in defense of BP- sort of

Over the past two months, BP has turned into everybody’s favourite whipping boy. They stand accused of negligence, eleven direct deaths, the destruction of an entire ecosystem, and the loss of a way of life for thousands of Americans. People in the fishing and restaurant industries have lost their jobs. Birds and fish are dying by the thousands or showing up on the shores of Louisiana coated in oil.
Is BP guilty of all of this? Yes, absolutely. But it is hypocritical and wrong for people and the Obama administration to single BP out for blame. It is even more ridiculous to paint them as some British neo-colonial force acting in American territory. BP is a massive multi national organisation, with 40% of its shareholders based in the US. It has no real nationality and is about as British today as Shell is Dutch. Furthermore ALL oil companies I know have blood on their hands. BP was simply unlucky it got caught on camera.
Contrary to what you might imagine reading the papers at the moment, oil spills are not uncommon, and this one is not the largest. Thousands of barrels are dropped into the ocean every year by container ships with faulty stabilizers alone. Whole cultures and peoples can be wiped out in the interest of western oil companies in places like the Nigerian Delta without anyone in the United States objecting or even hearing about it. safety standards in rigs offshore in Asia and Africa are abysmal and people die- but the lives of Pilipino or Malaysian offshore roughnecks are cheap and their deaths go unreported. In the name of oil, in reality if not in technical terms, The US has gone to war (Iraq being the prime example) and Western mercenaries have staged and/or attempted coup d’etats aimed at overthrowing third world governments sitting on oil reserves (such as in Equatorial Guinea, whose conspirators included an assortment of South African mercenaries, British aristocrats and even Mark Thatcher). But again, these things tend to happen in places like West Africa where journalists are few and lives are cheap. Shell, Chevron, Conocophillips, BP- they are all guilty at some moment or another of atrocities somewhere and until now, the US government has never objected- remember Sarah Palin in the last election shouting “drill baby drill”? they are only objecting now as the results of that drilling is washing up, literally, in their back yards.
Regardless of the agonized hand-wringing taking place at the moment in the US congress, these sorts of accidents are going to become more frequent. We are slowly running out of oil. What is left out there is going to be further offshore, and greater depths, and in increasingly hostile environments. Such reserves will be more expensive to recover, and these companies with both need to raise prices and cut costs in order to get them. And yes, more people will die for oil. And the die for oil because of our collective western greed, but American greed above all. The US consumes more oil than any other country by an enormous margin. It is predominantly to feed US demand that villages in Nigeria get exterminated, and it was to feed US consumption that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. If Americans are truly upset about the oil washing up on their shores, they should start petitioning now for massive tax increases to fund the creation of effective public transport networks that could help reduce their dependence on cars as well as to research alternative energy sources for the future. I don’t, however, see that happening.

on business travel

Many of my friends, especially those who went on in academia, assure me I have a glamorous life. I suppose they get this impression as frequently when they call me I am somewhere abroad, or when they they meet me in the pub and ask me what I did that day, I say I went to Rome or Aberdeen or something similar. One of my flatmates is the same, every time she hears I am off somewhere she gets excited (“oh, rome, how romantic, you must go to the Vatican…”) when I get back and tell her that I didn’t see a single place of cultural interest, she looks at me as though I were some sort of philistine or Neanderthal, always with the implication that SHE would have managed to see such places if SHE had been there. But the truth about it all is that corporate travel is mainly just boring. Most of my time is spent killing time away in airports, most of which look the same (I am sitting now in Dusseldorf, terminal A, with a stunning view of the sun slowly setting over an Iberia 737 that is parked in the gate opposite- really romantic scenery that) when I am alone I read and write, which isn’t that bad, but is certainly far from being romantic or glamorous. When I am with colleagues or my boss, we normally end up in the airport bar, generally talking rubbish or watching the football/rugby/whatever-is-on. What my flatmate fails to grasp no matter how many times I try to explain it is that travelling for work is fundamentally different than travelling for pleasure. My company books me a tight schedule so as not to waste my time and consequently their money. Yes, I have a nice fat expense account, but it is not for pleasure. Don’t get me wrong- I would much rather be travelling than in the office, not for the travel itself, but because I like to meet people in their native setting and have negotiations on their terms. And…..well, anyway, enough for now, it is boarding time.

