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The distinctive sound of the fiddle soared as Cajun music blared out of the speakers, precariously balanced on a supermarket seafood cart selling uncooked scallops and boiled crab.

The man serving was saying to the customer in front of me: "You notice BP didn't get going for a while. They didn't want to lose the oil, they were trying to make money rather than solve the problem."

The customer agrees that BP have behaved disgracefully, but the specific accusation is ludicrous. It doesn't make any sense at all. But it shows the depth of anger towards the company.

But the point is, despite the Cajun music the exchange took place not in the bayou but in my local supermarket in the Washington suburbs.

The sense of solidarity with the people of the Gulf and of anger with BP is growing. The company's name is officially those lone initials, not standing for anything. But their origin is not lost.

In Louisiana when people heard my accent, they were sure to stress that it was once British Petroleum. Not in a nasty or vindictive way, more in the nature of teasing, and I am not sure that it will do any direct damage to our country's image.

One man went on to point out this came on top of British responsibility for expelling his forefathers from Nova Scotia, the original some 255 years earlier.

Louisiana would be a less interesting place without this piece of colonial ill treatment but I nevertheless apologised and dissociated myself from the Government of the Duke of Newcastle. It is likewise necessary politely to dissociate oneself from BP.

For the company this is only going to get worse. One British analyst I heard on suggested that the whole thing may cost them a year's profit. US attorney general Eric Holder is in the gulf today with senior colleagues, talking to prosecutors to see if there are sufficient grounds for a criminal prosecution.

In a Rose Garden statement that was largely a repeat of his short speech on Grand Isle on Friday, the president said that if new laws were needed to prevent such catastrophes in the future, they would be bought in and, "if our laws were broken leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims of this catastrophe and the people of the Gulf region".

Of course, a criminal prosecution would be terrible news for any company but it is those new laws, tighter regulations that may be worse.

One thing that struck me about the NPR interview was that the administration's reaction to the disaster is likely to make off shore drilling a lot more expensive in the future. BP may find other oil companies joining the chorus of blame.

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