The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

A Barrel of Laughs

Popular comedian and BP chief executive Tony Hayward confirmed his retirement today, bowing out with yet more of the sort of comments which have made his name a byword for tact and sensitivity in the land of George W Bush, Sarah Palin and Homer Simpson. Hayward had been "demonised", he said, despite being merely the man on whose watch BP induced one of the biggest environmental disasters in history. Nobody's perfect, after all. Hayward brushed off the idea that he might care to attend further hearings about the oil spill; he will, it seems, be too busy teaching Putin's Russia about corporate responsibility and managing his redundancy payment. It would be interesting to know if Hayward plans to invest any of his humble reward in the company whose present reputation he has done so much to help forge.

The party atmosphere resulting from Hayward's remarks was much enhanced by his no doubt deadpan statement that BP's response to the disaster had been "a model of good social corporate responsibility". The grounds for this statement were that BP "capped the well and cleaned up a hell of a lot of the oil", when they could have just refused to try capping the well and walked off in a huff. Since the human beings affected by the disaster were Americans and not Africans, BP has announced a compensation fund; it remains to be seen what BP will spend dragging its poorer victims through the courts so as to pay out only as much as befits a model of good social corporate responsibility.

2 Comments:

  • At 10:30 am , Blogger Foamier said...

    The irony is that, if Tiny did now invest his windfall in BP shares, he would probably make a pretty good return, if only because he is no longer around to drag the share price down. I he did so before he was canned, sorry - left by mutual consent, I wonder if that would qualify as insider trading.

     
  • At 12:09 pm , Blogger phil said...

    If you'd like a comparable case in "good social corporate responsibility", google Bernie Banton and James Hardie. Banton died from mesothelioma induced by breathing asbestos fibres from Hardie products. They set up a 'compensation fund', put too little into and then moved their head office from Australia to Holland to avoid paying claims.

     

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