Yes, BP should pay for their mistakes. But we should also be aware of the risk of PetroChina – a company complicit in human rights violations around the globe – taking them over. It needs not to be attractive for long-term shareholders in BP to allow that to happen.

Of course BP should pay.

But should BP pay more – that’s the issue.

This will rebound anyway to some extent.
As much of BP is owned by US pension funds as UK funds.
BP employs 10,000 in the UK, 22,000 in the US.

BP deserves to take a massive hit, but I don’t think it is Obama’s place to deliver it (having said that, he has been much more restrained in a crisis than many other politicians). It is for the courts. Of course, I am pretty sure extra precautions would have been taken if BP’s directors had several liability, rather than the limited liability that government’s give these companies.

You’d think these right-wingers would at least capitalism.

Eh?

Interestingly, the man responsible for cost cutting as chief executive of BP, Lord Browne of Madingley, has just been appointed to advise George Osborne on cuts to the civil service (Private Eye 1264, p5)

Well said, Sunny.

“It is for the courts”

No doubt having BP lots of expensive lawyers will ensure the courts decide, after years of appeals, that the costs are actually very small.

Sunny I agree with you, but please stop using italics in the middle of your sentences, it’s a bit like Bill O Reilly

I’m a libertarian, and I can’t agree more. It’s events like this which help show up the neoliberals for what they are — conservative, corporatist, protectionist wankers. Well said, Sunny.

Of course, BP has corporate resonsibility for the consequences of the oil spill by the widely-accepted “polluter pays” principle. But according to a news report, some 39% of BP shares are in American ownership and I suspect the citizenship of most of those employed on this deep-sea drilling project are – or were, in the case of the fatalities – American.

Sunny,

Is it possible to agree with you that BP is not in itself necessarily a good thing, being a large corportation, with as you say, a rather cavalier approach at times, whilst still thinking that President Obama is trying to make too much out of this himself? I don’t think referring to BP as ‘British Petroleum’ (not the company’s name any more, and if he didn’t know at first he must have been told by now) is actually very helpful myself, as he is emphasising the inclusion of ‘British’ in the title over accuracy.

So whilst I don’t like BP particularly, and reckon this is their mess to clean up (unless US law says differently), I also find myself, as someone British, uneasy about the way President Obama is using our national epithet to suit his own construction of an image of evil outsiders drilling for oil, nothing to do with us Americans. For a supposedly honest and change-bringing politician, this strikes me as being a bit too deliberately low and dishonest.

Frankly, I don’t see why BP should be held responsible at all. BP is the customer here. Are customers normally held responsible for the negligence of suppliers?

The rig that exploded did not belong to BP. It was not manned by BP staff. Nor did BP carry out the cementing and embedding work, which some have suggested may have been at fault.

The rig was owned and operated by Transocean, which some report to have shifted its domicile from the Caymans to Switzerland. The cementing was done by Halliburton.

To hold BP responsible is as daft as choosing some other customer at random – further down the supply chain – for instance, some ordinary Joe at the petrol pump – and holding him responsible.

Surely it would be more sensible to investigate the incident properly, find out who truly was at fault and then hold them to account?

It may, of course, be that no-one was at fault. Sometimes accidents just happen…. without any culpable carelessness by anyone. There have been some 35,000 rigs set up to drill in the Gulf. This is the only one to have exploded.

You’ve completely missed the point.

BP should indeed pay fully for what it has done. The fact is, it is more than capable of doing so and has said it will. So why’s Obama mouthing off?

Simple, mid-terms.

Nice effort though, I can imagine your thought process.

“Well you know, I’m an expert on oil rigs and oil spills because I watch the news (The Daily Show, Colbert Report, etc.). After consideration, I think oil leaks are BAD. I think BP is BAD. I’m all about the issues, you know? And this is definitely a political issue, just like all other mechanical failures. Well, time to go fill up my car! See ya!”

So will you be writing a piece attacking Transocean any time soon?

