The Prime Minister called for the company to be protected from excessive compensation claims as President Barack Obama made it agree to potentially unlimited damages.
BP provisionally agreed the biggest compensation payment in corporate history, setting up a fund worth at least £13.5 billion to cover the damage caused by its leaking oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico.
But the US president last night made it clear that BP’s payments could be just the start, warning that the company could still face lawsuits from individuals and American states.
It may be time for us to stop wasting money and the lives of our young people supporting the US in Afghanistan.
Good plan, PM — England can make foreign policy decisions for itself based on our responses to a British corporation’s complete and disastrous and hamhanded ruination of the vocations of thousands who live on our nation’s shores.
Sounds like a winner.
It may be time for *us* to stop engaging in *any* overseas actions that require “support” from any country at all. Going it alone has always been the best course of action for the US — and taking care of our own, without constantly policing or assisting the third and fourth-world countries who have soaked themselves and their neighbors in blood for millennia, or the European countries who have chosen to squander their money passing out benefits and early retirements and vacations and other largesse to their “workers” rather than actually paying attention to their own countries’ defenses.
If the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have done anything for Americas beyond keeping us free from further attacks and pulverizing the core leadership of Islamic terrorists, it’s to make all of us far more interested in our country, rather than everybody else’s. I value what was done in Iraq and Afghanistan — dealing with those hate-filled Islamics who wished to make us into Israel was an important task.
But I’ll be glad for our soldiers to come home — and if we elect wisely and well, they’ll be reassigned to guard our borders to prevent our being over-run by criminal illegals and wastrels.
Thanks Sarah
[blockquote]based on our responses to a British corporation’s[/blockquote]
It has not been lost over here that Obama has been making a point of calling it British Petroleum rather than BP. It employs more Americans than anyone else. Is it “British”? – well only if you think that Bruce Ismay was British. BP is listed on the London Stock Exchange but is now a multi-national corporation whose shares are owned about 40% by British pension funds and 40% by US pension funds, so when Obama completely wrecks it, which may or may not be before any compensation fund is set up, be aware that US pensioners and employees will be hit as hard or harder than ours.
[blockquote] complete and disastrous and hamhanded ruination of the vocations of thousands who live on our nation’s shores.[/blockquote]
I think that is the point. No one defends what has gone on nor the need to compensate those who have been affected in full. BP has the funds to do so and will in the first instance be the payee, but a final determination of responsibility has not been determined between BP, and the US companies who Obama seems to be protecting: Haliburton whose work on the well cap failed, and Transocean who owned the rig. It looks to us like the usual thing of the US protecting its own. Liability is BP’s, but fault is yet to be determined and is not in any event determined by Obama or Congressmen mouthing off. All we are seeing is the abandonment of the rule of law, by a President deciding to spend other companies’ money, confiscation of assets without legal process and other examples of American bullying, which a US corporation would not be subject to. But that is an easy thing to do when you can just label everything “British”.
[blockquote]assisting…the European countries who have chosen to squander their money passing out benefits and early retirements and vacations and other largesse to their “workers†rather than actually paying attention to their own countries’ defenses.[/blockquote]
Insofar as this refers to Britain we maintain the world’s third largest defense spending and match per capita what the US spends. We have had our economy wrecked by supposedly reputable US regulated banks and institutions bundling worthless junk mortgages into fraudulent “securities” and then selling them to us. We of course have not confiscated the assets of these fraudsters by labelling them “American” because we have held up our side of the special relationship and the rule of law operates here.
Contrast the hysteria from the Obama administration with the parallel situation when the American owned Piper Alpha oil platform blew up and polluted our shores terribly.
Sarah, I’m going to have to agree with Pm here. There is no precedent for a POTUS to “require” a private corporation to put up money for claims from private individuals without some sort of protection or waiver agreement. This is an extraordinary circumstance, obviously, but this is another one of those situations where this President and his administration is ignoring the rule of law and using a crisis to take power, which it will not give back. I do not understand why BP has caved in and agreed to put up $20 billion without any further protection from claims. Bad legal advice.
RE: “BP is listed on the London Stock Exchange but is now a multi-national corporation whose shares are owned about 40% by British pension funds and 40% by US pension funds, so when Obama completely wrecks it, which may or may not be before any compensation fund is set up, be aware that US pensioners and employees will be hit as hard or harder than ours.”
Of course, Ford is a “multi-national corporation” — there are thousands of those, but it’s clear that BP is a UK company just as Ford is an American company. But no need to quibble over those matters because — I don’t support Obama’s actions at all. Whatever is BP’s part in the fiasco should be dealt with under the rule of law and not by our Dear Leader who doesn’t have the authority.
But I was merely commenting on this statement right here by you: “It may be time for us to stop wasting money and the lives of our young people supporting the US in Afghanistan.”
Not commenting on the article or Obama — neither did you — merely your interesting foreign policy idea in comment #1.
#5 Well interestingly Sarah, main item on the TV News last night was the Congressional hearing with the head of BP. We have not seen anything like it since the Stalin and McCarthy show trials. What a disgrace.
The news was followed by the weekly Friday current affairs panel program with an audience in Witney ‘ Question Time‘. The reaction of many of the speakers was identical to mine wrt our support of the US in Afghanistan.
It is just possible that the relevant section may be seen in the US at this link under Chapter 4:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00svbf2#p008f6b6
RE: ” The reaction of many of the speakers was identical to mine wrt our support of the US in Afghanistan.”
See Comment #2.
RE: “What a disgrace.”
There, we completely agree.
[blockquote]RE: “What a disgrace.â€
There, we completely agree.[/blockquote]
There I will agree with you completely, on both counts.
But I don’t agree that UK’s support for Iraq or Afghan military actions should be in anyway connected to our present administrations’ treatment of BP. Those military actions are not just US actions – UK has also been subject to attached from Islamic terrorist. It is just as much in UK’s interest to control them and wipe out their insular nests in countries that can’t control them as in US interest. Sarah is correct in #2 that UK foreign policy should not be based on this incident – it is too far out of the mainstream of normality for it to affect relations between the two countries. The catastrophe is extreme and the reaction is extreme. It should be left at that and move on to solutions and causation investigation by both countries.