Ha ha! I told you so!

My post of 8 June 2010:

I shall adopt the same approach with the recent [oil spill] in the Gulf of Mexico. No doubt the Yanks will engage in a lot of knee jerk stuff (like 'banning' future offshore drilling etc)... and Greenies the world over will adopt Louisana cray fisherman as their poster boys for a while but I give it six months* and the oil spill itself will be history, with or without any mass clean up efforts.

Daily Mail 30 july 2010:

He sparked outrage in the US when he suggested that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was nothing but a drop in the ocean.... But now, 16 days after the leak was finally stopped, scientists are coming forward to suggest that perhaps BP boss Tony Hayward may have been right after all.

Oil from the well is clearing from the sea surface much faster than scientists expected. Indeed, some are asking whether the original threat was actually exaggerated. And just over 100 days after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers, the water around the Gulf is almost entirely clear...

* With the benefit of hindsight, I'm kicking myself that I didn't say six weeks. Ah well... the MSM has now firmly fixed its gaze on this week's 'worst ever' oil spill. I'm sure the evil capitalists are to blame for that one as well. Whatever.

Tony Hayward is a little bit wayward; Michael Sheen is nice and clean.

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From the FT:

Sir, Nice idea to set up an independently administered fund to pay out BP’s liabilities in the Gulf of Mexico (report, June 14). Does the US have a Bhopal fund or similar that could act as a model?

Edward Lidderdale, Morden, Surrey.

Fun Online Poll Results: we told you so!

Jack Straw spoiled it all by openly admitting that al-Megrahi's release was part of an oil deal:

When asked in a Daily Telegraph interview last night if trade and BP were factors, Straw said: "Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I'm unapologetic about that… Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."

But he said he made the decision without conferring directly with Brown adding: "I certainly didn't talk to the PM. There is no paper trail to suggest he was involved at all."

Eighty per cent of us had assumed that this was the case anyway, so that poll is now otiose, I guess.

"Ministers consider windfall tax"

Oh God ... at least John Hutton shows a glimmer of commonsense.

The point is, the gummint has already had plenty of windfall taxes on the back of rising oil and gas prices:

The British Chambers of Commerce reckoned the annualised extra revenues would be over £4 bn on petrol alone, let's add on 50% for domestic fuel (only 5% VAT) and double it for additional corporation tax, which is 48% on North Sea oil and gas production = £12 bn.

That's £500 per household, for f***'s sake!

We could scrap the extra £70 per household for 'green' subsidies while we're at it.