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It’s always nice for politicians to have an easy target & for the Americans right now there’s no-one easier than BP, it doesn’t matter how much money they can throw at the Yanks, they’re still going to hate them, which is stupid. Okay if you were going to pick a group of companies that could be hated even more than the banking system then the oil companies are a fair point to raise, the profits they generate are obscene & they’re forever involved in the less democratic areas of the world in their endless search for fresh supplies. On any level despising the oil industry is peachy, it’s like loving the addiction but hating the dealers & we can all relate to that, after all it’s our way of life that spawned them & continues to feed them although we intentionally ignore this because it spoils all the hating & resentment. Even amongst the oil companies themselves there’s always one that gets to be singled out for a special dose of hating due to whatever disaster it caused or was attached to, at least until one of the other oil companies causes a fresh disaster & claims the crown back that it is. Right now BP is right up there as demon number one & if the oil spill had happened anywhere else in the world I’d be right there hating the company along with everyone else, but I can’t do it, it can’t be done & shouldn’t be done, as much as I’d like to join in with the abuse it’s just not right.

I’m not claiming that things went anywhere near well in the Gulf, I make no defence for the huge environmental disaster or for the implications for the future or even that the stupendous sums of money promised as compensation should sort it all out to everyones’ satisfaction. I’m not even going to claim that BP handled any of this particularly well at any point or that their PR didn’t prove to be a farce from start to finish, all I’m claiming is that the people complaining the most shouldn’t be complaining at all. You see it’s all very well for the Europeans to loathe oil companies & resent the hell out of their success, we’ve hardly got any oil & what there is of that is running out pretty swiftly, America however has loads of oil, just not enough for America, & that’s the thing. America is the one place on Earth where they’re always keen to discover more oil, they need more oil than just about any other country, okay so China may use a bit more overall but per individual? Not a chance, & it’s not as if BP failed to find oil, they found loads & were probably as surprised as anyone else to find out how rubbish they were at containing it, nope, as oil exploration goes it was an unqualified success right up to the point where oil became involved.

The Americans though are complaining too much, they’re the ones so bloody keen on oil & if they were naive enough to think that out of all the exploration going on there wasn’t going to be a few cock-ups then that’s hardly anyones’ fault but their own. I’m not saying that it’s a bonus to have your beaches covered in crude or a mass of wildlife coated in filth & dying but that’s progress for you & so long as we’re looking for oil it’s going to happen again. I’m all for those people who’ve had their livelihoods ruined to bitch the loudest & demand their pockets filling but aside from that all the politics has been pants & I expected better from them, no-one needs to treat an oil company with compassion but Salems’ over guys & that should count. As for all that blow about it being because BP is a British company they can keep it, none of these companies have any nationality to speak of, oh they may have originated in some country or other but after all the years of trade & share dealing they’re just cash machines for the markets. There are no American oil companies just as there are no French oil companies or any British oil companies, they’re just oil companies, period. Yes it was a disaster, yes the cap should have fit better, yes we’ve all been there, but please, if you don’t want them drilling all over for oil then just stop using so bloody much of it, or learn to understand that sometimes it isn’t always a good time to strike it rich. Americans complaining that someone discovered oil? I know, scary isn’t it?

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