Mark Benzie

While the UK blocks it's ears and pretends its oil and gas resources aren't worth bothering with, Norway has just launched its latest licensing round with 70 new blocks in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea "The oil and gas industry is crucial for Norway and for Europe. The government is today announcing new exploration areas in the APA to further develop the petroleum sector, so that it can continue to create great value for the community, lay the foundation for good jobs throughout the country, ensure our common welfare and contribute to Europe's energy security and safety" says Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre Pity @ed_milband refuses to accept the same is true for the UK and @Keir_Starmer lets him do whatever he wants, regardless of the consequences @clairecoutinho @andrewbowie_mp regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/utl…

Tax for growth, drink for sobriety, eat cake for weight loss etc.

This Thursday the country will go to the polls to vote on the bin collections in Gaza.

Meanwhile, in a country where energy policy is not made by halfwits...

The forensic details of Starmer’s EU payments scandal are catastrophic. Brussels wants £1 billion annually based on a Swiss-style model: Switzerland pays €375 million per year to access the single market. Applying the GDP ratio between Switzerland and the UK produces the £1 billion figure Britain would pay. But here’s what makes this an obscene betrayal: Britain’s pre-Brexit net contribution was £8-9 billion per year. We’ve already paid over £44 billion in divorce bill settlements since 2020, with another £5.7 billion still owed. Those payments will continue until 2065 - yes, 2065 - at £95 million annually for decades. Now Starmer wants to add £1 billion per year on top, described by European diplomats as “pay to play”. And for what? Access without representation. Brussels has already made clear Britain will be “blocked from making any changes or amendments to the rules, making the UK an EU rule-taker”. We’ll be paying £1 billion yearly for the privilege of following laws we have zero say in shaping. Whether you voted leave or remain, surely at least both sides thought we’d STOP paying Brussels when Leave won. Instead, Starmer is negotiating to pay them forever. This is the biggest political con in modern British history.

Reports today that the Royal Navy — you know, the one that ruled the waves — now down to five frigates. Some of which already have commitments. So we cannot provide a carrier fleet for our aircraft carriers, who have their own problems. A national disgrace in which Tory, Labour and even the pathetic Lib Dems are complicit.

I agree 100%. I am and have always been very proud to be Scottish. That will never change. But I am not proud of what the SNP has done to Scotland (or Labour for that matter), what it has become and I fear we are now in relentless decline, in stark contradistinction to our glorious past. But the Scots have nobody to blame but themselves. Nobody forced this dire mediocrity on them. They voted for it. Again and again and again. Devolution has only made it worse. The politics and ambition of the kailyard.

Having sought the advice of Labour councillors on where he would be best placed to help their local election efforts Keir Starmer arrives in Armenia.

Top British attorney Natasha Hausdorff stunned the audience by completely destroying the Palestinian narrative about the conflict. The truth the world refuses to accept: Palestine never existed as a sovereign Arab state. The British Mandate of Palestine was a British territory taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire after 1917. Jews lived continuously in the Holy Land for centuries — long before modern Zionism. They were the majority in Jerusalem under Ottoman rule. Jews legally bought desert land (including the area that became Tel Aviv) and turned it into thriving cities and kibbutzim. Not a single Arab was displaced by these purchases. The Arabs rejected the 1947 UN partition plan and launched war to destroy the newborn Jewish state. They lost. During that war, Arab armies ordered local Arabs to flee so they could “push the Jews into the sea.” Many did exactly that. Israel has never committed genocide. It has fought for survival against repeated attempts to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s regime are the real obstacles to peace in the Middle East. The historical facts are clear. The propaganda is not. Share this. The truth needs to be heard.

‘Burnham and his team are understood to have lined up an "impressive" replacement for his role as Mayor of Greater Manchester.’

Leftists don’t understand the (very simple) concept of trade-offs. If you hike VAT on private schools, kids leave private schools and place more pressure on the state. If you implement rent controls, you reduce the supply and quality of housing. And if you increase the minimum wage, less businesses hire people. It’s difficult to debate them because they don’t operate in reality. They’re children.

The answers to many modern problems are simple but politically incorrect. So instead of solving anything, everybody pretends they don't know what's going on, and spend years misdiagnosing the issue, talking in circles, and wasting time.

✍️ 'Under this ham-fisted, economically illiterate Government, the incentive to employ people is disappearing fast and so too the motive to work' | Writes @benjaminmarlow Read the full column below 👇 telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…

3,800 jobs are to go from Premier Inn owner Whitbread, which has decided get rid of its chain of branded restaurants & sell & leaseback £1.5 bn of its hotels, after being hit by higher property taxes. The decisions were taken because of “significant cost increases in the form of business rates & national insurance,” said CEO Dominic Paul. "Compared to other countries around the world, business rate taxes are punitively high, & that affects companies’ ability to invest & grow,” he said. 1/2

Interesting that @Ed_Miliband deleted his tweet about it being immoral for oil companies to "profit from the crisis" Like the rest of this @UKLabour government, he wants the private sector to put capital at risk, for it to swallow any losses that arise, but to tax into oblivion any profits they make This asymmetry is a major factor in the reluctance of firms to invest in the UK, with some now claiming parts of Africa have a more stable fiscal and regulatory regime than we do Meanwhile Labour wonders why the economy is failing to grow agcc.co.uk/news-article/a…

British Jews have every right to be angry. If the Conservatives, Labour and Sadiq Khan had applied pressure on Mark Rowley to ban the weekly hate marches, then these antisemitic terror attacks wouldn’t keep happening. These enemies from within are now violently emboldened.

You’re the energy secretary. Yet you don’t seem to know that BP’s ‘excess profits’ come from its global oil trading division, which is not subject to UK ‘excess profits’ windfall tax, not from its North Sea activities, which are. Remarkable.

Price controls don’t work, have never worked, and will never work. It’s so depressing being governed by economic illiterates.

Ahhh. Rent controls. A regular leftie populist war cry. And a disaster everywhere they’re tried. So no surprise Rachel from Customer Complaints is up for it — to add to her long list of successes.

@CutMyTaxUK You had me until “according to the OBR”

Britain is poor country which most of its voters think is still rich. An amazing 55% of voters think Britain is richer than the US. "The upshot is a nation that spends well beyond its means. The debt-to-GDP ratio is set to hover above 95% for the next few years, & could surge to around 275% by the 2070s, according to the OBR. The UK spends almost twice as much on debt interest payments than on defence," writes @tejparikh90 in the FT 1/3