I Love Blogging

I caught a brief glimpse of an old Unison colleague on the BBC's Politics Scotland programme yesterday, Chris Bartter, who was bravely attempting to 'defend the indefensible' - i.e. the recent behaviour of Unite during the long-running dispute at the Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant.

Now Chris worked with Unison for 20 years or thereabouts, so I believe, but during that time he was the union's communications officer - not a senior official with hands on responsibility for managing industrial disputes and dealing directly with Scottish employers.

So, I was a bit puzzled as to why Chris was on the programme instead of someone like Pat Rafferty, for example (Unite's Scottish regional secretary) - or someone of similar rank - with the practical knowledge and experience of operating in the front line.  

Now Chris is a decent and nice chap who retired from Unison back in 2012 - yet here he was on the BBC reinvented as a 'trade union writer and communications expert' which prompted me to have a closer look at what Chris had to say - by visiting his blog site at www.captaingrumping.blogspot.com

Which turns out to be not a lot because unless I've got my sums wrong, Chris has written only seven posts since 3 July 2013 - none of which deal with any of the crucial issues involved in long running Grangemouth dispute.

Not a word about Unite calling a strike over its local union convener and calling the strike off again - not a word about Unite advising its members to 'man the barricades' and throw out a proposed rescue package only for the union to do a complete U-turn - by standing this advice on its head the very next day.

Of the two posts on that jumped out to me was one about public ownership and how well the Labour leader Ed Miliband is doing - and the other talking up the Morning Star, which used to be the 'in-house' newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, of course.   

All very predictable, boring and par for the course - and of absolutely no relevance, in my opinion at least, to the momentous events taking place at Grangemouth in recent weeks.

But it's early days yet so maybe there's more challenging things to come - from Captain Grumping.