BP – What’s The Score ?

Everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon. They’re all having a go at BP. Even President Obama is hammering them but what’s the real story about the oil spill and who will carry the can?

The first thing to say is that BP are only drilling in the Gulf of Mexico because the US has an insatiable thirst for the black stuff (although it looks brown on the telly) and were only too willing to issue licences to operators to allow them to drill there but that of course does not condone the apparent lack of care which accompanied the actual drilling and operation of the well, 5000ft down in the Gulf.

The other thing to mention is that there are a few companies involved in this fiasco, which is becoming more political by the day. BP actually ‘owns’ the oil well, or rather, the oil in it, whilst a company called Transocean are the operators – i.e. the people hired by BP to get the oil out of the well. However, two other organisations also have a share of the oil well, one of which is a Texas oil company. Has Obama had a go at them? Don’t be silly.

As The Daily Telegraph put it quite succinctly yesterday …… ‘ (they should) explain to these tub-thumping shysters that this terrible accident happened on an American-owned, Korean-built rig leased by BP’s American subsidiary. Transocean, the owner of the rig, left America for tax reasons and is now based in Switzerland but that must not allow it to escape its part in this.’

Now, if you’re beginning to switch off at this point, this disaster (after all several people were killed) affects virtually every one of us – or it will do. If you have a pension fund then BP are one of the most widely held shares in these funds and the fact that the company has lost about 1/3^rd of its value since the leak will most definitely reduce the value of that fund. Insurance companies who rely on BP’s share price and dividends to keep their prices competitive will see their income fall – that might mean insurance rates go up. If the US delays further exploration and drilling for off-shore oil, the oil price will rise and as a result, so will virtually everything else – petrol, transported goods, manufactured items – virtually everything we eat, wear and use!

But eventually the problem will be resolved and after a few years the polluted coast will get back to normal. And if saying that, you think I’m trivializing the problem, I’m not. Virtually every oil related ‘disaster’ area seems to have recovered much quicker than the so-called experts predicted and whilst I sympathise with those affected, i.e. the fishermen, the beach cafes etc , methinks that the US government in general, and Barack Obama in particular are going completely overboard on this and are driving the frenzy levels higher than they need be.

The President’s very aggressive stance against BP in threatening to ‘nationalize’ the company and suggesting that he’d sack the CEO (Tony Hayward), is completely bonkers and is all based on the fact that when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast a few years back, good old George Bush didn’t really respond for several days and when he did, the response was totally inadequate. That was remembered when it came time to vote and Barack Obama does not want the same thing to happen to him in 4 years time.

So – where will it go from here? Hopefully, the latest attempt to ‘cap’ the well will dramatically reduce the amount of oil leaking from the well-head. President Obama will find another populist, voter-friendly cause to fight and leave BP alone to fix the problem. BP will inevitably end up in court over allegations that they told Transocean to install cheaper safety equipment which appears to have led to the initial explosion and if found guilty they will be find billions. And then there’s the usual lawsuits from everybody involved: the descendants of those who were killed; the injured survivors; those whose business are affected on the coast itself. The final total will be astronomical and as BP does not have any insurance cover (it covers itself as many large companies do) they will face a final bill of many billions – but let’s not forget that they were just about to pay out $10 billion this year alone in dividends – that’ll probably cover it.

And finally, I’ve just finished reading the book written by the last CEO of BP, John Browne. Despite the years of toil in the company and taking it from a predominantly British company to a global industrial behemoth , he was remembered for just two things – the Prudhoe Bay oil spill in Alaska and the Texas refinery explosion. He didn’t survive those – Tony Hayward won’t either.

We’re Here Because of Unknown Heroes

My PC is still on its back with its disk drive in the air but hopefully Amazon will deliver a USB network adapter soon and I'll be back to normal. In the meantime, an article from 2007 when we visited the Normandy beaches.

We’re on our third day in Normandy. The weather is mixed but thankfully cooler than the south where the heat has been oppressive for several weeks. The terrain is very similar to southern England with mile after mile of flat fields bounded by hedgerows which could have been transplanted from Kent or Sussex. The plants are also the same (apart from the occasional palm tree) and there are lush green lawns fronting most of the farmhouses, a welcome sight which is absent from the scorched south.

