They're taking the 'peace' aren't they?

So Greenpeace have fallen out with BP...

On the day when it was confirmed that Tony Hayward, the guy widely blamed for the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, would be taking a non-executive role within the company and on the very same day that the oil firm reported record losses, Greenpeace resort to 'criminal damage'. Allegedly.

The environmental group thought that by turning all the fuel off at around fifty BP petrol stations in London, they could influence the new man in charge, Bob Dudley, to steer the company in a greener direction...

I think Greenpeace missed the trick here. Some thoughts...

• BP have just recorded record losses. The only direction the new man will take is to reverse the current financial position of the company he now runs. The shareholders will see to this...

• If I was driving in London this morning, I would have been more than a little annoyed with the action Greenpeace decided to take. If you needed to fill up this morning, you would have had to continue driving in the hope of finding another filling station while being made to run the risk of not making it...

• If this mornings action had caused anyone to run out of fuel then wouldn't this have just caused a huge number of tailbacks? Tailbacks which would've contained lots of engines running in cars which were rapidly going nowhere... all the while belching out fumes which will only damage the environment? Genius for an environmental group.

• Removing the safety switches? From a petrol pump? Bit risky don't you think? Wasn't it a faulty safety switch in the Gulf of Mexico? And look what happened there. In London, we had environmental amateurs taking off the switches... I'm assuming none of them were petrochemical engineers but I could be mistaken...

• It is not the fault of the public! So why inconvenience it?

They call the people who carried out this mornings protests 'activists' but won't they end up being seen as being less peaceful and more... for want of a better word, 'militant' than they make out?

What will this mornings 'huff and puff' achieve? I'm guessing nothing. I don't think it will even gain Greenpeace one new member. Not that this protest was a recruitment drive... but if it did, it wouldn't be me joining their ranks. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few days... but somehow I don't think I will. So me and Bob Dudley may have something in common here, because I can't see him thinking it will achieve anything either.

By the way... as it stands, no crimes have been committed.

This from the BBC website: 'A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said they were monitoring the situation but no crime had been reported and no arrests had been made so far'