🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧Iain_L 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Despite the FM’s rhetoric, even today Scotland’s constitutional future is way down the list of people’s priorities.

Extracting from a mature basin requires investment and the technical expertise of the producers that have been painted as 'evil' in the UK. Norway knows this. Despite the basin’s maturity, Norway never stopped drilling, averaging forty-five exploration wells annually. In 2025, Norwegian production surged to its highest level since 2009 — the lucrative result of a record $24.68 billion investment that returned roughly $90 billion in exports. Today, the sector serves as the bedrock for 20% of Norway’s GDP and sustains 200,000 people. Britain still has its own reserves. The collapse of British exploration is a policy-driven crisis, not a geological one. By suffocating North Sea producers with a 78% effective tax rate via the Energy Profits Levy, Britain rendered long-term capital investment impossible. The result is a historic standstill. In 2025, for the first time in sixty years, not a single new exploration well was drilled in British waters.

My letter in the Herald today. Isn't it funny that the SNP love to dish out their universal benefits like prescriptions etc but when it comes to heating oil, oh no! That one is only for those on low incomes. Of course those who live rurally are less likely to vote SNP. 🤔😡

It’s funny that they are all now chomping at the bit to drill endlessly for oil in the North Sea Same people who told Scotland 12 years ago that there was fuck all oil left there 🤥😂

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 A reminder that 55% of Scots pay less tax than people in the rest of the UK. 🔊👇 Those who pay slightly more benefit from a far better social contract:

I think Kier Starmer is the best PM we have had for decades. Strange that so many say he's made mistakes/he's not perfect. When did those commentators ever say tory PMs made mistakes? You know tory governments that make ordinary people poorer & rich people richer. FUNNY THAT

NEW: We often hear that Scotland’s more progressive income tax is “driving people out the country.” New HMRC data shows the opposite. Far more taxpayers are moving to Scotland than leaving it. Let’s look at the data 🧵

Given suggestions the Government should go further in subsidising bills again because of the conflict in Iran we wanted to look at what sort of govt interventions/policies were/weren't affordable. 50% think govt could subsidise bills to stop the impact of the war, 38% disagree