People aren’t annoyed about BP being attacked, they are annoyed about the willingness to completely ignore their partners in crime.

And the lovely amount of xenophbia going on:

“Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum, they are not telling you the truth” – Congressman Anthony Weiner.

I also notice you quite rightly attack BP’s safety record. Maybe also attacking the totally hands off safety regulation of the US government would have helped.

Kevin Boatang wrote:
“I also notice you quite rightly attack BP’s safety record. Maybe also attacking the totally hands off safety regulation of the US government would have helped.”

And it’s just this kind of bollocks that helps inform us that you have no place falsely self-describing as a libertarian. It’s the US’s fault for lack of regulation? In practical terms, maybe. But certainly not an argument that someone with your claimed beliefs should be using.

Why is it whenever this story is on the TV news they show the same tape of a bird with a long beak in the oil slick?

And why doesn’t somebody lift it out of the oil and put it in the water?

I agree with you Sunny. BP were taking risks – this was an outsourced oil exploration, done on the cheap, where 16 different safety systems failed. And as for their record, need we forget Alaska?

One of the analysts who was technically “light” on BP pre this criss was asked by the media to comment on the disaster, and he said: “They had sacked or dismissed all the people with knowledge of production, and let all the retailers rise to the top.” Now that’s not wholly true, but it is reflective of the board of BP.

But the thing which is affecting BP’s share price and future prospects the most is its PR disaster. From Tony Hayward down, versus the Obama mid-term need, this was a tight squeeze at best which they turned into a no hoper. I can’t see Hayward surviving this one, at a public, board or investor level.

The risks were taken by Transocean and Haliburton as they were the contractors as well as BP. Until we know what when wrong, it would be wise for people to be more more reflective . There is also the issue if whether the EPA and US Coastgurd had the relevant procedures and resources in place. It would be expected for the USA to have a national response capability with BP paying for the costs.

Pensions require long term investments, to say that money should not be placed in companies which had Triple A ratings is absurd.

Re BP’s safety record, it is worth noting that (quoting from a post on the Guardian discussion- which makes the points clearly)

<<>>

In the USA. the cases in Alaska and Texas received wide coverage. And, as one would expect, there has been much more detailed accounting of the events leading up to the explosion, the inaccurate reporting of oil flow by BP, etc. There are Congressional hearings going on now. So it is possible for people to get at the detail and follow developments quite closely.

For example, re Transocean and BP relations (taken from ProPublica):
“In a hearing on Wednesday, the chief mechanic on Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig testified that a BP representative, in an argument that lasted for hours [9], “overruled drillers from rig owner Transocean and insisted on displacing protective drilling mud [10] from the riser that connected the rig to the oil well,” according to The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

As one petroleum engineering expert pointed out to The New York Times, it is not unusual to remove mud before finishing off a well, but a senior Transocean manager complained that BP was “taking shortcuts [11]” in removing the heavy mud and replacing it with seawater, according to witness statements reported on Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The argument between Transocean and BP was earlier reported on “60 Minutes,” and has since been confirmed [12] by testimony and company documents submitted to Congress.”

These examples of BP’s ‘bad form’ keep feeding the ire directed against them. And the incredible degree of ‘misinformation’ about the amount of oil released, as well as comments about the Gulf being a ‘big ocean’ have only added to the distrust.

Ultimately, BP is absolutely responsible for the actions of its subcontractors – whether they exercise proper monitoring or not; it does appear that BP directly intervened in decisions and oversaw such work.

The section quoting from the Guardian did not appear, So I am reposting that section here:

As George Stephanopolous pointed out to Haywood (BP spokesman) on ABC Good Morning America on June 2 (or 3) In the USA alone
“Occupational health and safety records showed that in the last three years, BP ran up 760 egregious, willful safety violations.”

