Colin Braid Johnston

Hi Michael. Did you or did you not vote last night to keep crushing Carbon Taxes on British refineries? We are down to four refineries and they are spending more on the Government’s Carbon Tax than their wage bill. I imagine they have been banging on your door to tell you this. Are you even listening? No, you would rather import jet fuel from Indian refineries, using Putin’s oil, with twice the emissions, than back British production. You keep wanging on about our oil being sold abroad, the vast majority is refined here or in Europe, without it both us and our allies are more dependent not less on dictators like Putin. This is obvious to everybody, but you.

The only people cheering on this Government’s approach to energy are people in Moscow and Beijing, who themselves won’t believe their luck in having such useful idiots in the form of the UK Labour Government 🥀

The more you read about the energy crisis the more you realise everyone else, every serious country, is going flat out increasing production, more oil/gas, prioritising domestic production where possible, ripping up policy assumptions, Uniquely, one major country is pressing on in the opposite direction. It would have to be us, wouldn’t it? Banning new oil and gas exploration and fields, by law! It is quite mad. Future historians will be astonished. Like looking back on Tony Benn’s policies in government decades later and thinking how on earth was that allowed to happen?

🚨 NEW: SNP, Labour and Reform MPs have failed to back Scotland’s oil and gas industry in a crucial vote this evening. In the Aberdeen South by-election, voters can send them a message by backing @DLumsden_MSP and the Scottish Conservatives to Get Britain Drilling.

I find it impossible to understand why we buy oil from Norway, now Russia again, when we have our own, which would create tax revenue, growth & jobs?

Starmer has put sanctions on British energy in the North Sea and is lifting sanctions on Russian energy. That’s funding our enemies not our hospitals. telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/…

After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries. Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences. We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea. Insane.

@DougChapmanSCO How are those ferries getting on? Scotland will send an astronaut to the moon before they're running reliably and in full service. Nice job on the A9, though. Oh. Wait...

Prediction : Scotland will send an astronaut to the moon before this project is finished🤣🤣🤣.

Flying over the HS2 route last week. No track, no trains, not a ticket sold. Cost to date £100bn for just 140 miles of track & yes, it’s running years late. Scottish taxpayers send every penny of tax collected in Scotland to @hmtreasury - this is how they spend it! 🤪

Amen, Brian.

The upcoming Aberdeen South by-election should be about the SNP's failure to support the North East and our oil and gas industry. Our position is clear: we must Get Britain Drilling again 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇬🇧

People can now get the equivalent of a £71,000 salary on benefits. Working people on £30,000 or £40,000 are asking themselves, why do I bother working so hard? This is not sustainable.

@RupertMyers 100% correct.

Unpopular opinion: Kemi Badenoch is becoming *really* good at this, and is miles better than Nigel Farage. Farage avoids scrutiny, avoids clarity, is trying to draw together a broad coalition by painting in the vaguest of strokes, where Badenoch is doing the hard work of becoming genuinely competent

@DawnNeesom @PatrickChristys Ah the Kemi look at 31 seconds on this clip is delicious.

@PatrickChristys Kemi's side eye to Wes just brilliant 😏

Absolutely glorious watching Kemi skewer the entire front bench

Many of the onshore wind farms along the coasts of the UK and Denmark are falling apart after only 10 years. A study reveals that energy contributions from wind farms begin to fall sharply after only 10 to 15 years, leaving the skeletons of steel and plastic blowing in the wind. The economic analysis reveals the lifespan of an onshore turbine is not 20 to 25 years, as stated by the wind industry itself, supported by the UK Government. This peer reviewed British study reveals that the energy production of onshore wind farms falls substantially as they get older, due to wear and tear. Energy and environmental economist, Professor Gordon Hughes (University of Edinburgh), carried out the statistical analysis of wind farm performance data in the UK and Denmark. He concluded that load factors, like electricity generated as a percentage of capacity, declined a lot faster than expected, suggesting a baseline 10 to 15 year lifespan. This is when the technical life of most turbines crunch to halt, and become unprofitable to continue. Rising maintenance costs makes them uneconomical. The study found the average UK wind farm's ability to meet electricity demand had fallen by a third after around 10 years, leading to a conclusion that many are fully uneconomic to run after only 12 years. While the wind industry generally forecasts a 25-year lifespan, the data reveals a different reality about the viability of keeping them spinning so long. Many companies now 'repower' (replace old turbines with new ones) long before the 25-year target to maximise subsidies and output. This often ends the lifespan of the original hardware much sooner. The wind farm study is published by the 'Renewable Energy Foundation on the Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark, 2012'.

@adriawildlife Great to hear Black Grouse are doing okay. Everything else is suffering without intervention to manage shelter and nesting sites, through food sources and predator control Why reintroduce species, locally extinct for centuries, when we can't look after what we have got now?

@colinnwm They're glacial relicts along with Ptarmigan, Black Grouse & Hazel Grouse. BG still present in '000s but the others in steep decline. CC doing better in bits of Slovenia

Only 22 males of Capercaillie located in surveys at leks in Friuli Venezia Giulia (NE 🇮🇹) in 2025. Many reasons, incl. forestry management style, loss of clearings, disturbance, predator increases (rabies eliminated), warm, snowless winters. Prob. doomed. studionord.news/video-gallo-ce…

John Swinney - “I will happily hold court with a man in the wrong body from a far off continent who has no right to be a parliamentary representative but I point blank refuse to engage with a man born in a tenement in Greenock who became a self made multi-millionaire”

@DeeWardRottal @BenGoldsmith Your Merlin app must be working overtime identifying all those birds, Dee!

Good morning @BenGoldsmith from the barren and silent wastelands of Scotland. Have a good day.

@JohnCleese A shudder ran down the Cabinet table, looking for a spine to occupy.

Forgive me, but... ...Isn't this what the country wants ?