I would just like to tell you that we haven’t specifically got it in for BP – the oil giant seems to have it in for itself.

Hot on the heels of news of the company being investigated for price manipulation and propane is the news that a group of prominent black leaders in the US including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have announced a boycott of BP, saying the company gouges consumers and racially discriminates in its business practices. The company was targeted, Jackson says, because none of its upper-level executives are black and there are no black owners among its hundreds of U.S. distributors.

So the company’s troubles mount: over the last year there have been explosions at refineries, spills in the Arctic, allegations of price fixing, and now this. Still those nice ads about what a wonderful company BP is are still running…