It's Been a While

This blog has sat idle for a while.. after a position change from the news department back into the studio production crew, news has flowed a little slower through life for a busy technician.

But there are still events happening which should be reported on, and opinion generated from this corner of the world. One of the biggest is the BP oil fiasco going on in the Gulf of Mexico. Too much that seems to be behind the scenes, and not enough being told to the public.

What preparations were in place to prevent or limit such a catastrophe? From what it seems like from news coverage, there didn't seem to be any real failsafe. Granted, when dealing with extreme depths there are difficulties to overcome, but such plans should have been made in the eventuality of a catastrophic loss such as has happened.

And the government has been fairly quick to accuse, yet slow to respond. Even with the requirement of orders filtering down from the commanding centers of our military, it should not have taken a month to get ships equipped to handle the oil down to the Gulf to aid in clean up. There was a Coast Guard vessel specifically designed to skim oil which sat idle at it's homeport in North Carolina for a month before she received orders to sail.

With accusations flying, from the manufacturers of certain parts along the pipeline to the subcontractor who ran the actual platform, British Petroleum is the company over all. In this day and age, most try to find a scapegoat, and refuse to take responsibility, instead making excuses and half-hearted apologies.

BP needs to step up and stop stalling. From what news sources have covered, it has taken acts of Congress and the President to force any sort of acceptance for responsibility and recovery. Now, almost two months after the initial blast, a fund is being set up to help those who have lost their livelihood to the oil spill and cover recovery efforts. Something like this should have been in place already, and even with it not in place, it should have been set up faster and without government prompting.

And of course there's the government. "We'll get to the bottom of this," they say. But what is there to get to the bottom of? The platform is owned by British Petroleum. That's it, end of story, clean up your mess and pay up. What does the government really need to do here? Other than the usual democratic red tape parade to bring all the oil companies under scrutiny, create more regulations that will probably be ignored in the long run, and waste more taxpayer money appointing new people to inspect and regulate as effectively as before.

Which is to say, not so great.