Joe, it shouldn't be a question of one nation against the other, but that is what the politicians and some of the media seem to trying to stoke up.

In today's Times newspaper there's a letter from someone just returned from New York describing how one TV station there linked the spill with a visit to the White House by Paul McCartney by asking why the President was "inviting the citizen of a country which has destroyed the planet".

US politicians want to appear to be acting tough in a situation which they don't actually have any control over. I'm not saying they shouldn't be criticising BP (although at the moment the priority should be fixing the leak and cleaning up the mess - there will be plenty of time later to argue over who is to blame), it is the way they are specifically identifying it as a British company (when it is 44% American-owned and employs twice as many Americans as Brits) which is not going down well over here. It seems from the story I quoted above that some of the US media have already fallen for this line, so it's only a matter of time before ordinary Americans start to believe it too.

As for Tony Blair, you're welcome to him.