The Widgery Report

Everyone is now dismissing the Widgery report (delivered shortly after the event) as a whitewash.

“Whitewash” implies conscious distortion and I doubt if that was the case. Widgery was not just a judge – he was the Lord Chief Justice of England. As such he had lifetime tenure and the power to override government if it behaved without the Law. So how could such a man be leaned on to give a false version of events? I don’t think he was. I think it is a demonstration of the impossibility for human beings of being impartial. In fact, I am not even sure that “impartial” has a meaning – I suspect that there are only “points of view”.

Widgery was an elderly man at the time and he would have been born in the Victorian era. He would have grown up with a belief in the virtues of the English way of doing things that he would have taken in with his mother’s milk. I am guessing that he would have found it impossible to believe that a British Officer could lie and he would have had an inbuilt distrust of anyone who was not English. I am guessing (and we will probably never know) that he conducted what he believed was a detailed and fair review of events but that he was simply inclined to believe the evidence presented by the army and to discount the evidence presented by the “terrorists” and so he arrived at a skewed conclusion without knowing it.

This is not to defend that enquiry. But I do think it is worth asking, “how could it have been so wrong?” and I think the idea that a senior judge woke up one day and decided to fabricate a story that yielded him no personal advantage is too simplistic.

The framers of the Saville enquiry had the great good sense to invite a senior Canadian judge and a senior judge from New Zealand to sit with Lord Saville to counter unconscious bias. I think that was wise.

Pouring oil on untroubled waters

At at time when hundreds of British service men and women have died supporting America in Afghanistan, and more are tragically joining them every day, the increasingly strident comments coming out of America regarding the BP oil spill are not playing well here. There is a growing demand amongst politicians and the public that the Prime Minister should pick up the phone to Barack Obama and tell him to back off. A feeling that I am beginning to share.

This is, after all, not Bhopal. There are not thousands lying dead or dying due to corporate negligence. This is an oil spill. A disaster, certainly but the kind of accident that is inevitable when a nation explores for oil in deep water. It may be that BP has been at fault but it is probably no different to any other oil major in this regard and the time for recriminations is not now but after the emergency is past.

For my own part, I admire what Tony Hayward has done in coming down from the comfort and safety of Britannic House and going to America in person to take the rap. A lesser man would have left his American lieutenants to handle the situation. His good intentions have, unfortunately, backfired because he didn't take the trouble to adopt an American persona. When in America, I make a point of talking about curved balls coming in from left field and stepping up to the plate even though I have no idea what this means. But I do know that Americans are stumped by sticky wickets. Tony Hayward has said things in a very British way that make perfect sense to me but have upset Americans. He should have done better.

The American demands for a freeze on dividends is bizarre. BP has more than enough money to deal with this situation and it is showing absolutely no sign of wishing to duck its responsibilities. But the major beneficiaries of BP's dividends are not fat-cat tax-exiles but millions of British pensioners. An attack on dividends is an attack on their pensions and they are certainly not responsible for the oil spill. The American Attorney-General is talking about taking out an injunction. It is not clear what the grounds for such an injunction could be - not Specific Performance, surely and not Tort, I would have thought. Also, it is not clear to me how such an injunction, if granted, could affect a British company in Britain paying British shareholders. However, it must be possible to have an effect or the Attorney would not be considering it.

The worrying thing for me is the way the Britishness of BP seems to be an issue (see my entry on Sarah Palin). I don't remember anyone here mentioning that Occidental was American when Piper Alpha blew in the North Sea. Americans talk a lot about diversity and integration but they often see this only in terms of different stripes of American. When faced with an honest-to-god foreigner, they often seem to fall back on prejudice in a way that astonishes those of us in smaller countries who have to maintain good relations with neighbours who are in every way our equal.

I guess the sensible thing to do is just to grin and bear it and rely on the short memories of the public on both sides of the Atlantic. In six month's time, nobody will remember which oil company caused the problem. And it could have been worse. It could have been Total!

Macau overtakes Las Vegas

A little-noticed fact that is probably significant. Macau overtook Las Vegas last year in terms of revenues to become the world's largest resort of the type. To see Macau, take a magnifying glass and look a little to the left of Hong Kong.

Sarah Palin and BP

So Sarah Palin thinks that Americans should not trust BP because it it foreign!

Fortunately, Sarah Palin is below the coverage threshold here - most people don't know who she is - but I stumbled upon coverage of this item on the web and if it did get coverage here it would irritate people mightily. There are plenty of people in Britain that don't like the fact that Americans own huge swathes of the British economy - far greater as a proportion than is the case the other way around. As a matter of fact, I don't like it. Any suggestion that Americans were intolerant of the few inroads we have made back the other way might produce a serious backlash.

I was surprised to read that BP is actually the largest exploration company in America looking for oil and gas. It is certainly the largest contributor, through dividends, to British pension funds. If the suggestion of a couple of American senators were to be taken up - that BP should suspend payment of dividends until the mess is sorted out - the losers would be British pensioners. I wonder if Union Carbide suspended dividends until it stopped killing Indians?

This is undoubtedly a catastrophe. But it was an accident and could have happened to any oil company. Creating an international incident over it would not be helpful.