Brit's view of BP CEO Hayward: just an "affable geologist" who's victim to the bullying Yanks

..and this from The Guardian, a "leftie" paper! Oh, please! That "affable geologist" is a greedy corporate pig who tried to drill oil on the cheap and caused the worst environmental disaster this country has ever seen. It's not anti-British to expect him to take the blame and responsibility, but after spending the last week in London, I can tell you the Brits are circling the wagons around him :wtf: :shrug:. Here's the article, and also some comments from the Daily Mail.

Too bad we didn't just beat the England team into the ground today!!!


"Using this tragic accident for political postureing is reprehensible. I don't know about sacking Tony Hayward, I couldn't care less one way or the other, it wasn't his fault but he is big enough to look after himself. But I think Obama should look to his own sacking by the American people with a bit of luck.
All his anti British rhetoric shames him after our troops are dying out in afghanistan shoulder to shoulder with American troops, and all whilst he holidays, and parties with the film stars he loves so much, hateful man."
- Marie., Lancs, 08/6/2010 15:32

"Obama keep your nose out, and we will keep our troops out of your war zones, fight your own wars your not fit for purpose."
- Terry, Leicester, 08/6/2010 15:31

I believe it is IMPOSSIBLE to overestimate the stupidity of the American voter. A high percentage of them have never seen the sea and have no passports. God invented war to teach them geography. Their hypocrisy is legendary. They spent millions in Italy bankrolling political parties and destabilising the government because they had a delusion that the country was going communist (and if it did what business was it of theirs?) but it is illegal for US political parties to take foreign money. Barrack Obama is just another US politician who can hardly string a sentence together, hence the speaking in lumps of three or four words with big pauses, just like who... Oh yes, Tony Bliar. If he hadn't been black, Obama would never have been elected and the Americans have noticed that he hasn't a clue (or some of them anyway)."
- Clive Blake, Victor Harbor South Australia, 08/6/2010 15:25 (another colony heard from! goes to show stupid isn't only in Europe or North America)


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1284896/Gulf-oil-spill-Id-sacked-BP-boss-Tony-Hayward-fumes-Obama.html#ixzz0qg6Sx4VH"



http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/09/tony-hayward-bp-barack-obama

of fair retribution -- no matter where the eruption occurred. Once we learned of all the shady goings-on it had participated in over the years, we'd want to take it down.

to pull their soldiers from the war zones. Maybe that will help prompt Mr. Peace Prize Winner to do the same.

Without him, their IQ would be around room temperature...Celsius.

Boy, talk about wrong! And yes, they're more culturally aware than we are, but a lot of that is passive due to their geographic closeness to the continent (which they still resist). But as compared to Italy, France and the Netherlands, where the populous is totally engaged in social issues, the Brits aren't that interested.

And it shows.

..what with me arguing with Brits, who seem to think our loathing of BP is anti-English. Then, the same people start that line about how Americans are basically ignorant of the rest of the world, blah blah. Of COURSE I'm not gonna disagree: for most Americans it's an absolute fact. But these Brits are showing their ignorance as well, what with the knee-jerk reactions and coming to Hayward's defence.

Anyway, I spent many years in London myself, I've traveled all over the world and YES I have seen the ocean and I've had a passport since I was 13 years old!!! So it's a little hypocritical for them to deride Americans for being stupid and clueless, by demonstrating the same.

not picking on BP because they have the word "Biritsh" in their name, we're incensed because they've engaged in scummy business practices at the expense of people all for the bottom line. Just like the American companies we loathe.

Americans are at least as culpable for this disaster than the British. Actually more so because we didn't regulate them properly.

destroyed a whole ecosystem/food chain , and 40% of a whole nation's estuary/marsh system.. that's all ..

Wonder how that "Brit" would feel if Texaco had a "gusher" like that going on in the Irish Sea, or the English Channel..

burning effigies of Uncle Sam, no doubt.

Really, this situation both angers and saddens me all at once. Here is one opportunity for the Anglos to come together and fight corporatism and we have to hear this kind of garbage. And to anyone with an ounce of sympathy for BP, Hayward or any of those other 'rats, FUÇK YOU!!!