“This dwarfed violations from other oil companies – Sunoco and ConocoPhillips had eight each, Citgo had two and Exxon had one,”

Haywood tried to dismiss this, saying “Much of that record relates to a prior period, and our absolute focus the last three or four years has been relying on safe and reliable operations,”

This was simply not true. The records compare like with like in the same period.

This interview and the Daily Show’s take on it have received wide coverage, but not apparently here.

I fail to see what is wrong with the principle that foreign multinationals (or any corporates for that matter) should be held responsible for their actions. It should however apply to US multinationals when they screw up elsewhere – so can we assume that the victims of Bhopal will now be properly compensated or that the rest of the world will be compensated for the fall out from the problems arising from the US sub prime market/credit derivatives market.

Sunny: the 97% figure is a red herring, and doesn’t mean what you say it does. BP was responsible (in its refining business, which was managed separately from its drilling business) for slightly more violations than other big oilcos; they were classed as ‘wilful’ rather than ‘serious’ because BP was already on notice following the Texas City explosion. Hence, all its ‘this could have killed someone or did’ incidents were put in one category (reserved for people who’d been involved in serious incidents – hence the 97% stat, because all the other majors had been lucky enough to not). Everyone else’s were put in a different category. More links in my blog comments.

@19, that’s what Transocean say, as they obviously would. It’s clear that the core liability for the spill rests on BP. It’s equally clear that we have no sodding idea whether Halliburton (yes, that Halliburton) who designed the rig, Transocean, or BP were responsible, and won’t until the public enquiry. But all that resolves is whether and how much BP gets to sue the others to recover its damages – it’s irrelevant to the environmental clean-up.

@21, the Government of India was the joint owner of Union Carbide India Limited, approved the location, design and safety plans of UCIL, and had permanent representatives on UCIL’s board. Whilst I do think BP’s being scapegoated here, the Union Carbide situation’s a bit more of a clear-cut government fail than the BP situation…

Missed @20. When you give a comedian a good briefing, he can give a good interview. If you give him lies, then he’ll give a shit interview. This was the latter.

Yes, very well said – it never ceases to amaze me how corporates and their institutional investors are unable to take responsibility for anything.

Here’s a piece by George Monbiot about the lack of provision made by industry ending-up in the hands of the taxpayer to deal with:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/06/07/the-money-gusher/

It’s the mantra of the international right wing that you privatise the profits, and socialise the costs. The Oil industry has spent millions of $ lobbying the politicians to reduce the amount they should pay in the event of one of these cock ups, and they have managed to get it down to just $75 million.

The oil companies also lobbied to stop regulations being put in place that would have forced BP to put a remote controlled device at the sea bed which would mean they could have got control of this much earlier. I believe that in Europe the oil companies have to use this device, but of course in America any regulation is seen as communism.

The funniest thing now is watching the Tea baggers who have been demanding cuts in govt spending now saying that the state should pick up the tab for this. As usual with the Right wing, responsibility and morality is only for poor people.

“It’s the mantra of the international right wing that you privatise the profits, and socialise the costs.”

Funny, because that’s exactly what Labour in my borough of Lewisham do too! It’s called PFI.

“The funniest thing now is watching the Tea baggers who have been demanding cuts in govt spending now saying that the state should pick up the tab for this.”

Have you got a source for that? And what do you mean by state? the individual states or the federal government? Or is that over your head?

Dear Obama,
Good on you. taking on corporate interests when they have obviously been negligent by not checking on the companies that pump out their oil in their name.
Maybe if leaders in the eighties, nineties and noughties had warned bankers maybe we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now.

As far as the state is concerned yes, I mean the federal govt.

As for who said it…… the Republican minority leader Bonher. I am sure you will tell me that he is not a tea bagger, but as we know all tea baggers are nothing more than an astro turf republican outfit run by corporate republicans.

As for you PFI New Labour is not left wing. I am sorry to break it to you but they are not.

Of course Labour are leftwing – you just don’t like the reality, you prefer the pipe dream.

