Friday, June 11, 2010

Isn't it always about oil?

Oh my this whole BP thing is getting interesting isn't it? Anyhow, for a start lets make something clear, they're called BP, they've not been called British Petroleum since 1998, and, if the sainted Barak Obama must insist on playing silly games with their name perhaps he should refer to them as British Petroleum American Oil Corporation (BP Amoco) which was their name from 1998 to 2000.

Anyhow, what strikes me as most odd about this whole thing is the complete lack of perspective from the White House and others about the fact this was an accident. A bloody awful cock-up of course, but not some deliberate act of sabotage against the good people of Louisiana and Florida as some of the hyperbole spewing from Democrats might have you think.

The most hilarious thing though is the synthetic outrage being displayed across the pond about how it's all the businesses fault, those nasty "British Petroleum" people. Now Obama, the White House and leading Democrats whoring themselves on British media airwaves have been falling over themselves to say this is not an anti-British response at all. To this I have one word which is a typically British response. Bollocks.

By continually, and repeatedly referring to "British Petroleum" the politicos over the water are constantly pushing a subliminal line that it's not America's fault. The key here is to refer to another nationality in order to ignore the reality that many of the staff involved before it went wrong are American. To ignore the fact that the company is a merger of one of America's own oil big boys.

It is little more than a cynical politicking by a President who's approval ratings have been dropping through the floor since December last year with an eye to the mid-terms which could see Congress re-balance. Obama is basically following the principle expressed by his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel that you should "never let a serious crisis go to waste".

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying American plebs are any less stupid than the British plebs, rather I'm just pointing out that the White House approach is a cynical spin operation that far surpasses the spin operation that BP are able to counter with. What;s more the White House is playing a rather worrying game with it's threats about seizing control of BP or forcing it not to pay a dividend to it's shareholder, many of which are, as has been made clear, pensioners in the UK.

Right now, splashed across much of the British press is the fact that thanks to just a few words by Obama, the share price of BP has gone into free-fall. It doesn't take a genius to realise that someone somewhere is going to make a hell of a tidy profit when it rises again, and you can guarantee that it won't be money that ends up helping the devastated communities in Louisiana or Florida.

In fact, this is probably the most amusing and contradictory reality of the White House's and loony Democrat approach to BP. By constantly battering the business with ill-judged words, its value is falling, at the same time the White House is demanding that BP pay every penny and not "nickle and dime" people. Should they continue this approach there may not be much money left as the company plummets on the markets.... but then the hard-Left has never really "got" markets.

OF course, there is one other wider issue that is beginning to be raised in the British press which I expect may gather some traction if some Brits start to whore themselves on American media. That being the sheer hypocrisy of the Obama Administration to demand retribution and compensation on the world stage, whilst simultaneously denying any liability for the many equally catastrophic and sometimes worse environmental clusterfucks they've been involved in.

Yes, it's true, such an argument is "whataboutery", and just because America hasn't stepped up to the plate in the past it does not mean that their demands now are necessarily wrong. Frankly, it's right that BP pay to clean up a mess they're responsible for. What is wrong though is to dictate what BP does with its profits. It is not the role of the Federal Government, or for that matter any Government to dictate to a private company how it should spend it's money when it has as much as BP.

All the White House should be concerned with is that BP have a legal obligation to pay up. It has no place allocating which pot of BP's money should be used for that legal obligation. However, like I said, there are mid-terms coming, and when a President is disliked more than he is liked, a crisis such as this is a golden opportunity to make yourself look tough and resolute to your voters that don't have a well-tuned political antennae.

As for David Cameron, he should grow some balls and tell Obama to stop playing silly buggers.

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