Tony Hayward remaining BP CEO

POLITICS - In China Tony Hayward would have been shot for gross negligence. The Chinese government has zero tolerance for companies and individuals who fail to protect the safety of the country.

Remember the big 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008? It killed almost 90,000 people. Two years later they're still pulling dead bodies out of the rubble. When word got out that a lot of schools and public buildings in the area had not been built to government specifications the building inspector for those buildings was tried for bribery, corruption, gross negligence and was promptly shot.

In the case of the BP Oil Spill however Tony Hayward, who continues to insist his oil rigs were safe (despite testimony from oil rig workers who refer to it as "the Rig from Hell" and now the new moniker "the Rig of Death" because of the lack of safety procedures used on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig), well he gets to keep his job.

Tony Hayward was recently the subject of a rumour he was going to be replaced. He was gaffe prone. He kept sticking his foot in his mouth. He was caught repeatedly lying on camera. He was downplaying the size of the catastrophe and releasing spill numbers which have since been determined to be wholly inaccurate.

17 million litres per day until the cap was finally placed on the well, that is the most accurate estimate so far. Tony Hayward and other BP spokespeople however were downplaying the numbers, spreading misinformation with numbers that were between one-tenth to one-quarter the real size of the spill. They were lying so much that they were contradicting their own people.

For now Tony Hayward is going on vacation... stress leave the oil company is saying. BP Managing Director Bob Dudley will be answering all further questions regarding the BP oil spill.

BP isn't the only company to blame. They were outsourcing a lot of their workers from Halliburton, workers in theory who should be drilled in safety procedures. The process of assigning blame began long ago, but the finger pointing thus far has been on nameless middle management and the CEO Tony Hayward.

Temporary caps have slowed the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, but the environmental and economic backlashes have only barely begun.