“as we know all tea baggers are nothing more than an astro turf republican outfit run by corporate republicans”

The Tea Party movement started up as a libertarian thing, supporting Ron Paul and against the Federal Reserve. Later the mainstream republicans tried to co-opt it, and have done so to some extent, a move pushed by the democrats, who were just as scared of people rejecting the false left/right paradigm.

@29

PFI was dreamt up by the Mussolini & the fascist party in ’20s Italy. It was first implemented in the UK by John Major’s gov of 1992. It has no grounding in left-wing economics whatsoever despite being co-opted by Blair’s new Labour.

“left-wing economics”

That’s an oxymoron, but thanks for reminding readers of the links between fascism AKA corporatism and the labour government.

The underpinning legislation for PFI was taken through Parliament by Norman Lamont when he was Chancellor in the early 1990s. In fact, little or no use was made of the legislation until Gordon Brown became Chancellor in 1997. The supposed appeal of PFI financing is that it enables a government to promote public sector capital spending financed off the government’s balance sheet so that it doesn’t show up on the public sector borrowing requirement which, on a large enough scale, could raise concerns about the possibility of sovereign default.

The scale of worries about PFI financing for NHS projects is well illuminated by this news report in 2007:

“The NHS will pay private companies £53bn for private finance initiative hospitals worth only £8bn, the Conservatives have revealed. The figures emerged in a response to a Parliamentary Question tabled by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

“Under PFI, a private company builds a hospital and then collects “rent” from the NHS for around 30 years. The government said the comparison was misleading, as the total cost includes cleaning and buildings maintenance.
It says the flagship PFI policy means the private sector bears the risk and cost of building new hospitals.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6089122.stm

For an early, non-partisan brief on PFI, see this research paper produced by the HoC Library:
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp2003/rp03-079.pdf

Was BP worse than any other oil company or was it merely the unlucky one? From the safety papers recently published (with a rescue plan for the Gulf walruses) it seems there was minimal scrutiny by the US government.

Of course Obama’s being political, but all the crap from the righties over here is too. BP isn’t British, its multinational. As such it uses loopholes and wheezes all over the place to dodge rules if it chooses to.

Now the US has suddenly got a conscience about multinationals causing environmental disasters can we look forward to better justice for the victims of Bhopal?

Oh and Morlock, what’s being a librarian got to do with anything?

“Of course Labour are leftwing ”

I am sorry but that really does show how ignorant you are of the issues. Blair’s decision to fight the Iraq war for the benefit of Anglo American Oil companies was not left wing. Labour cut income tax from 23% to 20% They also cut capital gains tax to 18%. I know this does not fit with your right wing talking points but that is not my problem.

As for the Tea Baggers I suggest you look up the role of Dick Armey in the their foundations. He is a former Republican politician and one of the biggest corporate lobbyists in Washington. They are nothing more than the base of the republican party being manipulated by corporate backers.

It is repulsive to watch the right wing corporate shrills on this side of the Atlantic screaming like little pigs. I heard that moron Digby Jones, (what a piece of shit he is. Gawd knows why Brown put him in his govt. ) But he was ass licking Cameron on the radio.

It is quite disgusting how the wealthy right wing increasingly hide behind the little people when it suits them. Apparently BP should be allowed to do WTF they like just so granny Smith will get a decent pension. The truth is they could not give a shit about granny, they only interested in their own holdings.

@31: “thanks for reminding readers of the links between fascism AKA corporatism and the labour government”

Try this:

“However it was with the idea of a state planning agency that [Stuart] Holland [Labour MP for Lambeth, Vauxhall 1979-89, political assistant in Downing St to the PM 1967/8, and shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1987-9] hoped to show the new possibilities open to a more just economy. He looked to the Italian example of the IRI (the Industrial Reconstruction Institute), set up by Mussolini and used by subsequent Italian governments to develop the economy. This had, of course, already been tried through the IRC (the Industrial Reorganization Corporation) set up as part of the National Plan [in Britain] in 1966, but the IRC had been too small to have much effect on the British economy. A revamped IRC in the form of a National Enterprise Board would, however, have a major effect in stimulating the private sector through an active policy of state intervention and direction.”
Geoffrey Foote: The Labour Party’s Political Thought: A History (Palgrave, 1997) p.311.

