The information I’ve been able to get on-line indicates 40-44% UK owned, 35-39% US owned, and, since that doesn’t quite add up to 100%, probably a few percent owned by other folks.
(Percentages given as ranges because exact figures vary depending on source)
This request is disingenuous.
That makes no sense. Do you suggest that Britain is controlled by a tiny conspiracy that involves politicans, press owners, and oil companies?
Heck, do you remember the circumstances behind the demise of Lord Browne as the last CEO of BP?
I don’t believe that “disingenuous” means what you think it means.
I’d heard that BP’s multiple safety issues, exemplified by the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion but not limited to that event, led to his “demise.” Oddly, his Wikipedia entry blames “personal” issues.
Of course, anybody can edit Wikipedia. Just as anybody can stir up fake “controversies” in the media.
By asking me to produce a specific statement you are implicitly asserting that such a statement exists, or at least that I have said there is such a statement. Which I haven’t.
Well, you’ve stated that the “issue remains the way that Obama has turned a local issue into an international one.” I’m actually quite interested in the method he used to stir up all that trouble without opening his mouth.
How did he do it? Voodoo?
It is not one specific statement he has made, it has been the general tone of it.
And it is not just Obama, either (in retrospect I have probably focussed too much on him). It appears to be almost the entire American political class (and many media commentators as well).
“The whole might of American wealth and technology is displayed as utterly unable to deal with the disastrous spill - so what more natural than a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance against a multinational company?”
-Lord Tebbit, former British trade secretary
I’m coming to the conclusion that the British people accusing the U.S. of a xenophobic reaction are being suckered by their own press and politicians. Which is kind of unfortunate because this is not a national issue, and also rather ironic.
OK, you can’t give us a quotation from Obama. Can you explain more about the “general tone”?
Or, here’s an easier goal: Since you widened the list of suspects, perhaps you can supply at least one quotation (in context) from this vast field of American Brit Haters?
What on earth is this guy even talking about? Are we in the fucking Twilight Zone now?
I think there’s some, um, stereotyping going on here. There is an idea among certain circles of British folk that Americans are, in fact, crude, bigoted, xenophobic, and partisan. (The last one is probably indefensible.) So it’s easy to make fun assumptions that will appeal to those circles.
Frankly, this completely fake indignation and over-the-top defensiveness actually is making me pissed off at the British public, because it’s distracting the public, the media, and politicians from the actual issue. Environmental catastrophe? Remember?
Oh right, we’re the ones being manipulated by politicians and the press, because everyone knows that the average Briton is far less worldly and cynical than the average savvy American. :rolleyes:
Hey, man, thanks for proving my point so quickly.
That’s exactly what I think is going on.
Thank you for demonstrating the irony.
I’m with you, Kyla. I’m not pissed at the UK for anything BP did, but I’m starting to get annoyed at the it’s-all-about-us reaction I’m seeing, while 11 Americans are dead and thousands of people are losing their livelihoods as a result of a few corporations’ negligence and greed. Oh, but the poor, widdle Brits’ feelings are hurt. We should just stop mentioning the oil spill at all so that the UK can get back to watching the World Cup without having to worry their little heads about it.
Take a look at http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=203 and see what you’ve done.
I suspect there are some people who are feeling a sense of schaudenfreude that at last America has suffered for once. But I don’t, I feel sadness and compassion for you.
I also, fwiw, accept such things as the price we pay for progress. Hysteria is not the way to deal with these things. That hysteria is annoying enough anyway but when it’s directed at me I am particularly pissed off. And when it’s directed at me by the world’s largest hypocrite because he got a bloody nose I am very angry.
P.S. One day I dream of being as sophisticated and worldly as Happy Poster. Then maybe I could start threads like this one.
There’s probably a deeper underlying meaning that my uncultured and easily misled American brain is incapable of grasping.
Hey, I heard Americans can get drunk too, outside of California.
Dude, you can’t expect me to not to mock you for disparaging Americans when you started a thread called “Cows to gays” the other day.
You can mock me as much as you like, particular when, like with that thread, I deserve it 
But it doesn’t detract or bolster either of our points, that’s all 
Egads, this thread is making me wistful for the warm, gentlemanly relationship enjoyed between George W Bush and Tony Blair.
Good times, good times…