Mark Steel on Total Oil

Mark Steel's latest column is about Total Oil and their profiting from the Burmese Myanmar regime:

So everyone loves the Bur-mese protestors, including George Bush, and yesterday the Conservative party conference. But there are a few in the West that aren't so enthusiastic. For example, Total Oil doesn't appear to be cheering for them.

This may be because they supply most of the energy to the regime through the Yadama gas project, which rewards the Burmese military with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Total denies that its operation there has any connections with the military, although 16 battalions of the army have been stationed around their plant to protect it.

...

It's also part of Total's contract in Burma that all their security staff are to be made available from the army. Did that not strike them as odd? Does this usually happen in democracies? If the Arndale Centre in Ipswich needs a couple of security guards, they tend not to get the 9th regiment of the Royal Fusiliers.

And they might have realised, if they were keeping a vigilant eye on affairs, that the elected leader of the country was under house arrest where she'd been for 13 years. Or maybe the Burmese government told Total that this was an experiment in spreading home-working. Because these days with new technology, fewer and fewer jobs require us to go into the office, even if your occupation is international rebel.

Read the whole column - as always, he's witty and incisive.