Matt Knipe

@bmwhocking @j_razor101 @s8mb @rcolvile Because they'd paid the tax up front, rather than being able to offset future decommissioning costs against it.

@MattKnipe @j_razor101 @s8mb @rcolvile Because between 2010 and 2019 UK oil companies got vast tax credits for decommissioning old offshore infrastructure. The price of oil had been low & oil extractors hadn’t made enough to fund decommissioning. Ed Miliband is not keen to create such a liability for his successors.

- Put tens of billions in wind and solar costs onto energy bills - Prohibit fracking and drilling for North Sea oil & gas - Impose a carbon tax 50% higher than California’s and 6x higher than China’s - Borrow billions of pounds to pay for a “cost of living bailout”

@j_razor101 @s8mb @rcolvile If it would change nothing, why have they needed to ban it?

@s8mb @rcolvile Now tell us how much extra actual oil and gas is available in the UKCS, how much through fracking and what difference that would make to our status as a net importer and ultimately to our oil and gas price exposure. (Hin: It would change nothing).

@DamCou What was the now deleted post?

Twitter means never having to satirise our ruling classes.

@neilorpen @D__Melb @HaQ_mAn So you're proposing prioritising British citizens for training posts?

This happens for no jobs in no other countries when it comes to their own citizens that may have had training abroad This rule being imposed will be imposed on British citizens who have studied abroad - students study abroad for many reasons but commonly it involves being schooled in the U.K. and then going abroad for university for a variety of reasons - exploring courses , scholarships , life experiences - They may spend a few years at university while of course not being a resident or citizen of that other country There is no justifiable reason a British citizen should be excluded from a British job just because they went to a high quality university in another country

Why do doctors from all around the world feel entitled to medical training in the UK? Also don’t their own countries need their doctors? All of them seem to aspire to leave their country when they graduate, what about the people of Nigeria and Pakistan ?

@MelJStride If only we'd had more than a decade of Conservative government recently - they'd have sorted this sort of nonsense out. Wouldn't they?

The increasing obsession with diversity on boards has unfortunately been encouraged by regulators. They’ve started arguing that they have to push diversity and inclusion because it’s in line with their objectives to improve ‘market integrity’ or ‘consumer protection’. If diverse companies perform better, then fine – let businesses work that our for themselves. That’s how markets work. Why is it anything to do with the government? fca.org.uk/publication/di…

@stianwestlake @Sam__Enright We already have a citizens assembly. It's called Parliament. If it (with a vast budget and the best of the best selected from heavy competition) cannot decide things adequately, then why would a Citizens Assembly?

Why I'm a sceptic of Citizens’ Assemblies I was talking to the v clever @Sam__Enright recently, and made a passing remark about how I'm sceptical of claims that Citizens’ Assemblies are a great way of solving political problems. He asked me why. I thought I’d share my response. Citizens’ Assemblies are hugely popular among people interested in politics. They're particularly popular both with “sensible” anti-populists and with environmentalists (climate assemblies are especially popular among the latter group). Here are some reasons I don't like them. 1. Cognitive humility. I think a lot of love for citizens’ assemblies is predicated on the inability by the Citizens’ Assembly Advocate to countenance that voters may genuinely have different preferences to them. The mental model is something like “I believe X. Some foolish voters believe Y, because they are tricked by misinformation/Rupert Murdoch/Russian bots/their own lack of bandwidth. A citizens’ assembly would give them time to reflect on the true facts and conclude X, like me”. I struggle to think of any citizens’ assembly advocate who thinks citizens’ assemblies will reach conclusions they object to. 2. Gerrymandering. CAs seem ripe for gerrymandering. The usual CA model is that experts will provide some education on the subject before citizens deliberate and decide. The expert selection process seems like it'd be stitched up, perhaps not deliberately but by design. Example: consider a CA on how to prevent obesity and encourage healthy “food environments” (something I've heard suggested): it seems very likely to me that the experts would include lots of public health experts with strong ideological priors about the role of markets in providing food (such as the ‘commercial determinants of health’ worldview), who see food mainly as a health issue. But opponents of these positions might not be invited - for example because their funding comes from commercial sources. The choice architecture of the assembly itself is also ripe for coercive design. A transport policy friend told me about a UK CA on road building that found that citizens wanted fewer roads built (a surprising result); it turned out that they had been asked to choose between three options all of which involved less road building, and had picked one. (This problem is exacerbated by problem 1.) 3. Social desirability bias. More conceptually, I worry that CAs impose a bias to socially valorised solutions that overlook people’s selfish but legitimate motivations. Again, take the example of a CA on how to reduce obesity. Obesity is bad and socially costly (esp in systems with socialised medicine). But restrictions on unhealthy food impose a cost on individuals in terms of deliciousness and pleasure. I strongly suspect a civic discussion on obesity would focus on the societal costs and the “wise” view that we should constrain our choices in our long term interests, but underweight ideas like “chips taste yummy” which seem stupid and base - but which are legitimate desires that most people have. So CAs’ conclusions might reflect a kind of false “prosocial wisdom” that doesn't fully reflect people’s true preferences - resulting in policies that people don't actually want. I’m not saying it’s impossible to design CAs that don’t involve these biases, or that they are not known to CA experts. Arguably, the higher profile the assembly, the harder it is to get away with them (which perhaps means that things like the Irish CA on abortion that was organised as part of the referendum on the subject avoided these problems - I'm don't know enough to say). But they seem pretty fundamental issues that aren’t discussed enough in the casual commentary on CAs that I find myself reading regularly.

