Bumi and Vedanta could learn a lot from BHP Billiton: no mining company is better skilled in confronting criticism with courtesy. "Thank you for coming; thank you for raising that issue; we'll look into it; let's continue the dialogue...." I'm not averse to courtesy; but what we need is justice. We could also do with the presence of more of the company's critics at its London AGMs. Almost all the criticisms of the company came from London Mining Network and friends -- though this year important issues were also raised by representatives of the Dutch Association of Investors for Sustainable Development. But given all the flak the company has been taking recently for poorer than usual results, the write down of its newly acquired Fayetteville gas subsidiary, problems with potash, and the (to us) welcome shelving of its Olympic Dam uranium mine expansion plan, you'd have thought that a few more punters might have turned up to give it some stick. Chairman Jac Nasser and CEO Marius Kloppers spent three quarters of an hour telling us how wonderful the company is and how well it's doing despite the world's economic woes. Among the points made was that there has been record production at the Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia, of which the company owns one third. The company has also, apparently invested $240 million in community projects during the 2012 financial year. This was a fitting introduction to the first question, from our friend Felipe Ustate, in London as a