You know I think that BP may have been passed ‘The Cat Towers’ my Prague HQ, and the centre of my ever growing empire, because there is the most enormous oil spill outside on the footpath (see below).
The enormous oil spill here prompted me to ask a favour of anyone living on the Gulf of Mexico coastline. If they could take a stroll down to one of their now black beaches and sniff a tarred pelican or two and then let me know if they smell of Vegetable Oil, because I have a feeling that is the odour that is drifting up to my office window and of course if the beach and the wildlife do smell of Vegetable Oil it will confirm my suspicions and I will start to make my compensation claim.
BP say that they have a 20 billion dollar fund that they will use to pay for the damage they have created which is a hell of a lot more than the 1.28 billion dollars that Exxon reluctantly spent in 1989 after the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks off Alaska.
I wonder if BP will wash whiter? Because people who live on the coastline that the Exxon Valdez sprayed with oil say that they are still suffering the ill effects all these years later, but then as the general public have a very limited attention span who out there cares? Definitely not Greenpeace those guardians of the environment who spend so much of our hard earned money on their offices, ships and of course staff needed to collect even more of our hard earned disposable income.
I only know that they don’t care about those poor Alaskans because nowhere on their website do they say that they are doing anything for those poor sods, but then the Exxon Vadez doesn’t have the cachet of the BP disaster does it? And that means that Greenpeace couldn’t use that old Alaskan disaster to make a grab for more of your money could they! The Exxon Valdez disaster is now only relevant to Alaskans.
But think about it can you blame greedy corner cutting corporations when it is ‘you’ that they are getting the oil for at the cheapest possible price so that you always can use your car and don’t pay too much for gas!
Tell you what, if you are ‘that’ concerned about this disaster then the obvious answer is to give up your car, don’t fly anywhere and then happily the developed world will need less oil.
If we give up our cars and trucks and save loads of oil then that will leave the two biggest polluter China and India (who of course don’t have any international legal obligations to stop polluting) to pay ever greater amounts of cash for oil, which I have to say is a nice idea isn’t it?
Still thinking about the BP disaster for a moment – did you know that the BP disaster is not the worst oil spill ever, yes, you wouldn’t believe it would you? There is at least one worse oil spill. It happened when that arch villain Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and then offered a “Mother of all Battles” then ran away before ‘Mother’ arrived and the battle could begin.
During Saddam’s brief time in Kuwait he was worried about the American Marines landing from the Persian Gulf and so being the ‘hero’ that he was he ordered that the valves at an offshore oil terminal be opened. The result was a loss of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and a 4 inch thick oil slick that covered 4000 square miles.
To give you an idea of what that was like just imagine Rhode Island not only covered in oil but swamped with it to a depth of a foot.
Lastly on an equally unhappy note I recently travelled to Hungary to write a little more of my next book which is a Travelogue, now you can see why I went to Hungary it wasn’t for any sort of literary inspiration or anything I hope you didn’t misunderstand.
The whole trip was awful because basically Hungarians are the rudest people I have ever encountered and I have met Prince Charles!
You can read all about my trip in the book when it finally comes out, but I thought I would share an observation and show just why people are acting unwisely if they wear t-shirts with writing on.
As I passed through downtown Budapest I saw a t-shirt which had a very odd message on it! It said “I Love BP” actually it was one of those even worse than dreadful t-shirts that said “I” then had a little graphic representation of a heart “BP” if you see what I mean.
As you can imagine I thought that this was a very risky stance for anyone to take on behalf of BP in the light of what they are doing to one of the prettiest places in the world, but this was Hungary and as I explained, though I hope not too critically, 99.99% of Hungarians are rude bastards.
It wasn’t until I was on my way home and had spent several hours sighing with relief to get out of Hungary alive it sort of dawned on me “I ♥ BP” meant “I Love or ♥ Budapest.”
As you can now tell it was such a dreadful place, because of the Budapestians that it never ever entered my head that someone would love Budapest, or dare wear a t-shirt that showed any love to the oily polluter either for that matter.
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BP, Budapest, China, Exxon Valdez, Gulf of Mexico, Hungary, India, My Next Book, Oil Spill, Prince Charles, Travelogue, Saddam Hussein, Persian Gulf
