Interesting People

One of the perks of the job as Scottish Organiser is varied travel and meeting interesting people. In my case I get to meet various people and have very interesting travel experiences.

A number of those experiences involved air travel, so I tend to go by rail and car these days. Unfortunately the incidents don’t seem to have diminished.

Many of the people I meet these days are employers, some of them more interesting than others. Some bring much entertainment to my life - as well as value added stress.

On Friday I got up at 5am and drove to BBC Scotland to have a chat with Gary Robertson on Good Morning Scotland. He wanted me to tell the Scottish commuters and breakfasters about the madness of dealing with Newsquest.

One of those commuters was our lawyer Amanda Jones who was entertained (again) at the latest wacky news from Renfield Street, providing her with even more food for thought towards her overall legal opinion.

Graham Morrison is an interesting man and he had some things worthy of note to speak about later that morning. He is MD at Clyde & Forth and makes every effort to engage with the union, he nearly always pre-consults before coming to negotiate. I believe there will be some pain at their papers from darkest Ayrshire across to the kingdom of Fife but it will be done with maximum consultation and minimum job losses. Something I seek from every meeting these days.

Two new chapel committees were voted in later that day around the NUJ boardroom table. S&UN-Trinity and Johnston Press group chapels have new officer structures to help build the union strength. They will be needed as they discussed the latest thoughts and strategies of their “talented and imaginative” employers. Indeed it was noted that Tim Bowdler once of JP, was being recognised for his unique services to the newspaper industry. One observant FoC said he was certainly not unique, there are others who have caused similar levels of damage in recent years.

Travel was looming and as I boarded the train to London, my hope was to get some sleep before meeting my fellow officials at Kings Cross, prior to the Saturday jobs summit.

I was woken up by a loud announcement as the train guard informed us that an incident on the tracks meant everyone would have to get off at Preston. After some confusion as to where the buses were situated we set off to Wigan in the rain. It took nearly an hour from start to finish and of course all trains north and southbound were delayed. Temporary solution was to sample the delights of a local hostelry frequented by Wigan’s chosen few.
Back at the station platform delays south, like the travellers, were excessive. Estimated time of arrival in Euston was early hours depending on lots of things. I would have been up at 8am to speak at the NUJ jobs summit, however there was a train on platform 5 heading to Glasgow. After making my way back and forth twice between both platforms I realised it was a no-brainer and headed back north.