The attraction for Stuart Holland of Mussolini’s model for funding business projects is further developed in his book: The Socialist Challenge (1975).

When Blair launched his Fabian Society pamphlet on the Third Way in 1998, I came across a claim in an internet forum that the provenance of the Third Way went back to Mussolini.

Surely that can’t be, I thought, but it’s as well to check. The second book I picked up was Martin Clark: Modern Italy 1871-1995 (Longman, 2nd ed. 1996), which has an illuminating section (p.250) on the policies of Mussolini’s fascist government: “They seemed to offer ‘a third way’, between capitalism and Bolshevism, which looked attractive in the Depression. . .”

Martin Clark is an academic historian at Edinburgh University. The second edition of his book was published before the general election of 1997. Surely Balir’s advisers would have checked out the antecedants for his Third Way nostrum. They would, wouldn’t they? After all, you can hardly let a British prime minister stand up and be seen to espouse a policy of Mussolini.

“Blair’s decision to fight the Iraq war for the benefit of Anglo American Oil companies was not left wing. ”

So why is Ron Paul and the Tea Party rightwing, when he was one of the most vocal opponents to the Iraq war? And why is Obama, the hero of this piece, doing nothing but expand the wars, using Predator drones, sending special forces hit squads into foreign countries, keeping Guantalamo Bay open etc and hyping up a war against Iran? Could it be because there is no difference between him and Bush? Could it be that your beloved left versus right frame of reference is reducto ad absurdum?

“your right wing talking points”

I’m not rightwing, I’m neither rightwing nor leftwing, I’m a libertarian, what used to be called a liberal, before the word was hijacked by socialists. Read ‘The Constitution of Liberty’ by Friedrich Hayek to understand what liberalism used to mean. It is the antithesis of socialism.

As for BP, they should be held responsible, and the use of the oil dispersant corexit is disastrous. That pension funds will take a hit if the share price tanks is unfortunate – good job the BP CEO sold a huge proportion of his holding, as did Goldman Sachs, just before the disaster. As for Obama, what has he done, other than take two holidays, and pretend to be tough? Meanwhile the federal authorities have hampered the states’ efforts to protect the rivers – and shame on the states for allowing the interference.

@36 Bob B: “Surely Balir’s advisers would have checked out the antecedants for his Third Way nostrum.”

Perhaps. And perhaps a few perceptive journalists would have spotted it. Perhaps we expect too much.

Third Way was also the name of a movement/splinter group in the National Front in the 1980s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Front

I foolishly assumed that Ralf Dahrendorf was a Third Way thinker. A few quick searches proved me wrong but most of his work is behind paywalls. The link below cites Dahrendorf and explains why Third Way is incoherent:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=398&page=1

@37

Read ‘The Constitution of Liberty’ by Friedrich Hayek to understand what liberalism used to mean. It is the antithesis of socialism.

I see your Hayek and raise you JS Mill’s ‘On Liberty’. *yawn* *stretch*

Funily enough most modern fascists (I mean the real neo-nazis) claim not to be “rightwing” or “leftwing”. They also pretend to play outside the normal boundaries. I wonder why?

I’m pretty fed up of the (ab)use of the word “liberatarian” to mean “any fucker can do what the hell he wants, to hell with the consequences”. FYI “Trooper” (surely an insult to any serviceman or woman), there have been and continue to be libertarian socialists, William Godwin being one example (George Orwell being another likely contender).

” I’m a libertarian”

No you’re not, because there are no such things. Just pretend libertarians.

It is funny how many so called libertarians are now saying the tax payer should pick up the tab for this cluster fuck.

@38: “And perhaps a few perceptive journalists would have spotted it. Perhaps we expect too much.”

