Thread: BP trashed unfairly by Yanks?

There we go- show your true colors, pole-smoker.

I would pay money to have you say that to my face- sadly for you, you can only show balls on the internet.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I said it's called 'British Petroleum' in the States-

It's official name is actually 'BP PLC' for both it's primary listed UK shares and it's US ADR's. It changed the name from British petroleum some years back.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I would pay money to have you say that to my face

Originally Posted by English Noodles

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I would pay money to have you say that to my face

Yup- we both know that's a joke- you would never have the sack.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

Yup- we both know that's a joke- you would never have the sack.

Are you and Obama looking for an 'ass to kick'?

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I would pay money to have you say that to my face

How can some people be so stubborn.

It is call BP, not British Petroleum regardless how many times you call it that. That its proper name is BP is a nailed on FACT.

Obama, as president, is showing ingorance by not even getting the name of the company right. Either that or he is deliberately renaming it to shift the blame.

I couldn't give a flying one about nationalism but the bloke is clearly acting like an ignorant prick.

Originally Posted by Moonraker

How can some people be so stubborn.

It is call BP, not British Petroleum regardless how many times you call it that. That its proper name is BP is a nailed on FACT.

Obama, as president, is showing ingorance by not even getting the name of the company right. Either that or he is deliberately renaming it to shift the blame.

I couldn't give a flying one about nationalism but the bloke is clearly acting like an ignorant prick.

And where did the initials BP come from? Did they just pluck them from a hat?

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by Moonraker

How can some people be so stubborn.

It is call BP, not British Petroleum regardless how many times you call it that. That its proper name is BP is a nailed on FACT.

Obama, as president, is showing ingorance by not even getting the name of the company right. Either that or he is deliberately renaming it to shift the blame.

I couldn't give a flying one about nationalism but the bloke is clearly acting like an ignorant prick.

And where did the initials BP come from? Did they just pluck them from a hat?

Read the thread. You are doing yourself no favours.

Don't worry too much. You have Obama, we have Phil the Greek.

Difference being though is that we laugh at Phil whereas you guys have to take it personally.

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by Moonraker

How can some people be so stubborn.

It is call BP, not British Petroleum regardless how many times you call it that. That its proper name is BP is a nailed on FACT.

Obama, as president, is showing ingorance by not even getting the name of the company right. Either that or he is deliberately renaming it to shift the blame.

I couldn't give a flying one about nationalism but the bloke is clearly acting like an ignorant prick.

And where did the initials BP come from? Did they just pluck them from a hat?

Read the thread. You are doing yourself no favours.

Don't worry too much. You have Obama, we have Phil the Greek.

Difference being though is that we laugh at Phil whereas you guys have to take it personally.

You read the thread. You are the ones personalizing the argument. If you see something insidious in British Petroleum you are either paranoid or over sensitive.

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Originally Posted by Humbert

Originally Posted by Moonraker

How can some people be so stubborn.

It is call BP, not British Petroleum regardless how many times you call it that. That its proper name is BP is a nailed on FACT.

Obama, as president, is showing ingorance by not even getting the name of the company right. Either that or he is deliberately renaming it to shift the blame.

I couldn't give a flying one about nationalism but the bloke is clearly acting like an ignorant prick.

And where did the initials BP come from? Did they just pluck them from a hat?

Read the thread. You are doing yourself no favours.

Don't worry too much. You have Obama, we have Phil the Greek.

Difference being though is that we laugh at Phil whereas you guys have to take it personally.

You read the thread. You are the ones personalizing the argument. If you see something insidious in British Petroleum you are either paranoid or over sensitive.

Others Brits might be taking it personally on this thread and elsewhere, but I am not.

I am merely pointing out the ignorance of a man who is a national leader. The man is re-enforcing the stereotype that American's are ignorant and stupid.

The really sad thing is that you and other septics can't even see that.

Originally Posted by Humbert

You read the thread. You are the ones personalizing the argument. If you see something insidious in British Petroleum you are either paranoid or over sensitive.

Exactly- while I've gotten personal with a couple guys after they went there first, nobody American is giving the Brits any flak at all from a nationalistic perspective- it's amazing how something they can so easily find in us they can't recognize in themselves (at least as far as this thread is concerned- I don't judge every Brit by some of the examples on TD- there are some great, reasonable people from the UK here, but some of you guys really take it too far).

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Others Brits might be taking it personally on this thread and elsewhere, but I am not.

I am merely pointing out the ignorance of a man who is a national leader. The man is re-enforcing the stereotype that American's are ignorant and stupid.

The really sad thing is that you and other septics can't even see that.

Just the fact you need to use the derogatory term 'septic' shows that you're being disingenuous and condescending- this is obviously very personal for you.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Others Brits might be taking it personally on this thread and elsewhere, but I am not.

I am merely pointing out the ignorance of a man who is a national leader. The man is re-enforcing the stereotype that American's are ignorant and stupid.

The really sad thing is that you and other septics can't even see that.

Just the fact you need to use the derogatory term 'septic' shows that you're being disingenuous and condescending- this is obviously very personal for you.

