There has been far too much about the hard times ahead and everyone needing to tighten their belts as we're all in this together - a multi-billion pound bail of a rich oil company would completely undermine the message for most people.

I'm not sure exactly where blame lies - there was sub-letting going on and Haliburton had done some work there as well but BP do deserve a fair amount of the stick at least. They're apparently far ahead of other oil companies for regulation breaches in the US and I saw reports saying that their contingency plan for accidents was deeply flawed and just lip service to the regulations.