companies house made easy

No this isn’t about the world cup but it’s not entirely unconnected.

Are we all solely responsible for managing our expectations or are we just victims of our own innate desire to be optimistic. It is quite clear that journalism gets a lot of its daily bread from pointing out where delivery of results fails to live up to expectations but it usually leaves me with a very unpleasant after taste.

So if it’s not about football what is disappointing me in particular? It’s the way BP and President Obama have handled the Gulf oil disaster. As usual I had expected better of both of these participants and find myself feeling yet again a little foolish at my well practiced naivety. BP could so easily have handled this situation so much better to the benefit of everybody involved. All that was necessary was for the chairman to go and meet Obama at the end of the first week, apologise and try and work together on the clean up. They would both have gained credibility and created a fine example of good leadership in adversity and instead of that now it’s all about testosterone! BP has shot itself in the foot by understating the extent of the leakage and as a result will be heavily punished for arse covering.

It was also a poor call from the White House not to get involved sooner but for their part they didn’t want to be seen as part of the problem because of the dubious oil regulation arrangements and they are also now hiding behind macho posturing to cover their own arses. I think I could cope with the posturing from President Obama given the extraordinary scale of the disaster if it wasn’t for the timely comparison with the Indian Bhopal gas leak in 1984 that makes this incident look modest by comparison. An American company called Union Carbide virtually walked away free of almost all responsibility from a gas leak that devastated a whole region in India killing tens of thousands of people and blighting the lives of many more survivors for generations. A little more perspective and humility in the circumstances wouldn’t go amiss.

So why does this leave me with an unpleasant aftertaste? Well it’s my own fault because I really did expect more from the players in this game and there they are again our old adversaries avoidable own goals.