[spellchecker changed the BP in the tite to Bop and I didn't notice. Maybe a mod can fix it?]

First of all, I'm not trying to create a thread about BP being guilty or not. There is another thread about that.

Anyway, I was watching this grilling of Tony before the US Congress last night and I actually started to take the side of BP boss Hayward. I felt the politicians were grandstanding by trying to appear as tough as possible for their voters. I thought he gave some reasonable answers (the need to wait for the results of investigations before making some decisions - our Presidents do that all the time) and the Congressional committee were plain rude with their holier-than-thou attitude when it's pretty much accepted that politicians aren't holier than anyone.

Oil Spill: BP Boss Tony Hayward Heckled At US Hearing Into Oil Spill Then 'Stonewalls' Committee | Business | Sky News

Too bad you didnt just add this to the other thread.... The other thread is about the oil spill crisis not whether or not BP is guilty. You should copy & paste your message into it anyway as this title is as you said odd ...

But I agree 100% with what your saying.

I saw the whole thing & kept thinking the same. Grandstanding to the max.

To top it off when one asked him if anyone had been fired at BP yet & why not.....

I thought you bunch should be fired a$$holes. These same holier than thou types are all just as much to blame as they are part of the regulations that allowed any of it. How could they ask now about how bad BP's safety record has been & yet allowed them into the gulf in the 1st place.

The greatest bunch of Stonewallers in the history of mankind have just been Stonewalled.

Good for the Bop Chairman, Heyward.

Too bad you didnt just add this to the other thread.... The other thread is about the oil spill crisis not whether or not BP is guilty. You should copy & paste your message into it anyway as this title is as you said odd ...

But I agree 100% with what your saying.

I saw the whole thing & kept thinking the same. Grandstanding to the max.

To top it off when one asked him if anyone had been fired at BP yet & why not.....

I thought you bunch should be fired a$$holes. These same holier than thou types are all just as much to blame as they are part of the regulations that allowed any of it. How could they ask now about how bad BP's safety record has been & yet allowed them into the gulf in the 1st place.

Funny you should mention that, I was going to include a reference to that exchange in my original post. When Tony logically answered, "I believe we should wait for the conclusions to be made before we make decisions based on those conclusions" the politician (no idea who or from which party) snidely replied something like "Well, at least you answered that today is Wednesday".

Could it be that the US Congress will end up saving at least a little piece of Tony's reputation by making him a sympathetic figure?

Tell you what, I feel uneasy defending this guy but Congress is one body that shouldn't be pointing fingers at anyone. We should have hearings where our own elected representatives get grilled like this.

Funny you should mention that, I was going to include a reference to that exchange in my original post. When Tony logically answered, "I believe we should wait for the conclusions to be made before we make decisions based on those conclusions" the politician (no idea who or from which party) snidely replied something like "Well, at least you answered that today is Wednesday".

Could it be that the US Congress will end up saving at least a little piece of Tony's reputation by making him a sympathetic figure?

Tell you what, I feel uneasy defending this guy but Congress is one body that shouldn't be pointing fingers at anyone. We should have hearings where our own elected representatives get grilled like this.

Exactly...These congress critters are trying to shore up votes is all.

The general public should be asking why the congress has been asleep at the wheel for so long. Not just this but the financial crisis as well.

In the end Tony Hayward is CEO of a company of almost 100,000 employees. For them to blame him or make him the scapegoat is ludicrous.

I agree though that to see a few congress critters roasted would be a better BBQ

I agree the pols were shamelessly grandstanding, but on the other hand there was a clear problem with BP safety culture that the CEO has NOT fixed. While of course he can't be involved in every single technical decision in a huge firm, his grand policy of "focusing on safety like a laser beam" turned out to be more like a wet rag in terms of the culture of the officials that DID make the unsafe design decisions on the disaster site. They were warned about severe risks and ignored them. Ultimately, the CEO IS responsible. The so called anti-British sentiment in the US is a sham. It's about giant corporations, not nationalities.

Any time humans are put in decision making positions there will be mistakes. We have not make equipment nor guidelines for the use of that equipment that is fail safe when people get involved. There have been numerous accidents similar to this, just not as catastrophic.The oil sector does a good job of learning from their mistakes and there will be mistakes when you operate in deeper water and drill deeper and into more hostile environments than what is the norm. This spill/blowout was due to what proved to be the wrong decisions being made by BP personnel

Governments/politicians in all the self righteous glory will add more regulations, operating procedures, and what they consider safeguards while knowing virtually nothing about the oil sector.They have been increasingly meddling in virtually every business in the US for the past 50+_ years. Some legislation turned out for the good (some would disagree on this) as they seemed to have somewhat of a understanding of it , such as labor, employee benefits, working conditions etc. When the attempt to control/modify, through regulation, financial institutions, military operations, education programs, etc where them seem to lack understanding, the following generation/government has to attempt to right their mistakes. As mistake does not seem comprehensible to them, they/politicians will grandstand grill people, make smart ass remarks, appoint committees and throw monies out to rectify a unsolvable problem. When we eliminate human error/stupidly then the problems may become solvable. Just my 2 cents worth.

I used to have one restaurant. I was the boss. If someone got food poisoning I was responsible. If they got sick and went to the hospital I paid the bill.

To take one example, prime rib of beef. You can cook it to medium rare and hold it for 8 hours, slicing it as needed. If you don’t use it all in one day, you chill it over night and then re heat it the next day. All in all you can safely hold it hot for 24 hours. After that it becomes dangerous. But do you throw it out after 24 hours? It is expensive prime beef? In my restaurant if I figured the usage wrong I threw it out, actually gave it to the dogs.

Then I got another restaurant. I did the same thing. Eventually I managed 52 restaurants and I made sure all the managers threw the stuff out after 24 hours. One inventive manager froze the old stuff and counted it as inventory at the end of each month making his food cost look better than it was. I did unannounced spot checks of inventories and caught him and fired him.

If I had 10,000 restaurants like MacDonald’s I’d do the same thing and no one would get sick. My priority was making sure I made no one sick. Second was profit. A burger chain called Jack in the Box had profit as a first priority and killed a bunch of little kids with food poisoning. I think they should have put the president of the company in jail.

I never made any excuses that the food inspectors allowed me to use prime rib that had been held more than 24 hours. They didn’t care. Health inspectors let processing plants use diseased beef almost dead steers to grind up for burger. I wouldn’t blame the USDA. I wouldn’t buy the beef.

I didn’t change my standards from running one restaurant to running 50. If you don’t know how to do the job you shouldn’t take the responsibility. If you don’t know how to do the job you shouldn’t get the big bucks for being the president of a company.

I don’t care who regulates you if you let your people get killed you should take the rap for that. Truman said, “The buck stops here.” That is a President talking.