Bill,

"Mr Hayward could have given some answers, but qualified his responses, pending the investigation"

If you were CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world and had a dreadful accident where 11 people died which also resulted in an environmental and PR disaster wouldn't you be a bit curious to know who made decisions and which level of management knew about these decisions? Who sanctioned these decisions?

59 days later the CEO of BP does not know this. (Or, more probably, is hiding this information.)

If this was any airline in the world this would not be acceptable. In aviation we are always given preliminary information to inform the public as soon as it is available.

You always have to wait for the outcome of the full enquiry but, a CEO of BP cannot simply say, "I cannot tell you until the investigation is complete".

He must know by now (59 days after the event) who made the critical safety decisions and which level of management were involved in these decisions. If he does not know, he is incompetent.

Also, no member of the committee ask him what are the terms of reference of the BP internal investigation.

I've watched this debate for a long time now. In another post, I mentioned that I had watched the entire testimony of the congressional enquiry yesterday.

Andrew Neil always makes out that these committees put our select committees to shame. As such i was expecting penetrating questions getting to the main issues. Some members of the committee seemed clueless and seemed to waffle on to impress the voters in their state.

No-one asked what are the implications of the relief wells failing? What contingency plans do they currently have in place if the relief wells fail in August?

The BP CEO said yesterday that they estimate that this site has about 50 million barrels of oil. What happens, if in August the relief wells fail? (One congressman said yesterday that this has happened before - I think in 1979).

If the two relief well fail in August, we could end up with oil on our shores, here in the UK.

"However the fact that it was not financed by banks makes me wondwer - though it may well be that the bank's refusal owes more to political factors than economic, in which case such a loan has a valuable moral tonic. "

John Redwood has repeatedly pointed out the fact that banks are lending less money due (owing?) to capital requirements imposed by the regulators.

There seems to be a good argument for supporting this loan of £80 million. Apparently, their products would be used by the new nuclear power plants (if they ever get the go-ahead).

In the current situation, it would be incredible to spend £25 million on a new tourist centre for Stonehenge.

Mr Redwood, I'm surprised at you. Aren't you a conservative?

Test cricket between two evenly balanced sides can be the most exciting version of cricket that there is. 20/20 is more like basketball and is a gimmick. In 10 years or so the new converts to 20/20 will lose interest and move onto something else. What then for cricket?

Some of the most exciting matches I have ever watched have been 1-0 or even 0-0.

My God, you'll be asking for bigger goals next!!!

BTW: There is a good argument for bigger goals as the average goalie is bigger that he would have been 150 years ago.