@cjsnowdon Surely the picture needs adjusting to give Homer massive boobs....

“Look into my eyes. You have moved on from immigration. It’s the billionaires that are the problem.”

@cjsnowdon Everyone except the BMA and, more importantly, the government

Inflation was 3.4% last year. Everyone except the economically illiterate BMA knows RPI is garbage. ons.gov.uk/economy/inflat….

@IGMansfield With no guarantee that they wouldn't be kicked into the long grass completely. Maybe we just need a little less government? A government that "treads more lightly on our lives"....

Regardless of other effects, changing PM – and the ensuing Cabinet reshuffle - would mean progress on SEND, nuclear, planning reform and a host of other difficult issues is put back 6-12 months or more. Further entrenching the narrative that nothing works and nobody can fix it.

@GarethLyon1688 Experience of working for a monopsony employer shows that in the absence of strikes our pay will suffer the same fate as the capital maintenance budget. As long as you use national pay scales to hold pay down you will have strikes - the alternative (move job) requires emigration.

“Instead of demanding yet more substantial pay increases beyond the 30% they have already benefitted from in the past three years they should be focussing on improving productivity and giving the Government some kind of tangible return on its investment.”

On the news that the Resident Doctors have approved further strikes: “After 14 sets of damaging doctors’ strikes since 2023 it is hard to see why anyone would think another one would solve anything...

@cjsnowdon Thanks. I would say "that makes sense", but I'm not sure that's appropriate!

@cjsnowdon I had the misfortune to sit through a talk by Coco pop man at a conference. He repeatedly stated that the tobacco firms that own all the UPF companies don't just use the same marketing, but also the "same molecules" with UPF as tobacco. Any ideas what that's supposed to mean?

Today's bonkers, billionaire-sponsored bollocks from the Guardian. theguardian.com/global-develop…

@Anaes_Journal Why does the threshold for cancellation based on ambulatory or home bp readings vary so much depending on who's requested those readings?

How do you manage hypertension in the peri-operative period? Checkout this new flowchart for the management of pre-operative adult blood pressure! #anaesthesia #WSM2026 #MedTwitter doi.org/10.1111/anae.7…

@tobytarrant "No matter what they've supposedly done" covers a very broad range of possibilities. And why does it matter if they are a mother: if someone's attacking you are you supposed to check whether they're a parent before defending yourself?

Controversial opinion: I think if you shoot a mother point blank in the face, no matter what they've supposedly done, you're fucking mental #woke

@whitesundesert @TomWright165389 Paid per patient on their list per year (more complicated than that, but that's the basis). This is purely because if you have 7 minutes per appointment, someone turning up with a long list of issues will make you very, very late. It's crap basically.

@TomWright165389 I’m not sure how they’re paid but my experience is they want you out of there ASAP, the whole consultation is rushed as hell, barely listening while reaching for the simplest, easiest remedy available. I think they’re always running late.

For me the most grimly amusing thing about a GP appointment in the UK is they often tell you up front you can only discuss ONE thing, as if they’re a prime minister taking questions from a room. If you have two issues, you need two appointments.

@Cox_A_R We still haven't managed to implement the Bristol inquiry recommendations, so why wouldn't we still be getting scandals?

It’s 2025 and we are still getting 1980/90s Bristol style scandals.

@cjsnowdon Yes. It's just another part of the joy of a government monopsony employer.

Interesting theory. Did NHS England lie about “super-flu” as part of the strike negotiations?

@wallaceme Are they actually harming themselves? I keep seeing some references to a hunger strike, near death etc, and others to a "rolling hunger strike" where they take in turns to skip a meal. Which is it?

We can't have a situation where if a prison inmate chooses to harm themselves enough, they get ministerial meetings as a reward. Totally right to refuse.

@edwest He has been jailed for 21 years....

Once again x.com/PMArslanagic/s…

After the Bully XL the next campaign should be lifetime driving bans for people who cause death or serious injury through reckless driving. look down the thread to see how dangerous drivers are routinely allowed to drive again after as little as a year twitter.com/edwest/status/…

@cjsnowdon Not a doctor. A radiologist would be a doctor, a radiographer isn't.

Doctors