we must be free.
This is a 1960s quote when the World’s population was half what it is today.
“Take away the energy-distributing networks and the industrial machinery from America, Russia, and all the world’s industrialized countries, and within six months more than two billion swiftly and painfully deteriorating people will starve to death. Take away all the world’s politicians, all the ideologies and their professional protagonists from those same countries, and send them off on a rocket trip around the sun and leave all the countries their present energy networks, industrial machinery, routine production and distribution personnel, and no more humans will starve nor be afflicted in health than at present.
Fortunately, the do-more-with-less invention initiative does not derive from political debate, bureaucratic licensing, or private economic patronage. The license comes only from the blue sky of the inventor’s intellect. No one licensed the inventors of the airplane, telephone, electric light, and radio to go to work. It took only the personally dedicated initiative of five men to invent those world transforming and world shrinking developments. Herein lies the unexpectedly swift effectiveness of the design-science revolution. Despite this historical demonstrable fact, world society as yet persists in looking exclusively to its politicians and their ideologues for world problem solving.”
Buckminster Fuller
It looks to me like a deliberate and hideously spiteful move against white working class people.
No other explanation is possible.
Complete scorched earth you will never be able to switch any of it on again. They have ruined the lives of you and your progeny forever.
Can the BBC use that as a headline please?
In the midst of despair, remember that Nothing on Earth, or in the spirit world, compares to Heaven’s Glory.
And Heaven is where we belong.
Deleted
Stalinmer is trying to increase the defence budget, ok, what is all this extra military equipment supposed to run on? other countries diesel and petrol?
This news is so saddening and maddening, all those quality jobs, all those families that are now in shock at their unessassary uncertain futures.
All this done by their own lying government
All this destruction of their own national security, its lands and its peoples, and all for f@cking what?
This is nothing short of governmental treason!
Jesus wept
This government is so obviously insane, yet still a substantial number of voters support it. I guess these people are the types who would support Pol Pot. How else can you explain their desire for immiseration.
ANSWER:
Postal Ballots gathered from the 54 Commonwealth countries who ALL HAVE VOTING RIGHTS IN UK ELECTIONS. All they need is a UK address, easily obtained from human traffickers, mosques, friends or relatives in the UK.
Britain is the only country in the world that has totally disenfranchised its own citizens, by swamping their democratic votes with the votes of citizens of 54 Commonwealth countries.
ABOLISH THE COMMONWEALTH VOTING RIGHTS IN UK ELECTIONS.
Better yet, ABOLISH THE COMMONWEALTH.
So what, the Unions supported Labour. They’ve got what they funded … Two-Tier, Mad Ed and the Net Zero SCAM destroying British jobs and increasing imports.
Well done chaps. Perhaps engage your brain before handing over £millions to Labour.