William Kelly Posted June 12, 2010 Share Posted June 12, 2010 Isn't there a World Cup on? BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted June 12, 2010 Share Posted June 12, 2010 Isn't there a World Cup on? BK Yes, and today England plays the USA. The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and are hoping for a big victory tonight. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted June 12, 2010 Share Posted June 12, 2010 Brazil! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted June 12, 2010 Author Share Posted June 12, 2010 Isn't there a World Cup on? BK Yes, and today England plays the USA. The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and are hoping for a big victory tonight. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis. I'm pretty sure that the people who live along the gulf coast are pretty angry too, as their entire life style must now change, their fishing industry is kaput and their tourist industry has no beaches. The British people are directing their anger at the wrong person, as those responsible for this disaster are the ones who designed it without a contingency plan for what happened. Perhaps they should look at those in charge of the company and those responsible for overseeing these types of operations. Just weeks before the explosion and leak in the Gulf Obama came out in support of off shore oil drilling off the east coast of the USA, something that now will probably never happen, and with good reason. As for soccer, ah, foootboll, if history is to be repeated, as the USA upset UK 1-0 in 1950, then the underdog USA will win. Soccer has only had one generation of students playing in most schools, as previously the secondary schools only offered baseball, baskeball and American football, and only in the past decade has soccer become a popular school sport. Only in the past few months have Americans even had professional soccer football teams, mainly foreign players and coaches, but we're catching on. Let's see, you can't hold the ball in your hands, right? And its just like hockey except in slow motion. Go Yanks, beat the Brits! BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Kelly Posted June 12, 2010 Author Share Posted June 12, 2010 Isn't there a World Cup on? BK Yes, and today England plays the USA. The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and are hoping for a big victory tonight. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis. I'm pretty sure that the people who live along the gulf coast are pretty angry too, as their entire life style must now change, their fishing industry is kaput and their tourist industry has no beaches. The British people are directing their anger at the wrong person, as those responsible for this disaster are the ones who designed it without a contingency plan for what happened. Perhaps they should look at those in charge of the company and those responsible for overseeing these types of operations. Just weeks before the explosion and leak in the Gulf Obama came out in support of off shore oil drilling off the east coast of the USA, something that now will probably never happen, and with good reason. As for soccer, ah, foootboll, if history is to be repeated, as the USA upset UK 1-0 in 1950, then the underdog USA will win. Soccer has only had one generation of students playing in most schools, as previously the secondary schools only offered baseball, baskeball and American football, and only in the past decade has soccer become a popular school sport. Only in the past few months have Americans even had professional soccer football teams, mainly foreign players and coaches, but we're catching on. Let's see, you can't hold the ball in your hands, right? And its just like hockey except in slow motion. Go Yanks, beat the Brits! BK The Yanks are not playing the Brits, they are playing England. Said by a true Scotsman. BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted June 12, 2010 Share Posted June 12, 2010 it doesn't matter, Brazil has already won. (don't worry Socceroos, you'll get your chance) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Haley Posted June 12, 2010 Share Posted June 12, 2010 Unfortunately (or fortunately) there was a 'spillage' from England goalie Robert Green at a crucial moment before half time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted June 13, 2010 Share Posted June 13, 2010 Unfortunately (or fortunately) there was a 'spillage' from England goalie Robert Green at a crucial moment before half time. At least the club will not be able to sell him now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted June 13, 2010 Share Posted June 13, 2010 Isn't there a World Cup on? BK Yes, and today England plays the USA. The British public are very angry at the way Barack Obama has attempted to blame the British for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and are hoping for a big victory tonight. Obama and other American politicians have called it British Petroleum where in fact, since it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998,it changed its name to BP. In fact, BP, in terms of its investors and employees, is more an American company than a British company. The rig that caused the problem is owned and operated by Transocean. An American company with a