Re: The BP CEO's "scandal"
- From: Chris Hansen <chrishansenhome@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 17:46:48 +0100
On Thu, 03 May 2007 00:01:54 GMT, dsl@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dennis Lewis) wrote:
I must admit being perplexed about the brouhaha over former BP CEO
John Browne's relationship with "a younger man."
The business section of today's NY Times gave prominent play to a
rather lengthy article that could have been lifted straight (pardon
the pun) out of a 1952 edition. The entire gist of the article seemed
to be (1) Browne had sex with a guy, (2) he wasn't truthful about
where he'd met the guy, and (3) a lot of bad things happened while
Browne was running BP.
It wasn't until someone e-mailed a link to a UK newspaper's report
that I learned (1) Browne's partner was a (gasp!) *HUSTLER*, and (2)
Browne said he'd met the guy while exercising in a park rather than
being upfront and admitting he'd contacted the guy via a sex site.
Regardless of the circumstances, hasn't Britain moved beyond all this?
This is playing like a scene in the 1961 movie "Victim."
<http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0055597/>
Oh dear, one of the difficulties is that he lied about it to a judge, in
court, under oath. That's perjury.
No one is too exercised about the fact that he is gay. He used to have dinner
a quatre with his partner, a certain Tony Blair, and a certain Cherie Blair.
He also would dine as a couple with the Gordon Browns (you know, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer). He took his partner to business functions. It
was widely known in the business and government world that Browne is gay and
had a partner. No one gave a darn.
BP has fallen in a few places: the refinery explosion in Texas and oil
pipeline leaks in Alaska, to name two. It just lost control of a gas deal in
eastern Siberia.
Yes, Britain has moved on beyond that. This is a typical "older business
executive takes up with young floozy and then dumps floozie after tugging
floozie around as his partner--floozie finally takes revenge" story. It's not
about gay sex, it's about a guy who made some dumb choices and then lied about
it.
Browne wasn't a government official. So what if he shared some of his
huge salary with a "working lad"? It's not like the hustler sat on the
wrong switch during "working hours" and caused the Alaska pipeline to
rupture.
He was towed around to business and political events as Browne's partner. (He
also consumed a bit of BP secretarial time, but BP decided that wasn't enough
to constitute a misdeed).
After reading that this little dalliance might cost Browne $30 million
in retirement and stock benefits, I had to locate a picture of
Browne's young friend to judge whether he was worth it. The guy's
certainly no Jonas Armstrong ...
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/robinhood/characters/robin.shtml>
No, but would you kick him out of bed?
I think the moral of the story is this: when you take out an injunction to
protect information about your private life, and lie to the judge about the
circumstances that led you to ask for the injunction, and the judge finds out
about the lie, there will be consequences.
Chris "It seems about GBP 17 million of them, not including the perjury rap."
Hansen
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
www.christianphansen.com or chrishansenhome.livejournal.com
"...do ex-smokers go to smokey bars?" Mike McKinley
"What are those?" Michael Thomas
"They make them commercials about preventin' forest fars."
Tim McDaniel,
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