I'm not surprised at BP

I grew up in the shadow of the BP oil refinery at Grangemouth and I'm not surprised that they were found to have cut corners on safety, or that they're taking so long to fix the problem. I've seen them turn the sky orange at night when a flare has went up too high. One cloudy day it was like a seen from Lord of the Rings, the flare was literally shooting into the sky. A year where BP weren't fined for safety issues was a year wasted in their eyes. There were never really any serious issues but I seem to remember a person walking their dog being blown across the street, a fire, a massive flare up. Warnings have been issued fairly regularly to residents in the Grangemouth area that this will happen and that will happen and not to worry but it's hard not to.

I stayed in Grangemouth for a week with my gran and every night I had nightmares about something bad happening at the refinery and having to leave, the many safety issues they were caught on not helping my nerves one bit. To this day the place freaks me out somewhat. After all, it's a company I've known to be pretty negligent and slow to fix problems. I'm just not surprised at all and that's just sad in a way. I miss having faith in certain people.

I wonder if other refineries have that problem as well?

THis is just another way we are killing our planet.

Every decade brings about more damage. These oil companies are only worried about their wallet, so are many other entities that make money producing things that are harmful to the world we live in.

In 50 years I seriously doubt anyone will be taking many strolls along the beach as the waters will be so nasty by then no one will want to.

Probably. I know that safety can be hard to maintain. It just seemed to be all the time at BP. You pretty rarely hear about anything else happening in that area and there are quite a few chemical works and other oil companies down there. So much so that the area has the highest rates of cancer in Scotland, probably linked to industrial pollution. A favourite joke in Falkirk is that people from Grangemouth glow in the dark. I swear my cousin Danielle does.

Apparently pollution on UK beaches has dropped in the last few years There was a scandal a few years ago about BP poisoning a burn (stream). All the fish and frogs died and it was a while before it ran clean again.

All companies cut corners to maximise profits, I don't think it's fair just singling out BP.

I'm not. I'm just saying I'm not surprised. I'm also observing that it happens pretty often compared to similar businesses in the same area. I grew up in the shadow of that thing. I'm not as scared of it as I was when I was younger but there was a time I couldn't stay overnight in Grangemouth because of the nightmares it gave me. It was a pretty awful thing to grow up near. I might have had more confidence if they weren't being fined for one safety violation or another every few weeks.

Just an idea of the size of it.

The problem is, they save more than they are fined when they cut corners, so no real incentives there to go by the book, they need to be fined a whole lot more than they currently are.