terrible safety record. Our old friends, Halliburton, was responsible for cementing the plug in the oil well, the original cause of the blowout. I am afraid that Obama has lost a lot of support in Britain by the way he has dealt with this crisis. Unfortunately John got most of his facts wrong. Let`s see BP is HQed in London and its board of Directors and management are dominated by Brits, it has 5 top managers who joined BP before the merger 4 of whom are on the board it has only 2 managers who came from Amoco only one of whom is on the board. One of the only 6 Americans on the board is married to a Brit and has lived in London for almost 30 years another has worked for BP since 1988. The company was briefly called BP-Amoco 12/31/99 – 5/1/2001 but now is just BP, while Amoco`s HQ was in Chicago BP America`s is in Texas, the Chairman and President of BP America is NOT on the parent company board. According to the NY Times “about 40 percent of its shares are held by American investors” presumably most of the rest are held by British ones. According to The Times before 2009 BP has never had a chairman “from outside the British Isles”. BP safety record in the US is appalling. The Guardian reported that: In the months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig sank in a ball of fire in the Gulf of Mexico, the company had four close calls on pipelines and facilities it operates in Alaska, according to a letter from two congressmen obtained by ProPublica. In that letter, dated Jan. 14, 2010, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted that the company's efforts to cut costs could imperil safety at BP facilities […] BP has a recent history of disasters stemming from incomplete maintenance and faulty equipment, including the 2005 blast at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, where 15 workers died after a fuel tower was powered up without following protocol. Then there was the 2006 Alaskan pipeline spill, which occurred four years after BP had been warned about corroded pipelines. The company pleaded guilty to felony counts in the first incident and a misdemeanor charge in the second, tallying fines in excess of $62 million. According to The Times (2): A series of internal BP documents published by ProPublica — an investigative website that won a Pulitzer prize this year — claimed last week that senior BP managers had repeatedly warned over the past decade that safety and environmental rules were being disregarded. “These documents portray a company that systematically ignored its own safety policies across its north American operations — from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas,” stated ProPublica. A string of accidents prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion — including a fatal 2005 explosion at a Texas City oil refinery and a 2006 leak from an Alaska pipeline — had already prompted US officials to consider banning BP from federal contracts or new drilling leases. “That inquiry has taken on new significance in light of the Gulf accident,” the study said. It added: “One key question ... is whether the company’s leadership can be trusted and whether BP’s culture can change.” One of BP’s internal inquiries was said to have found a pattern of workers who raised safety or environmental concerns being intimidated into keeping quiet. A 2004 report said BP managers adopted a policy of “run to failure”, under which maintenance costs were reduced by using equipment until it fell apart. A BP study of the Texas City disaster, which killed 15 workers and injured 170 others, said that significant safety issues existed at all five of the company’s US refineries. Flaws included “a lack of operating discipline, toleration of serious deviations from safe operating practices, and apparent complacency toward serious safety risk”. As the criticism flies, there is little mention of the failings of US regulators who approved BP’s operations. BP spokesmen have insisted that Hayward became chief executive in May 2007 with a mission to improve safety procedures, and that claims of continuing problems are “essentially groundless”. Yet last year BP was fined $87m for failing to make safety upgrades at its Texas plant, and Jeanne Pascal, a former US Environmental Protection Agency lawyer who investigated BP, last week denounced the company as “a recurring environmental criminal”. She added: “At what point are we going to say we are not going to do business with BP any more? None of the other [multinational oil companies] has an environmental criminal record like they do.” […] Halliburton warned BP in an April 18 report that more work was needed to prevent the cemented pipe from developing fissures that could allow gas to escape. Without special devices to secure the cement the well could have “a severe gas flow problem”, the report said. Halliburton recommended using 21 of the cement-sealing devices; BP ordered six. Other alleged lapses included a procedure known as “bottoms up”, which circulates drilling mud through the system to check for escaping gas. Engineers quoted by The Wall Street Journal said the procedure should have taken between six and 12 hours, but on Deepwater Horizon it was completed in just 30 minutes. Then there’s the saga of the blowout preventer, the now-notorious device that was designed