Troubled Waters

Having done his bit for the Eastern Question, Daveybloke the Cuddly Conservative has turned the power of his statesmanship to the public-relations disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Daveybloke and his Cuddly Chancellor, George the Progressively Osborne, have had a bit of a chat with the chairman of BP and have urged all sides to find a constructive solution, which is a jolly progressive thing to urge since they'd certainly never have thought of that on their own. BP is going to suspend the dividend payout which was planned for next week until it becomes clear how far the Big Society's taxpayers can be relied upon to bail the company out of any financial difficulties resulting from cleaning up the damage and meeting (or, in Standard English, fighting) all legitimate claims for compensation.

Meanwhile, the London Haystack has done his populist (or, in Standard English, fatuous) bit for the special relationship by accusing the Obama administration of talking down a great British company and thereby taking money out of the mattresses of British pensioners. Apparently it is Obama's anti-British rhetoric which has caused BP's shares to lose value, rather than BP's little accident or BP's consistent underestimation of the scale of the problem or BP's continuing inability to bring the spillage under control. Presumably it was also Obama's anti-British rhetoric which deprived British pensioners of an adequate provision from the state, thus forcing the said pensioners to entrust their meagre resources to inadequately regulated private companies which placed them at the mercy of neurotic fluctuations in a highly unstable global market. Daveybloke will, no doubt, be appropriately robust and forthright in demanding that Obama explain these derelictions.