Lynn and Brian have made us most welcome, plying us with copious amounts of food and wine and have ferried us everywhere so the plan about J and me not driving up there worked – although having witnessed the rather more courteous driving style and the quiet country roads, I sometimes wish that I had taken my Alfa.

Picauville, where Brian and Lynn have their beautiful cottage is just inland from where the D-Day landings took place and although I had reservations about visiting the many seaside memorials for the invading forces, we ended up at one today. As I looked out to sea from the sand dunes still populated by German bunkers, I could almost visualise the troops storming ashore to be met by German resistance on the morning of 6^th June 1944.

My reservations were based on the fact that I dislike the glorification of war and all the commercialism which generally accompanies and, in my view, trivializes the struggles of others. However, the Utah Beach site which commemorates one of the US landing forces was quite understated and although there was the inevitable shop with tasteless memorabilia, the commercialism was not overdone. No McDonalds or KFC outlets and no garish hotels with neon lights. Just miles and miles of beach where thousands of US soldiers lost their lives as they jumped from their ships and waded ashore in the dawn light. One thinks of the opening sequence from the film Saving Private Ryan and desperately hopes that the film makers overdid the bloody sacrifice which happened on those beaches. As I stood there, and this may surprise those who know me and don’t think I have a serious bone in my body or thought in my head, but as I stood there looking out to sea I tried to imagine myself as a young US infantryman on one of these ships which had carried me to the coast of occupied France. I would see my comrades on other ships landing on the beach and being blown up by mines or being cut down by machine gun fire from the German bunkers and I would be thinking that it’ll be my turn soon. The high command would have worked out the anticipated casualty rate during their planning period but to them this was a statistic – to me this was most probably death and I hoped that it would be quick.

So as I stood there thinking of the 19 year old Private Anonymous and his comrades who were just about to be killed, I thanked them silently and in my own way for their sacrifice. Without them and the thousands of British, Canadian and French troops who stormed the Normandy beaches, fighting a war which many of them would not understand, we Brits would not be enjoying a French countryside in the way we do.

The Bread Maker

We get lots of smells up here on Cupples’ Mountain some of which I cannot really comment on because J sometimes reads this but there’s the perfume factory smell which, depending on the direction of the wind, sometimes wafts across the valley and if you think that must be quite pleasant, it’s not. A cross between a cheap bathroom air freshener and a bad aftershave, it’s quite sickly. Every time we drive past the factory and the odour eventually works its way through the car ventilation system, Guy and I always say the same thing - ‘ooooh Kitty’. She gets upset, a row breaks out and the rest of the journey is chaos!

Then there’s the unfortunate ‘septic tank’ smells which we get wafting around after we’ve had heavy rain and there’s some sort of atmospheric pressure which prevents it from dissipating. Thankfully, this only happens around a dozen times a year – but why does it always happen when we have visitors round for lunch on the terrace ? Do you explain it or hope they don’t notice it? If you do explain it, you find that you’re drawn into a lengthy detailed discussion about ‘septic tanks’ their design, construction and function which is not always the best way to start a nice lunch.

Then of course we have Shadow smells. He’s usually quite clean, in fact he’s always clean but just occasionally, he has that earthy doggy smell which permeates the lounge. I suppose we’re quite used to it but I do feel conscious when we get visitors. Do they smell it? Do they think our house always smells like it?

But of all the smells we get, the one we’d probably like to get and don’t get is from the bread maker up the hill. All of maybe 100 yards as the buzzard flies, the guy makes bread 2-3 times a week and in ten years living here I’ve never smelt a thing!

Rumour has it that the guy won the French lottery and gave up his job to follow his passion which was making bread. He’s French so a passing wave is all we get from him. We’ve never spoken, although years ago when his goats strayed onto our land and Shadow did his impression of a sheep dog and tried to round them up, and I carried a young goat back to him, we must’ve exchanged a few words – but maybe not!

