I haven’t seen any of that. I have not heard from or spoken to anybody who gives a damn that the company is based in Britain. Most people hold BP responsible. That BP happens to be British is not meaningful.
You were saying something about “disowning all responsibility?” When you spell someone’s name wrong in a letter, you can say ‘everyone makes mistakes.’ When you cause an enormous environmental calamity through negligence and greed, that doesn’t apply. The accident wasn’t intentional, but the crap that led up to it was.
Halliburton is headquartered in Dubai. Not an American company.
BP dominates the safety violation producers in the oil companies. They collect about 97 percent of the violations. They are a great example of whats wrong with international ,unrestrained capitalism.
I haven’t seen any of that. I have not heard from or spoken to anybody who gives a damn that the company is based in Britain. Most people hold BP responsible. That BP happens to be British is not meaningful.
[quote]
That it’s not American is meaningful. You probably have to be non-American to see this.
They are taking responsibility. But you can’t expect these disasters never to happen. They just do. “Negligence and greed” is just over-emotive crap.
I have no doubt you can backup that 97% claim in some twisted misunderstood way, but it’s complete bollocks nontheless. As for the Dubai thing… :rolleyes:
Boycotts can only be effective when the offender is fairly flat, for instance a local chain of three restaurants, or a consortium of California grape farmers, or something like that, and even then the effect is debatable. Boycotting BP gas stations in the U.S. is not even the prick of a mosquito.
If it makes you feel better, by all means, go for it. Disgust at a brand is as good a reason not to give them your money as any. Just don’t expect it to hurt the corporation too much.
A few piddling billions? Have we any reason to believe that they have enough money, when we don’t have any idea how much all of this shit is going to cost?
One damn thing: no way…no fucking way!..should BP be paying out dividends on its profits. Unh-unh. Nope.
Whats the line about the French guy talking about how the English have to hang an admiral every once in a while, to encourage the others? Pour encourager les autres?
What will happen? All of this shit will Go To Court. A lawyer feeding frenzy, with a couple hundred, maybe thousands, in all sorts of venues and jurisdictions, with BP lawyers dreaming up new and interesting ways to slow, delay, impede, and drag out the process until the Rapture. And in the meantime, we, the people, will be picking up the tab. Don’tcha just love risk-taking entrepreneurship? Well, you better. You own it when it blows up. They own it when it comes up money.
No, a mistake is when you do everything reasonable to prevent a problem and it happens anyway. This is gross negligence.
If Shell or Hess or Exxon or anyone else did this we’d be just as pissed off and they’d probably be boycotted. It’s easier to boycott BP than Halliburton or other players, since their name is on retail products.
This is very interesting information.
I believe I have been subconsciously boycotting my local BP station and given the fact that it is only hurting the nice folks who run the station, I guess I should be more logical in my actions.
Thanks LonghornDave!
Aside from all the corner-cutting that led to this accident. And not having a plan for how to deal with this kind of wreck if it occurred. That wasn’t very responsible, now was it? Oh, and they’ve never disclosed how much oil is leaking into the water because they want to keep their fines to a minimum. Very helpful.
What would you expect them to do? Mumble “that’s not our rig” and back out of the room? Yes, they’ve said they’re sorry, they’re paying some money to Gulf businesses, they’ve put their CEO on the talk show circuit, and spent money on ads. Most of that stuff is meaningless. I am sure they have been trying to fix the leak. They’re taking a huge PR hit and losing a lot of money. Making nice-nice and saying you’re sorry is all very fine, but it doesn’t undo anything they’ve done.
It’s accurate description of their pitiful safety record. Cut enough corners for a long enough time and this kind of thing is going to happen. Particularly since the regulatory agencies weren’t doing their job either.
Corner cutting my arse. It’s probably impossible to actually conform to every single regulation.
Anyway this argument is the same kind of one that… oh ffs, think about it! This idealism would mean there would never be train crashes, never plane crashes, never car crashes, never accidental firearm discharge, never building damages, never food poisoning etc etc etc etc etc etc
Their safety record is much worse than other companies who do the same thing. “Accidents happen” is a statement about the world in general and not a defense in any specific case. Do you believe this is really an argument?
Of course I do. Demanding perfection is ridiculous.
Gross recklessness should be the standard for getting angry with someone/some entity and I don’t see that here.
And again, where is the real evidence for this alleged much worse safety record? Being worse in two random states is meaningless. Particularly as for all I know almost all of those citations could have come from one or two incidents.
(I don’t believe this absolves them of their legal and moral liability to clean up to whatever the max that that law is, and considerably more if you lot would be a bit more greatful)
Obviously, you’re probably right, it probably is impossible. As per the cite above, OSHA statistics show Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight “egregious and willful” violations, Citgo had two, and Exxon had one. So even the best are going to get popped now and then. BP had 760. Bit of a difference there, don’t you think?
Again, is this a reasonable, worldwide perspective?
Or does it in fact stem from a large series of violations discovered after a couple of incidents, and it’s essentially BP’s bad luck that the latter happened.
I don’t know the answer to that, but it sounds a lot more likely to me.
I am sure, though, that a worldwide perspective will not show any of the major oil companies to be terribly different to one another, partly because they’re so incestuous
BP has very kindly said it will compensate fully everyone affected by this spill, while as I understand it damages are theoretically capped to some piddling sum. What the hell else more do you want?