Hook line and sinker.

Just another American stereotype of over-sensitivity. That was just too easy.

^^^

Right- you're just fishing, not being an asshole... that's like the 'party line' with you guys.

Once again POM's should not be within 500 miles of an oil well. They'll just fuck it up.

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Just another American stereotype of over-sensitivity. That was just too easy.

Careful, he will be offering to meet you for 'friendly beers' soon.

Originally Posted by dotcom

Once again POM's should not be within 500 miles of an oil well. They'll just fuck it up.

You do realize that it was an American crew doing the drilling?

Originally Posted by English Noodles

Originally Posted by Moonraker

Just another American stereotype of over-sensitivity. That was just too easy.

Careful, he will be offering to meet you for 'friendly beers' soon.

Hehe- come on, Noodles- first round's on me.

Originally Posted by Norton

BP should have been more clever like those wily folks at Shell. Most Americans have no idea company's name is Royal Dutch Shell. Had it been a Shell platform spill, no doubt the media would point this out and all would be blamed on Queen Beatrix. Make the bitch pay.

Most Americans would be holding placards saying:

Make the Republic Of Shell pay!!!!

or

Down with the People Socialist Republic of Shell

I'm sure he's used the term "British Petroleum".

Here's an interesting article from the British press (written by an American- just like I said earlier, he makes the point of saying he hasn't heard any other Americans display any animosity towards the UK itself, only at BP):

Sorry guys, but Obama's anger isn't about Britain



Sorry guys, but Obama's anger isn't about Britain | Michael Tomasky | Comment is free | The Guardian

Could it be more fitting that the US and England face off tomorrow on the pitch? Because obviously, we're just about on the verge of another war over the BP spill and Barack Obama's "despicable" and "xenophobic" (that's Norman Tebbit, in the Telegraph the other day, without citing any particular despicable or xenophobic thing the president had actually done) attacks not only on BP but evidently on the sceptred isle and the crown itself.

Just yesterday, the New York Times surveyed the problem, splashing the results across the front page. Being a US paper, it gave the matter a slightly different spin. Its chief concern was a growing "protective backlash" in the UK against what it conceded was a "stream of condemnations" coming out of Washington.

Maybe so. But here's a point that I think is kind of useful. Said condemnation stream is not flowing in the direction of No 10, or Buckingham Palace, or the fine people of Brighton or Luton or Liverpool. The denunciations are aimed at one company. I haven't heard any fellow Americans say one bad thing about Britain since the oil spill. Now, I'll grant you, maybe I travel in some atypical circles. But even so, I have a really hard time imagining that out there in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a husband and wife are sitting at their breakfast table, watching CNN and deciding to toss their English muffins in the garbage (some might for other reasons: I like them, having been raised on them, but in his new memoir, Christopher Hitchens notes he tasted his first English muffin when he moved to America and judged it a feeble representation of both Englishness and muffinhood).

I take it the problem, which I confess my jaded ears hadn't even registered, is that Obama keeps saying "British Petroleum" instead of BP. The conservative Canadian-American commentator David Frum, surveying the UK's conservative press, espies "an attempt to mobilise American nationalism against Britain in order to evade political blame for the disaster". Well, I suppose that could be. We have established in the past – the slighting of Gordon Brown, the removal of a Churchill bust from the Oval Office – that Obama seems not to be an Anglophile. I want to stipulate that I'm totally guessing here, but I suspect this diffidence (if it's real, which we don't really know) has something to do with the fact that Obama's roots are Kenyan. Which country colonised Kenya? Ah. This is the kind of thing that happens when white Anglo-Saxon hegemony is interrupted and you let people into the club whose forebears saw history from the other side. Deal with it.

But really. This is mostly a rightwing talking point, just another item in an endless list of grievances that begins with accusations of Hitlerism and runs to the idea that he can't put together two sentences without a teleprompter. Obama may have mixed feelings about the UK, but he surely doesn't hate it. And there is no broad anti-British sentiment in the US. There is anti-BP sentiment. And well there ought to be.

Let's break down the logic of the British right's anger here. I've variously heard it said that BP is a British corporation and should not be attacked for that reason, and that it is in fact a multinational corporation so therefore attempts to call it out as a representative of the UK are pointless.

In either case, I don't understand being defensive about it. If it's the former, then if you ask me it's Britons, not Americans, who are looking at this the wrong way. I can assure you I maintain no patriotic impulses toward Exxon, and the idea of Britons feeling patriotic about BP strikes me as silly. And if the latter, well, then it's just a stateless multinational, and not British, so why feel offended at all?

It makes no sense either way. But it does come at a handy time. Let's just settle it in South Africa.

Originally Posted by FailSafe

I'm sure he's used the term "British Petroleum".

So I thought but can find no evidence he has.

Even this guy whose sole mission in life these days seems to be trashing BP doesn't use the term.

This is a line from the article above (take it for what it's worth):

I take it the problem, which I confess my jaded ears hadn't even registered, is that Obama keeps saying "British Petroleum" instead of BP.