Anyway, he’s a specialist bread maker or an artisan. He has a sort of stall just outside the village which comprises several large granite blocks erected in a sort of Stonehenge fashion and there, two days a week at 4pm he sells his breads, cakes and brioches.

Such is his reputation and the quality of his fare that queues start to form about 30-40 minutes before he even unloads his bread from the van. Despite my aversion to queues, I have actually hung around to buy his chocolate brioche, which, if you can buy it when it is still warm, is utterly delicious.

Last week, Julie came back from his stall with some cheese brioche which neither looked, nor smelled particularly good but once I’d tasted it, I was hooked. A meal in itself.

But back to the point I was making – we know he makes his bread up there because we see piles of wood on his terraces which he obviously uses for his ovens and his large van trundles down the hill past our house on the days his stall opens and last week about 6am when I was having a wander I looked up and there were clouds of steam coming from what must be his ovens – but absolutely no smell!

Would I like to have the smell of newly baking bread wafting down the hillside and into our house? Well, it would probably make me hungry and those on those rather infrequent occasions when I’m being good and only have a banana or a cup of coffee for breakfast, it would no doubt ‘force’ me to have a good old fry-up which would not be the plan, but then again when J entertains her lady friends for those frequent champagne breakfasts on the terrace she insists on having, it would probably be quite nice for the smell of newly baked bread to be drifting around – after all, they say that when you’re selling your house, you should stick some bread in the oven – the smell apparently makes the house seem nicer than it actually is! That probably goes for the ladies as well!

Now I did take a photo that morning of the bready-steam but with all the problems I’m having with my PC, it’s got lost so you’ll just have to do with one I took the same morning across the valley.

Revisiting the Fokkers

My PC is still in its death throes so in order to keep my Google account active and keep any readers I have, still interested, I'm taking the easy way out and reprinting some of my older and, dare I say it, more popular postings. This one is from August 2008.

Julie and I left for Normandy today. We’re off to stay with Brian and Lynn, our friends who also have a place in St Paul and whom we know from St Paul’s Baptist church. The trip’s been arranged for months but despite this there is always the last-minute panic that sets in before the dash to the airport. Watering plants, organising cats and dogs, cleaning the place up for our house guests and then ….oh yeah – I’d better have a shower. Never know who I might sit next to on the plane.

At the airport, with of course, no cheap parking available, Julie spending money like she’s just won the lottery and me desperately trying to get airside so I can just sit at the gate and relax, we realised that for the first time we’d be flying Air France, that industrial bastion, so beloved of the French government that it is habitually provided with billions of taxpayers euros to the extent that they had enough last year to go out and buy KLM, the Dutch carrier. Anyway that’s an aside – so as we sat there patiently waiting to board Julie asked me what plane we’d be going on. I looked over to the end of the air bridge, saw the plane and said, ‘Fokker’. ‘Excuse me’, she replied, reminding me with her supercilious tone that for the last few days my language has been basic to say the least. ‘Fokker’ I said again. ‘Who’s a fokker’ she asked looking around to try and spot the person who might have annoyed me. I said ‘there’s loads of Fokkers over there so it’ll be one of them’. She turned away in disgust and we boarded and took off. When we arrived at Lyon there were loads more Fokkers, in fact there were Fokkers everywhere, and they were all French. A whole load of French Fokkers.

Trying to impress my wife, I said ‘I’ve never seen so many Fokkers, France must have most of the Fokkers in the world. Just think of that – all the world’s Fokkers in one place’. By this time Julie had gone off in disgust in a vain attempt to find yet another retail establishment where she could try and melt her plastic but in fact could only find a ‘ladies’ and, never one to pass a ladies, in she went.

I wandered off to the departure gate and was looking out of the window when she sauntered up. ‘What you looking at darling’, was the question, obviously having forgiven my previous bad language. ‘All those Fokkers’, I said. ‘Well I hope those French Fokkers have transferred our bags onto the next plane’, she said surprising me with her grasp of aviation terms so quickly.

