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You know what? Screw BP

L

LittleBitCheeky

Planetoid
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
I'm actually getting really sick of headlines like these:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...MENT-This-scapegoating-BP-shames-America.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1287228/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-Time-protect-BP.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/n...-obama-is-poisoning-the-special-relationship/

I hate how people now claim BP is something we (ie, the British people) should protect against "attacks" by Barack Obama and America in general. That the damage they caused is somehow secondary to the dynamics of Anglo-American relations.

The BP isn't British. I know their acronym stands for British Petroleum, but in fact it's a global conglomerate with senior leaders, staff and shareholders all over the world. Furthermore, it's a company that has done something wrong. It's failed to observe proper safety regulations, opted for shabby contractors based on price and caused one of the worst ecological disasters in the last fifty years.

I'm well aware that thousands have their pensions invested in BP. Under no circumstances should the money they have worked for be compromised. But they need to pay for what they have done. BP is a very large company, they can afford to protect their pensionholders (their shareholders I'm less bothered about, by the notion of shares alone they're taking a risk from the start) and compensate the victims of their accident. Even if it ruins the company, this is something that needs doing.

Some people have blamed the contractors working for BP, saying they're responsible for the spill. Fine. Take them to court, y'know? BP has a responsibility to pay both its pensionholders and for its mistake. If others are responsible, let them share the burden.

I don't know what my point is here. I just guess I'm sick that this has turned into a US vs UK-type thing, whereas it really shouldn't be.
 
I've yet to heard anyone mention about how the UK is some how responsible or any relations souring.

I know it's not the UK's fault for the spill. It's the company BP's fault for exploiting a crap regulation in the US. They weren't forced to install a $500k part, so they didn't. And it's this cheap part that is fail safe.

The other option is to do what Russia has done for 7 out of 8 of their last oil spills. Stick a nuke in it. It's worked and hasn't seem to cause anything crazy to happen so far, but it's better than spewing oil and toxic chemicals out into our environment.
 
I find it kinda nuts that everyone finds it the governments job to protect private companies, like BP but when they bail out other companies everyone screams socialist/communist. BP fucked up so they should tank for it, that's how the capitalism system is supposed to work, so a different company can take its place and provide a better service so nothing like this spill happens again. Instead we the people bail the company out telling them to go ahead and do whatever the hell it is they want their to important to loose.
 
dramamine213 said:
The other option is to do what Russia has done for 7 out of 8 of their last oil spills. Stick a nuke in it. It's worked and hasn't seem to cause anything crazy to happen so far, but it's better than spewing oil and toxic chemicals out into our environment.
Click to expand...
Please tell me you have a source for that, I want to believe it so hard.
 
I was listening to NPR one day and I think it was done 5 times with a success of 4 times. The only reason I remember that was because I was thinking "God, an 80% success rate is probably not worth the nuclear debris". Not a hard source, but at least it ... sounds familiar?
 
The 7 out of 8 I heard from my husband, who heard it from a news broadcast interviewing a man who had worked with Russia's nuclear department. If I can find a source for that exact statement/video, I'll update with a link, but all I have are several articles stating the "4 out of 5" fact.

But yes, it's worked 80% of the time so far for Russia who used nukes rather often for somewhat mundane reasons. And I agree with Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, when it said “the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%. The Americans could certainly risk it.”

I think they should give it a go seeing as all other means to stop it have failed. If you want links to the articles, lemme know. :)
 
Russians have only used nukes to seal natural gas, not oil. They have also never done anything this far down. If I recall correctly most of Russia's gas leaks have been on land, I could be wrong though.

However I hate BP and believe they should be footing the bill for everything for decades to come.
 
Was watching CNN, guy being interviewed who ran a fishing fleet in the gulf. Got "Compensation" from BP equal to about one day's operating costs after being shut down ever since the spill. I'm sure that is going to be a fairly typical case, they won't pay out what they really owe unless someone ties them over a barrel to make it happen. Considering they are after all an international conglomerate, it means it'll never happen. International law gets screwy like that. Makes me think the UN needs to get seriously shook up and shook down, then give it some actual power to get some stuff done on an international level. Not going to ever happen of course, every leader will be crying foul about sovereign rights and such. But without it, any company that is global is pretty much untouchable.
 
If that's the case then it should be made impossible for them to do business in a host country; but that too would never happen.

The world is a fucked up place and a lot of things are just happening all at once.
 
LittleBitCheeky said:
I'm actually getting really sick of headlines like these:
...

I'm well aware that thousands have their pensions invested in BP. Under no circumstances should the money they have worked for be compromised. But they need to pay for what they have done. BP is a very large company, they can afford to protect their pensionholders (their shareholders I'm less bothered about, by the notion of shares alone they're taking a risk from the start) and compensate the victims of their accident. Even if it ruins the company, this is something that needs doing.

Some people have blamed the contractors working for BP, saying they're responsible for the spill. Fine. Take them to court, y'know? BP has a responsibility to pay both its pensionholders and for its mistake. If others are responsible, let them share the burden.

I don't know what my point is here. I just guess I'm sick that this has turned into a US vs UK-type thing, whereas it really shouldn't be.
Click to expand...

The US versus UK thing is, as far as I can see, being driven by Sky News. A.K.A. News Corporation, controlled by the Murdoch family, who also owns Fox News over here. Who will turn blind eye to the poisoning of a city for a paltry $100k advertising contract.

The only people Murdoch shows any loyalty to is communist China. And it is starting to show, badly.
 
The US versus UK thing is, as far as I can see, being driven by Sky News. A.K.A. News Corporation, controlled by the Murdoch family, who also owns Fox News over here. Who will turn blind eye to the poisoning of a city for a paltry $100k advertising contract.
Click to expand...

True. The problem is that, while I don't want to disparage my own countrymen, we have alot of people in the UK that just follow the gutter press and believe everything the Sun (that's Murdoch's flagship paper here) and the Mail (not Murdoch owned, but may as well be) say. It's because they're uneducated. The more these people take umbrage at Obama's attacks on BP (mistakenly believing them to be directed at themselves) the more it is heard the other side of the pond, which is where the offense happens. All I know is, if I was a victim of this disaster and I read some sarky editorial by some Essex boy saying BP should refuse to pay any damages because "it's a British company for British people" I'd be bloody offended.
 
That's not just your countrymen, cheeky. It's like that in alot of places. It's sad how people will blindly follow some skewed information they hear without a second thought. Another sad thing is that many companies do the same things BP did. Take shortcuts, be cheap bastards to turn a bigger profit, etc. Things need to change. Unfortunately, the change we're getting doesn't seem to really be helping. I do hope things get better, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
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