to cut off the flow of oil in the event of any mishap. It failed to activate after the explosion and has since resisted all BP’s attempts to make it work. The Telegraph reported that: BP has been handed a record $87m fine for "outstanding life-threatening safety problems" at its Texas City refinery where an explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170 in 2005. Hilda Solis, the US Labor Secretary, said authorities had found 439 current "wilful and egregious" safety violations which "if unaddressed could lead to another catastrophe". […] "There were some serious, systemic safety problems within the corporation and specifically within this refinery," said Jordan Barab, acting assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. "Just the fact that there are so many still outstanding problems, life-threatening problems, at this plant, indicates that they still have a systemic safety problem." What ever the role of Halliburton and Transocean BP was the contractor and thus bears ultimate responsibility. The latter is a Swiss company not an American one according to the WSJ its board “eliminated executive bonuses last year over concerns about the company's safety practices” even though it already had a better than average safety record. The former “cemented into place the casing for the well” I have yet to see anyone but BP say the casing was the primary cause of the failure. Let’s not forget that BP ordered less than a third the number sealing devices Halliburton recommended and ignored the American company's saftey warning. According to the Guardian (2), “…the House of Representatives's energy and commerce committee said documents and company briefings suggested that BP, which owned the well; Transocean, which owned the rig; and Halliburton, which cemented into place the casing for the well, ignored tests in the hours before the 20 April explosion that indicated faulty safety equipment… The failures included a dead battery in the blowout preventer, suggestions of a breach in the well casing, and failure in the shear ram, a device of last resort that was supposed to cut through and seal the drill pipe in the event of a blowout.” Though one might assume the head of BP America, an American, had a primary role according to the Times (3) Englishman who is based in Houston “has been credited with many of BP’s biggest recent successes — leading the group’s charge into deepwater exploration with a string of big discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico…[and] has also played a key role in crafting BP’s strategic push into deepwater drilling technology” Another top company executive described him as “BP’s chief engineer” So BP is most accurately described as a British company. It is a company with a history of poor safety record the US that was warned shortly before the incident that its cost cutting was perilous and along with its Swiss and American partners ignored problems with the rig. So Obama quite rightly is holding BP responsible for the disaster, I have seen no evidence he blamed the British people. If John and other Brits object, it’s their problem NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11bp.html?hp Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/05/congressman-bp-safety-oil-spill Times http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6499083.ece Times 2 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7148986.ece Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/6470162/BP-fined-record-87m-for-life-threatening-safety-failings.html WSJ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703969204575220552092667436.html Guardian 2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/12/deepwater-gulf-oil-spill-hearing Times 3 http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/movers_and_shakers/article7113275.ece BP Executive Management on the board (3 Brits, 2 Americans) Tony Hayward Group chief executive Executive member of the BP board of director Scottish – BP since 1982 Iain Conn Chief executive, Refining and Marketing Executive member of the BP board of directors Scottish - BP since 1986 Robert Dudley Managing director Executive member of the BP board of directors American - Amoco since 1979 Byron Grote Chief financial officer Executive member of the BP board of directors American - Standard Oil, BP since 1988 Andy Inglis Chief executive, Exploration and Production Executive member of the BP board of directors English - BP since 1980 Executive Management (not on the board) 2 Americans, 1 Brit, 1 South African Total Management 4 Brits, 4 Americans, 1 South African (who worked for BP since before the merger) Rupert Bondy Group General Counsel, BP plc Member of the BP executive management team. British - SmithKline BP since 2008 Sally T. Bott Executive Vice President, Human Resources Member of the BP executive management team. American - Marsh & McLennan BP since 2005 Lamar McKay Chairman and President BP America, Inc. American - Amoco since 1980 Steve Westwell Executive Vice President Member of the BP executive management team and Group Chief of Staff South African - BP since 1988 Non executive board members 4 Americans, 4 Brits, 2 Europeans Total board 7 Brits, 2 Europeans, 6 Americans Carl-Henric Svanberg Chairman Swedish - Assa Abloy Group / Erickson BP since 2001 