germany

I have never much liked Germany. It is hard to pin down the reasons as to why. Maybe it is for the same reasons I never liked learning German at school- it is close enough to my own language to be recognizable, but then just when I am nearly tricked into some sense of affinity, I realise it is actually rather different, get annoyed and cant be asked anymore. Or maybe it is just embedded in my DNA, I am not sure. I am certain however that if I spent more time here I would probably be arrested. I manage to break every rule, and I do it without thinking- like crossing the street when there are absolutely no cars coming in either direction, but the light just happens to be red. Some concerned citizens pointed out my error today in best pedantic German fashion. They seemed as puzzled that I would actually be breaking such an obvious rule as I was that they should actually be dressing me down for it. pedantic, concerned citizens annoy me (I mean surely I should be allowed to risk my life crossing the street where I feel like it, and in any case THERE WERE NO CARS) I am reminded here of a story a former professor once told me. Just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was offered a visiting professor position in Edmonton, which she described convincingly as the Siberia of Canada. So off she went. At the end of the year, she was offered a contract to stay on as a permanent member of staff, with a decent Canadian salary, at a time when academics in Moscow had essentially been reduced to dire poverty and were often dependant on taking bribes from students to get by. Despite the generosity of the offer, she declined and returned to Russia. When I asked why she said “kanada, eto strana kak apteka”- Canada is like a pharmacy: so clean and sterilised that you could eat your dinner safely off the floor of any public toilet, and my poor professor returned to Moscow with the desire to kiss the first stinking, drunk homeless bum she could find. In one of my favourite stories of the Russian experience in Canada, she was leaving the office late one night (still working Russian-style hours clearly) when a police officer approached her. Like a good Soviet citizen, she immediately gave him her passport, no doubt to his great confusion. He then told her it was very late for a woman to be walking alone- could he escort her to her car? She was too scared to object, and was convinced he would rob her as soon as she got to the car. But when they made it to the car, he just opened the door and wished her a pleasant evening and went off on his way. She naturally became convinced he was a spy sent to monitor her activities.
A slightly absurd example, but I understand that professor’s logic, hopefully without the unnecessary paranoia, as it is basically how I feel everytime I am in germany. The various rules, written and unwritten, are so numerous and so rigid that I feel inclined to rebel, or at least to start questioning them. In its obsession with tradition and ritual masquerading as genuine rules, Germany is actually far closer to France than it is to Britain. But it is somehow even scarier, as the Germans are more efficient than the French at following their national written and unwritten codes.
Walking around Dusseldorf, it is clear to see that all the international studies indicating that this is one of the most affluent cities in Germany, with one of the highest living standards in the world, are no doubt correct. The transport is efficient. The streets are spotlessly clean and the offices immaculate. Walking along the Rhine and coming in from the airport, I can see endless blocks of flats of the quality you hardly ever find in England, and when you do, they are reserved for the ultra-rich. In Dusseldorf, it seems such structures are the norm. everyone looks prosperous and healthy. It drives me insane. Give me Moscow any day over this!

on black bread

Unlike me, my father is a proper Scot. He claims bargain hunting is simply engrained in his DNA. Once in Manila we walked by a Diesel shop and my father said “lets go in and see what is on sale” although there was no obvious sign of any sale. Some 30 minutes later, after intense negotiations, we left with several leather belts which had been 40% off, and which my father talked down further until they became 60% off. I am wearing one now. He can haggle anyone vendor down by some margin: even if he doesn’t speak their language, he uses facial expressions to mysteriously push down the price.
At home where he lives he is something of a known quantity. He can tell you the price of anything in any local supermarket, and he knows every offer on at any moment. When he travels with me, we end up in random conversations, and sometimes even going for drinks with people he has met whilst discussing prices. I once left him alone in Punta Arenas, Chile for about 10 minutes, and when I came back he was drinking a coffee with some Chilean pensioners, discuss the price of salmon. My friend Conar noted that discussing prices is the Scottish generic conversation equivalent to the English standard comments on the weather. He might be right, but I maintain my father is an extreme case.
Yet what baffles me is his blind spot when it comes to Russia. Every time he visits me in Britain (which is rare) he complains endlessly about how overpriced everything is. But he consistently refuses to believe me when I complain about overpricing in Russia. His Russia is frozen in time, somewhere back in the Brezhnev era. When I try to persuade him, he claims I find it expensive because I live in a business traveller bubble. Maybe. But I am the same business traveller in Moscow that I am in Rome, Paris or Madrid- and Moscow is way more expensive than any of those. If I persist in my views, he insists that if only HE were there with me, he would ferret out good bargains. The last conversation on the matter ended with the argument ending declaration “well, you just don’t understand because you never faced down Adolf.” Once any conversation moves to the War, I know it is time to change topics.
Now I have decided to take scientific measures to prove my point. In doing so, I have been partly inspired by my childhood friend C. C works for some government agency (I forget which) and she monitors inflation. This involves getting pensioners, much like my father, to go around supermarkets and note down prices. If the pensioners she recruits are anything like my father, they were probably doing this anyway- C just makes sure they get paid for it. Presumably this information then gets compiled into some sort of database for government purposes. My aims however, are strictly personal. So I have started gathering receipts from grocery trips to different cities and taping them into the little black book I always carry on me. I then use it as concrete evidence to demonstrate to my father that he is allowing nostalgia to warp his bargain drive. Yet despite the presence of concrete evidence demonstrating that rice cakes in central London cost 85p, whilst in central Moscow they are £3.30, my father still refuses to accept my argument. “Man does not need rice cakes. If you had lived through the war, you would have looked at the price of black bread.” Probably I should give up, I sense this is a battle I shall never win.