Now – this is plagerism of the most blatant kind. Eons ago I was sitting watching the Des O’Connor show on TV (yes I know but I always switched off when he sang) when he introduced a new comedian unknown to British TV. I watched this guy lamely try to get more than polite laughter out of the audience when he suddenly started telling this story of a British First World War fighter pilot surrounded by Fokkers. When he mentioned the word at first, the audience were a bit quiet and poor old Des didn’t know where to look but gave a quick snigger which only encouraged the comedian, Stan Boardman, to continue his story. It was an absolute classic. Find it here on You Tube and enjoy it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Yf5B6GbYk

Sport – There Is Hope

I’m a football fan but I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned by all the faking of injuries, the time wasting and the general histrionics of the players although, having said that now that Jens Lehmann (Arsenal) and Christiano Ronaldo (Man Utd) have left these shores, 50% of the stupid behaviour has gone with them.

These guys should look at rugby where, apart from ‘Bloodgate’ last year when a player faked some blood so that he could be replaced by a specialist kicker, their behaviour is generally quite good. OK they do have a few bouts of fisticuffs now and again but at the end of a match, they clap each other off the pitch and then all have dinner together later that night.

But both of them could look to golf where an unwritten etiquette is that a player is self-regulating, i.e. if a player makes a punishable error, even if nobody else has seen it, then they are duty bound by the generally accepted behavior code, to report it and take the appropriate penalty. Only a few months ago, an English golfer by the name of Brian Davis was playing in the US when he made it through to a sudden death play-off. The prize was just over $1,000,000 but as he swung his club in a bunker he thought he had hit something other than the ball. He duly called over an official who studied a replay and noticed that Davis had hit a reed on his backswing. He incurred a two-stroke penalty and finished third.

But whilst that was at an individual level, sporting behavior generally falls short when it’s a team game - players surrounding referees to dispute decisions, cricket teams ‘sledging’ each other (mumbling vicious and mischievous utterances just before the batsman takes a delivery) and Grand Prix teams cheating each other out of finishing places by all sorts of illegal subterfuge.

So it was a breath of fresh air when I read about a baseball game in Detroit last week.

Do you know what a ‘perfect game’ is in baseball? No? I didn’t either until I discovered that it happens when the pitcher manages to get through a complete game without any of the batters getting to first base. In 150-odd years of professional baseball in the US, prior to the start of this season, a perfect game had only been pitched 18 times in the major leagues. No pitcher has ever managed the feat twice. Considering that 2,400 Major League Baseball games are played every season, which means around 400,000 in total, that's roughly a ‘perfect game’ only every 20,000 games.

Then last Wednesday night in Detroit, a city that could use all the good news going, Armando Galarraga of the Tigers was going to join the pantheon of ‘perfect game pitchers ... until one of the umpires, a guy called Joyce, blew it. Galarraga had retired 26 Cleveland Indian batters and was looking for the third and final out of the ninth innings. The batter, Jason Donald, hit a pitch to his right to a waiting fielder whose throw beat him to first base and Donald was out, as the TV replays clearly show, by half a stride. Everybody knew he was out - except umpire Joyce, who quickly and clearly declared Donald to be in, and robbed Galarraga of his place in history.

Well, as you would expect, the Detroit players remonstrated, the fans booed in disgust and the nation agreed an injustice had been done. To his credit, Joyce, after seeing the replays, expressed mortification at his error. But that’s not the end of the story.

As reported in the US press, on Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Tigers and the Indians again came out to play, with Joyce umpiring as usual. But rather than castigate Joyce for his error, fans of the recession hit Motor City stood to a man to cheer a guy who admitted his mistake, which had denied one of their own a perfect game, a feat accomplished just 20 times since 1858. And, everywhere, observers shook their heads that a thing that was so sad and screwed up late Wednesday night could, simply by good will and compassion, be turned into something so humanitarian, so heart-warming, so sporting.

As the game began, Joyce's fellow umpires surrounded him in support, while members of the Tigers stopped by his field position, patted his arm and spoke a few words.

Afterwards, umpire Joyce was lost for words. He described it as ‘love’.

How’s that for a nice story?

The picture is of Gallaraga and Joyce talking before Thursday’s game and after the ‘mistake’ the previous evening.

PS - my PC is dying a slow, painful death so blogs might be infrequent until the problem is sorted.