However, I got the impression from reading the "Guardian" article that the Brits see Tony Hayward being singled out as a scapegoat because of his nationality. Which is partly untrue, since he is the CEO of BP after all. However, IMHO arguments about nationality are immaterial - BP is a true integrated multinational. The fact is that corporates and multinationals are pretty much answerable to no one these days and resist even limited attempts to regulate their operations by buying off the corrupt ruling class(es). BP, the MMS, a bought and paid for Congress and ultimately the subjugation of all aspects of life to the profit motive are to blame for this catastrophe. I sense some sort of (convenient) denial in the one-dimensional narrative about everything being the fault of "evil furriners" here on DU, which merely externalizes the cause of the problem and ignores the equally pernicious role played by "our" corporatist apologists.

from the first day of the explosion, he was the premier spokesperson quoted in the media. Tony Hayward also was part of spending 50 million on a feel-good ad campaign which was promptly telecast into every single American's home (a HUGE flop, and quite frankly I think that most who were angered at HIM directly became so after viewing that commercial). If BP had prevented Hayward from commenting and only using American spokespersons and not creating that disastrous commercial, it would have confused us Americans more into thinking we were not really dealing with a British company after all.

So Hayward is a scapegoat of his own doing.

Superficial affablity that starts wars like Bush and pollutes oceans like Hayward we simply do not buy anymore. (some of us never did)

The comments section is usually an excellent illustration of Winston Churchill's quip that 'the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter'.

Also...BP? 40% US-owned; half the board of directors? Americans. The contractors who were doing the actual work on the well at the time of the accident? All American companies (including Halliburton), who must surely bear some degree of culpability. And Obama's insistence on referring to BP as 'British Petroleum' (which it hasn't been called in over a decade since they merged with Amoco) doesn't help the perception of anti-British bias on this side of the Atlantic either.

nearly every day. Not only do you have crazy conservative Brits ranting, but also the RW teabaggers who continue to apologize for Obama and make us look pathetic.

...their coverage of the Gulf oil spill was all about whether the Yanks had begun expressing negative comments about the Brits as a people because of the spill, how BP's problems would affect the Brits' retirment investments and their economy as a whole, that sort of a thing.

I realize all news is local, but their coverage seemed terribly self-absorbed.

I'd love to know who is behind this pathetic attempt to make it a US vs. UK thing.

And let's not forget: Rupert owns most of their tabs and rags too!

No, it's more BP PR. If they can get us fighting each other across the pond, they get more heat off them for destroying our Gulf Coast.

Diversion. Nice try, BP.

:boring:

Next?

And of course, much of our media, like yours, is owned by King Rupert; and much of the rest by people just as bad.

Hello, no one home in that head.

As if most of his countrymen are ocean farers and sailors, seeing as it takes weeks to reach the Australian coastline from some of those towns!

The reason I posted those Mail comments is because it takes very little provocation for the global anti-American sentiment to out itself. WTF does our anger at a CORPORATION have to do with foreign policy or who's the most culturally aware? I think that previous poster could be right: BP might be ginning up the Nationalistic prose as part of its deflection and damage control. Too bad the British Media has to lap it up like so many pelicans getting a beakful of OIL or something!

Seems to me Europe was imperializing for 300 years, while we were being "nationalistic" to the point that it was even hard to get us into WW2.

Or is that part left out of history ed in Britain?

And even the best newspapers like the Guardian have their bad commentators.

We should all be in this together - the people against unbridled and unregulated corporations that may yet ruin us all, and make the world uninhabitable. As an American revolutionary against the British King once put it, 'We must all hang together or assuredly we will all hang separately'. Now it is not a king of one country that we must fight, but global corporations and their unregulated power.

Our government is proposing to hire 'outside experts', *including Hayward's predecessor Browne*, to advise government departments on how to cut costs - and that would probably mean treating all British public services with the same level of responsibility and concern shown by BP. So for anyone who wants to see the Brits punished - we will be, oh, yes, we will be.

Let us ALL fight against the present-day worship of big business, wherever it may be.

As you said, The Daily Mail is a RW rag, by I love The Guardian. It's been my go-to paper (print and online) for about 30 years now, when the Corporate American media won't print info We The People need to know. And one other poster mentioned the venerable Beeb (pun intended, and I know you'll get the allusion!) jumped into the foray as well.

I guess I just didn't expect the Brits, who really are able to nuance situations a little better than Yankees, to have this knee-jerk reaction. And obviously the media is having an affect, illustrated by my loud debate last week in the pub. For one thing, my opponent broke the cardinal rule which is: I can talk smack and say whatever I want to about stupid, clueless Americans, but the minute an outsider does it, he's gonna get an earful from me. Like someone slagging off your sister: you don't have a go at my family cuz I'll defend them to the end.