BP in crude political dilemma

The American people seem to want their president to be some kind of cross between a genie in a bottle and a jack in the box. He is, of course, neither. But disasters always lead to a belief that the president is the chief fixer as well as the Chief. So President Obama is now involved in some form of crude politics in order to rid the Gulf of Mexico of crude oil. Calling BP "British Petroleum" just ratchets up the blame game but it hardly serves to find a real solution. The truth is that there were three other American companies giving willing support to BP in their quest for deep sea oil wealth. And it's not as if BP is exclusively British. American investors have a sizeable share in the global conglomerate. Perhaps we should call it Anglo-American-Sino-Hispanic-Franco-Teutonic Petroleum.

BP is being asked for billions of dollars to help with the clean-up. Where is all this money going to go? First off, I hope it will have a properly audited paper trail and not just be doled out to porkbarrel merchants and get-rich-quick consultants. Will some be given in compensation? Who will decide how much each deserving case should get? A lot more questions will be forthcoming. I hope the answers will be honest and straightforward. What we don't want is filthy lucre literally contaminated by the globular oil it is expected to remove.

In the course of events some will lose their livelihoods, others will gain massively by obtaining cleaning contracts they never dreamed of. This could well be the biggest redistribution of wealth in a single episode of history. We just need to keep a check on who gets what in President Obama's counting house handouts.

John Prescott and the Beanstalk!

Pantomime Land? Well John Prescott's well and truly strutting the stage with his one-man fantasy that Gordon Brown is a Giant! Prescott has said the prime minister is a "global giant" who can win the next election. He said "everybody" outside the UK believed Gordon Brown had "turned this global economy round" and dismissed his opposition rivals as "pygmies".

Everybody? That's including the camp known as "the jungle" outside Calais, I suppose. They know a "global giant" when they see one. It's all a load of twaddle. To think that this is the stuff of high level politics.

Come to think of it, if Brown has done so well in turning this global economy round, he did it without the help of tax evading bankers. The Panorama programme tonight shows just what a bind he really is in. Caught in the headlights of a runaway bank juggernaut with the headlights searing into his brain.

If he's such a giant, he must have done his stopping around with velvet slippers on his feet.