Amy Winehouse in St. Lucia earlier this year

Amy Winehouse can credit her life to Universal Music Group -- the record company is going out of their way to keep her alive. But not because they care about her, they only care about the bottom line. They want her to make another album. Amy's six-months-and-counting vacation on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia is being picked up by the company. From the Daily Mail:

Amy is living in two villas which cost her record company about £2,000 a night each and come with their own butler and maid. It's a curious, dissolute life and Amy, lonely and drunk, seems quite lost in her Caribbean idyll.

She has company: half-a-dozen minders who have been engaged by her record company at a cost of £250 a day each. This week, she also has her cousin, Lauren, and her boyfriend, who have flown out to try to stop her from 'being bored'.

In truth, they are trying to keep Amy sober enough to work - and trying to steer her into the recording studio which has been installed in the second villa at eye-watering cost. Some £500,000 has been spent so far by Universal Records on accommodation, staff and equipment for Amy's Caribbean jolly.

The hope is that Amy can again create an album like Back To Black, the multi-award winning phenomenon which sold 11 million copies after the songs seemed to tumble out of her during an extraordinary two-week period in 2006.

Good luck Universal. The second Amy leaves that resort and stumbles across a pub or a CVS pharmacy, your efforts to keep her sober will go up in flames faster than unsmoked crack in Whitney Houston's favorite pipe. By throwing good money after bad, Universal is handling Amy a lot like the U.S. government handled GM. In both cases it'll end up costing them tons of cash -- and the only thing of value they'll be left with is a Hummer nobody wants.