Paul Anderson Non-executive director Member of the chairman's and the safety, ethics and environment assurance committees American - BAE Systems PLC, Spectra Energy Corp BHP Billiton and Duke Energ BP since 2/2010 Antony Burgmans, KBE Non-executive director Member of the chairman’s, the remuneration and the safety, ethics and environment assurance committees Dutch - Unilever BP Since 2004 Cynthia Carroll Non-executive director Member of the chairman’s and safety, ethics and environment assurance committees American - Anglo American BP since 2007 Sir William Castell, LVO Non-executive director and senior independent director Chairman of the safety, ethics and environment assurance committee, member of the chairman's and nomination committees English - Wellcome Trust/GE BP since 2006 George David Non-executive director Member of the chairman's, the audit and the remuneration committee American - Otis/UTC BP since 2006 Ian Davis Non-executive director Member of the chairman's, the audit and the remuneration committees English - McKinsey & Company BP since 4/2010 Douglas Flint, CBE Non-executive director Chairman of the audit committee, member of the chairman's and nominations committees English - HSBC BP since 2005 Dr DeAnne Julius, CBE Non-executive director Chairman of the remuneration committee, member of the chairman’s and nomination committees American - based in London since “the early 1980s” English husband Bank of England/Chatham House BP since 2001 David Jackson Company secretary David Jackson was appointed company secretary in 2003. A solicitor, he is a director of BP Pension Trustees Limited, and a member of the Listing Authorities Advisory Committee. English The list above and most of the info on it comes from the BP website some additional information obtained by Googling the names on it principally from Wikipedia and Forbes. The other companes listed are ones the people worked for before joining BP or still work for regarding non-executive board members. http://www.bp.com/managedlistingsection.do?categoryId=9021801&contentId=7040608 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted June 13, 2010 Share Posted June 13, 2010 (edited) it doesn't matter, Brazil has already won. (don't worry Socceroos, you'll get your chance) I hope so to but though they would go all the way in 2006. They should make it atleast to the semis where they will probablly meet up with France or England or perhaps the US. The former has eliminated Brazil 3 - 4 times in the Cup. Edited June 13, 2010 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted June 14, 2010 Share Posted June 14, 2010 Unfortunately John got most of his facts wrong. Could you list the facts that I got wrong and I will then address them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted June 14, 2010 Share Posted June 14, 2010 (edited) Unfortunately John got most of his facts wrong. Could you list the facts that I got wrong and I will then address them. Let's keep this about the Cup replied to here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=16057&st=0&gopid=195214entry195214 After shabby play by England and France I'm less worried about Brazil meeting them in the semis. Edited June 14, 2010 by Len Colby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Dolva Posted June 15, 2010 Share Posted June 15, 2010 Brazil will finnish top of its first table. They'll go through to the semis and dep on others probably any way go into the final and there do what they do best. (I'm going to buy an edible hat so I feel fully confident I can''t lose even if I lose). Privately I predicted 4 - 1 to Germany against OZ, So I must admit to feeling a mite cocky. No idea where Holland is these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted June 16, 2010 Share Posted June 16, 2010 Brazil will finnish top of its first table. They'll go through to the semis and dep on others probably any way go into the final and there do what they do best. (I'm going to buy an edible hat so I feel fully confident I can''t lose even if I lose). Privately I predicted 4 - 1 to Germany against OZ, So I must admit to feeling a mite cocky. No idea where Holland is these days. Brazil struggled to beat North Korea last night. A group of very talented players but not a great team. I think Spain will win the cup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Len Colby Posted June 16, 2010 Share Posted June 16, 2010 Brazil will finnish top of its first table. They'll go through to the semis and dep on others probably any way go into the final and there do what they do best. (I'm going to buy an edible hat so I feel fully confident I can''t lose even if I lose). Privately I predicted 4 - 1 to Germany against OZ, So I must admit to feeling a mite cocky. No idea where Holland is these days. Brazil struggled to beat North Korea last night. A group of very talented players but not a great team. I think Spain will win the cup. But then again France barely qualified for the 2nd round in the weakest group in 2006 and made it to the final which it lost in the penatlties and Brazil lost to Norway during the 1st round in 1998 and made to the final. But I agree I'm not so sure now they can go all the way this time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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