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It is truely a matter of national shame for the ever so right Brits, that the newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron came out in support of BP, trying to condone its misdeeds and going to the extent of saying, that he is ready to spend the taxpayers's money to bail out BP and its share holders. The Dutch Prime Minister also came out with such a statement a fortnight back, which however was much more muted in tone, than that of David Cameron.
There is nothing wrong with being nationalistic and defending the rights of the citizens of a nation or its corporates. But to defend the wrongs of an individual or a corporate just because of nationality is a concept of the 17th Century, when nations fought pitched battles with jingoistic fervour just because of brotherhood and the feeling of nationalism.
It seems the British and the Dutch have still not got out of the days when their ships ruled the world and plundered and ravaged other nations, and the Queen bestowed honours on the chieftains just to bring the Gold home .....equivalent to modern day shareholders wealth. David Cameron's passionate plea on behalf of BP is possibly going with the age old tradition but definately not in line with modern day sensibilities, where we don't condone crimes just because they happen to belong to our class, creed, religion or country.
BP's crime was not spilling oil, which could have been however condoned, as an accident.Its crime was covering up the extent of oil spill, the mismanagement of the repair job trying to keep public attention away from the toxic spraying of dispersamnts for cleaning, It tried to hoodwink the public by focussing on hightech rocket science coverage of highly improbable repairs, which sounded insincere and lacked transparency. Finally its crime was to sieze the opportunity and air spray millions of gallons of toxic dispersants, that broke up the oil spill into 100,000 unmanageable parts, that would be soon blown out to the seven seas by the Atlantic Hurricanes. Some Dishonest Risk Management.... as BP is often known to do.
It would be of course of great interest to know what environmentalist Prince Charles has to say on David Cameron's stand. Also an opinion poll on the BP oil spill and wether they should be boycotted must be held exclusively for the British public and its results would be interesting to watch in such cases. The American public has overwhelmingly cast a 76% opinion against BP in the opinion polls held by environmental groups with only 10% saying that BP should be let go.
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