Tony Hayward Gets His Life Back

Very clever. Let him take the heat as his last act then swap him out for another guy. We’re no better informed about BP’s role in this mess than we were yesterday morning and they get to avoid answering the tough questions for a while longer, assuming they’ll ever have to.

Great. A new guy to say with an eloquent, cockneyed accent “I don’t recall,” “I can’t remember” and “I wasn’t part of the planning.”
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Being British means never having to plead the Fifth.

I’ve been betting for a month that Hayward will stay in long enough to get the leak ALMOST fixed. Then the next guy can come in, announce that it was fixed 3 days later, and have a clean slate going into cleanup mode. This leak’s going to continue into August so might as well not sacrifice another executive to appease people now.

As a former Brit I found Hayward’s performance appalling. I assume he has been warned of the legal consequences of saying anything even if he wanted to make it exculpatory. I know the British Govt has to deal with angry BP pensioners and those invested in BP stock.

I would give them a chance to chose six of the complainers and fly them to the Gulf. Let them see the misery BP has caused first hand and the toll it is taking on ordinary folks who have no reliable income and who see their jobs disappearing.

Neither Brit or US bashing is called for. The people in the Gulf need help.

Corporate honchos are the same everywhere: my pocketbook first, investors second and everyone else can GTH.

Looks like time for someone to pour oil on troubled waters.

I thought he did well, from a legal point of view. He had a complete memory lapse, has nothing but the best intentions, stated several times that safety is his primary concern. The lawyers couldn’t have done better if they were remotely controlling a robot.

Or being Reagan either.

Kind of nice to see someone from across the pond not calling us fat, SUV road tripping, pigs who are the cause of all evil in the world. I usually like to go to British sites for a more objective view, but I’ve become so depressed over how much the British commenting on articles just plain hate us and even seem to think we are deserving of this, I can’t even enjoy any of my previous “British delights” like books and movies. It’s really almost as disturbing to me to see how we seem to be really thought of as it is to see the Gulf slowly become unrecoverable.

I’m sure we all know that this whole exercise before Congress is our typical form of Kabuki theater (“known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers”). It’s a show put on for the masses (us), with Hayward the British robot avoiding any litigious statement, and all the Congresspeople fighting for sound bites they can use in their next campaign videos.

Hayward will retire to a fine job, though maybe at a lower pay rate of only a few million a year, Congress will enjoy playing “outraged Americans” on TV, and they all hope, reasonably enough, that we the people will be too distracted by the next fluffy scandal (Tiger Woods! Al and Tipper!) to notice that actually, nothing whatever has been done and the rich are still quite rich, thanks.

While I sound cynical, I believe what I’m saying is plain truth and has been for quite awhile. If nothing changes, nothing changes. The only agents of change are the American people, and I don’t know if we have what it takes to do what needs to be done — to study and work to get the sleazy bureaucrats like Salazar out of their inherited offices, to be persistent, keep showing up, keep being a pain until the politicians do something just to get rid of us. It has worked before in dozens of cases, but the country might be too far gone now to retrieve things. And who of us has the time to do this, to suit up and show up, day in and day out, while at the same time trying to make a living? I don’t.