I knew nothing about the intended launch of the “Third Way” nostrum but had previously been engaged in a somewhat abrasive online discussion with a prominent leftist journalist (now dead) in a private internet forum – I suspect in retrospect that he had a hand in the drafting.

The focus of the abrasive discussion was about the claimed moderate stance of New Labour and what was dubbed its “middle way”. I reminded the journalist that The Middle Way had been the title of book written by Harold Macmillan in 1938 in which he attempted to persuade his political colleagues of the merits and relevance of keynesian remedies for economic depressions, contrary to the Treasury orthodoxy of that time.

Macmillan’s book was evidently news to the journalist and he challenged me to produce citations showing that Macmillan had produced such a book, which it was easy to do. The next I became aware of was the fanfare associated with the launch of Blair’s Third Way nostrum, which was almost instantly written off by the broadsheet press and The Economist.

Btw the leading academic guru for Blair’s Third Way, was Anthony Giddens, a sociologist who became Director of the LSE:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Third-Way-Renewal-Social-Democracy/dp/0745622674

I have no sympathy for insurance companies or the like, but I’m not impressed by the Obama government’s rhetoric.

The repetition of “British Petroleum” is for cheap political points, a deflecting tactic and due in part to fears about public approval.

As I know has been stated in this country many times, ‘BP’ is a multinational corporation. It has how many US shareholders? How many US directors? How many US employees? And what other companies were involved with the rig?

This essentially anti-British stance is not a good example of international relations and it is possible that it could be damaging for the UK as a whole; if it is established, however temporarily, in a nation that is all too easily inclined to protectionism and xenophobic sentiment (sorry but it’s true).

The oil industry is to blame and the particular MNC responsible is BP.

“Funily enough most modern fascists (I mean the real neo-nazis) claim not to be “rightwing” or “leftwing”.”

“No you’re not [a libertarian], because there are no such things. Just pretend libertarians.”

As Obelix would say: “these people are crazy”.

Back to Sally:

“It is funny how many so called libertarians are now saying the tax payer should pick up the tab for this cluster fuck.”

wheras I said @ 37: “As for BP, they should be held responsible”

And Mr S Pill:

“I’m pretty fed up of the (ab)use of the word “liberatarian” to mean “any fucker can do what the hell he wants, to hell with the consequences””

But this is not what libertarians say, it is what raving leftwing loons accuse libertarianism of being.

Ah, it’s pointless arguing with you people. Sally, you are so twisted, I really hope you find some love in your life, because you’re just going to keel over, twitching and salivating.

Adios

Holy shit, Trooper Thompson’s one of the most unpleasant, ignorant newcomers I’ve seen on here in a while.

Listen here TT, ‘socialists’ didn’t repurpose the word liberal – US conservatives and Fox News did. In the UK the word ‘liberal’ means exactly what you (to your credit) understand it to mean.

Throwing entry-level political science texts around and ham-fistedly repeating dullard clichés about left-wing ideas is not a very effective way of looking like you’ve spent more than ten minutes thinking things through.

Claiming New Labour were left-wing and then trying to draw a parallel with Mussolini just demonstrates a pretty astounding lack of knowledge of both ideas. You knew Musso was anti-communist, and ended up being hanged by communists, yeah? No? Oh. Well, you do now. Go the fuck away and do your bloody research.

Yuzzem you make a good point about BP. They were “unlucky” but remember the US give them their dues went after Enron after the Alaska oil spill.
The US seems to have a better record in taking on corporate mistakes, corruption, or bad practice than the UK.
For instance you could never see Conrad Black been prosecuted in the UK

“An internal BP document unearthed a few weeks ago showed how the company took deadly risks to save money by opting to build cheaper facilities for workers. “The company estimated the value of a worker’s life at $10 million.””

That’s actually quite a high number. Certainly higher than most other people use.

Network Rail for example uses a value of a life at around £2 million to decide upon safety improvements. Local Councils around £100,000 I think for road improvements.

