I’ve got no doubt that when they get down to the investigation of the horrendous accident in the Gulf of Mexico, they will discover, as ever that it was caused by the oil companies’ penny-pinching ways.

I’ve lost count of the number of oil rig accidents which have occurred in the North Sea. The companies are completely uncaring of their employees’ welfare and people die because of the sheer greed of the companies.

Even although the profits which the oil industries make are eye wateringly enormous, they can’t bring themselves to spend paltry sums of money on maintenance. I’ve seen photographs of pipelines which look like badly patched quilts and obviously the only safe thing to do is to replace the broken pipe. It must be terrifying to work on an oil rig under such conditions.

The first disaster which I can remember which concerned oil was when the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on rocks between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in 1967 when I was 8 years old. You can read about it in an article which was published in The Guardian yesterday.

I can’t see how the oil is ever going to be cleaned from the sort of coastal grasslands which I have been seeing on TV.