There has to be a value applied of course: how can we possibly try to make decisions about how much safety to try and have unless we can put a value on safety and on not safety? Nothing can be 100% safe after all.

In fact, to be honest, I’m rather surprised that BP’s valuation of a life is so high. It’s very definitely at the top end of the range that everyone else (yes, including government) uses.

As to should BP pay: sure, yes, of course….but they should pay the costs of their actions. Not the costs of other peoples’ actions and most certainly not the costs imposed retroactively.

For example, Obama is trying to insist that BP should pay the wages of workers who are now unemployed because the US Federal Govt has closed down deep water drilling. No, that’s an action by the Federal Govt, not BP. And no, that’s not a cost that is there in current law, that’s something newly made up.

On that vlaue of life thing.

Yes, BP are using a high number as this paper shows.

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/422.pdf

Kip Viscusi is indeed one of the go to people on this subject.

The nationalistic, patriotic “British” card is being used as a convenient smokescreen by BP. Just because their PR failed spectacularly.

Of course scrimping on a $500,000 secondary acoustic shut-off switch has come back to spectacularly bite BP. They are compulsory in the North Sea, and Shell and Total even use them in areas where they are not required. BP took the risks for to them a derisory sum and now will have to pay the costs. Absolutely no one denies that. However, the point is that Obama is playing politics with the incident in a barely concealed nationalistic manner. I say that as someone who supported Obama and won a lot of money from backing him to win long before the mainstream media and the public had ever heard of him. It is not defending Big Oil to say he has handled things badly. Personally I put it down to bad advice rather than an Obama character flaw.

@46 Tim Worstall: “Network Rail for example uses a value of a life at around £2 million to decide upon safety improvements. Local Councils around £100,000 I think for road improvements.”

I suspect that those who expressed shock at BP’s life valuation did so because they were shocked by the concept of valuing life in pounds, shillings and pennies. The absolute value was irrelevant.

Unfortunately, putting a cost value on human life is the way that organisations work. There isn’t a better model currently that informs an organisation on how to spend money to improve safety.

The life valuations for roads and rail reflect the cost of improvements to the providers. Rail is very safe so improvements are inevitably expensive. The 20 fold difference between road and rail should be alarming.

“I suspect that those who expressed shock at BP’s life valuation did so because they were shocked by the concept of valuing life in pounds, shillings and pennies. ”

I think you’re probably right…..but as you say, how else can it be done?

@ 51

Was there not a case years ago with an American car that had a potentially fatal fault?

As I remember the story, the car company assessed the projected annual death rate from accidents caused by the fault and calculated the cost of payouts to the families of those killed. They also calculated the cost of recalling all the cars for the fault to be corrected and, when the second number came out higher than the first, they decided not to issue a recall.

Sort of reinforces one’s faith in corporatism, doesn’t it?

@52 Pagar: “Was there not a case years ago with an American car that had a potentially fatal fault?”

Unfortunately, there are at least two cases.

1. Chevrolet Corvair, which had a swing axle rear suspension that produced unpredictable handling. Ralph Nader wrote about it in the book _ Unsafe at Any Speed_.

2. Ford Pinto, which had a fuel tank that was easily broken by the rear axle in a rear end collision.

Both cases are taught in ethics education for engineers.

52
Wasn’t that the basis of a film by Paul Newman about bean counters.

“Wasn’t that the basis of a film by Paul Newman about bean counters.”

Just under 3,000 people are killed in Britain a year as a consequence of road accident fatalities (page 111):
http://www.dft.gov.uk/adobepdf/162469/221412/221549/227755/rrcgb2008.pdf

This could be easily reduced by reintroducing legislation, repealed in 1896, requiring cars driving on public highways to be proceeded by persons walking ahead and carrying red flags.

Any suggestion that this is a ridiculous proposal since the costs and inconvenience outweigh the benefits gained amounts to bean counting.