The Liib Dems have been in coalition with Labour in the Scottish government, before the SNP overtook both parties.

The Lib Dem member of the Welsh Assembly is currently a member of the Labour led Welsh government.

Brown offered the Lib Dems nothing in terms of policy, at a time when a coalition needed to be formed in the national interest. It is impossible to say what deal might have been made with Milliband, if the numbers in the 2015 Parliament had made a Lab/Lib Dem coalition possible.

The pesent situation is quite different. The Lib Dems would support a government of national unity led by almost any pro-remain Labour MP except for Corbyn and his factional allies. This is even more the case for dissident Conservatives and ex-Labour Independents.

The difficulty is that Corbyn has no realistic possibility of gathering a majority, but is well placed to prevent any other opposition MP from doing so. As a result nothing will be done, which will result in no new government before 31st October.

I've come to think about it more as financial engineering than normal engineering. Loosing on every sale, but making it up on volume. Fracking has a horizon of about three years till production craters yet none of it will make money unless oil prices rise significantly. And they just keep drilling. It's even less likely than Uber's flying robot taxis or anything Elon Musk keeps ranting about. For all I know the material resources of our society are handed out on the basis of winning the coke line race on Epstein's rape island.

But to come back to fracking in the KSA: No idea about the geology, but I'd assume the enormous amounts of water that would require might be prohibitive. And even if they go for it, because nothing matters I'd expect they'd need the IPO first. A fraud of the scale of fracking in the middle of the Saudi desert would need a lot of money boys on board to not be laughed out of the room.

I don't know, but it didn't make any money.
Former Shale Gas CEO Says Fracking Revolution Has Been 'A Disaster' For Drillers, Investors | naked capitalism

"The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions," Schlotterbeck, who left the helm of EQT last year, continued. "In fact, I'm not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change."

So who knows if it would help solve the KSA's problems.

Smoke from Burning Amazon Turns São Paulo Afternoon into Midnight

Humanity and the planet, an abusive marriage

Ever since the Malaysian airliner was shot out of the sky above the Ukraine in July 2014, Mark has done extremely well ... Obama/Trump - leash - dog.

Decision has been posponed ... after summer reces Mark Rutte must make a choice: offend the president of a great nation or comply. It would be a stake through the heart of any political career beyond the EU. Mark has ambition ... 😠 a crucial week.

Apparently the whole reason for Trump's visit to Denmark was to negotiate the Greenland purchase. Trip is off now.

Preview of coming attractions for Prime Minister Johnson.

Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time....

Is fracking a factor in the Middle East? It certainly rejuvenated the US oil and gas industry.

"'humankind must treat nature with care and show some ...'

< pick teeth, suck vigorously >

"'humility,' the chancellor stressed."

... NI gov requires domestication as does Tory gov. ...

The EJC issued a binding finding that the UK had the unilateral right to withdraw its A.50 notification until such time as Brexit had actually happened. After that A.49 applies, i.e. the UK would have to re-apply for membership like any other third party. Any UK government cold do so, in accordance with its own constitution - with or without "a democratic event" beforehand.

the oxford comma is so needed for these situations https://t.co/eNUBwgTUh9

— Christine Rousselle 💁🏻‍♀️ (@crousselle) August 19, 2019

Sort of...

Tusk is unimpressed.

The backstop is an insurance to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland unless and until an alternative is found. Those against the backstop and not proposing realistic alternatives in fact support reestablishing a border. Even if they do not admit it.

— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) 20 août 2019

Neither is Angela Merkel.

Merkel: No need to reopen Brexit deal to tackle Irish border - Politico.eu

The EU will consider "practical" solutions for the Irish border after Brexit, but this does not mean re-opening the Withdrawal Agreement, Angela Merkel said Tuesday.

"As soon as we have a practical arrangement where we can abide by the Good Friday Agreement and also define the borders of the [EU's] single market, we won't need the backstop," Merkel said at a press conference during a visit to Iceland.

"That means we will, of course, think about practical solutions, and I always say that if you want to find these solutions, you can do so in a short period of time," she said. "The European Union is ready to do this, but we don't need to open up the Withdrawal Agreement. It's a question of the future relationship."

Conservatism Brexit cannot fail, conservatism brexit is failed.

It's all setting up the "we would have made it work if it hadn't been for the dirty tricks of those foreign scoundrels in Brussels" nrrative so beloved of the Daily Heil.

The Gusrdian view on Boris Johnson and the EU he cannot be serious

A matter of timing ... the election wiil be planned shortly after 10/31 ...the clusterfuck wiil take months to develop ... shit happens. 😎

Google, Amazon, Facebook slam French digital tax as 'discriminatory'

The so-called GAFA companies appeared at a USTR hearing on possible countermeasures and were unanimous in their complaints, calling the tax a "troubling precedent."

CA Cohort "Subsidy" classic wtf. Wait for it ...

The proposed three percent tax on total annual revenues of companies that provide services to French consumers applies only to the largest tech companies, which are MOSTLY US-based.

'Double taxation', says Amazon

For Amazon, where France represents the second largest European market for e-commerce, the levy "creates a double taxation," said Peter Hiltz, director of tax planning for the online retail giant.

< wipes tears >

Some 58 percent of Amazon's sales are through ["]partner companies["], which stand to take the hit.

meeeeaning shareholders or subsidiaries or clients or customers or ...POC?

archived privatizing profits 101
Amazon Says French Clients to Bear Cost of France's New Digital Tax
a threat of new taxes [sic] on French wines [sic] ...
PLUS
IRS | US Multinational Enterprises (MNEs)
the implementation of transfer pricing ...

I know very little about the state of refining capacity, but the rational explanation that I got for the Yemen war and the IPO was that KSA had been faking the reserves data for a long time. A Saudi without money is a Saudi without friends.

Italian PM Conte denounces far-right Salvini as he resigns
Metternich is alive, ALIVE, I tell you!

That assumes Boris wins. If he is running an election campaign in the middle of a complete clusterfuck, he is pretty likely to get unceremoniously drummed out. The press can be as hacky as they want, if supermarkets are having trouble stocking shelves, that wont look good.

5, high

Team Biden (his own wife): my husband may be uninspiring and bad on the key moral challenge of our time that decides if millions live or die but, uh, polls, so... go out there and pull the lever for Joe you ungrateful dipshits

Me: can't wait to knock on doors for this man

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) August 19, 2019

"maybe you have to swallow a little bit"

< wipes tears >

Yes.

Although I've only read the excerpts, the main points of the theses studiously avoid discussion of intermediate goods and services (value, process, people) in hydrocarbon supply chains. The scenarios advanced rely on readers' limited knowledge of marketing--crude grades (value, volume), refining capacities (MNC, national, H or V combinations), and distillates' applications demand, for example. Every "player" identified began diversifying production in the chain, like, more than a decade ago.

Add to these considerations of value bilateral FX and newly weighted and volatile, yet acknowledged, SDR credit; costs of marginal extraction from remote fields; fossil fuel demand destruction. OPEC + Russia are manipulate supply to PROP UP prices (spot, forward).

MBS undermined long-term, remedial KSA capital planning, eg. The IPO wtf, by entering a "stupid" war with the Houthi and untold indenture to US-UK pirates. Doubtless, US-UK envoys punked his personality ahh weaknesses.

US claims to market leader (share, vol, val) are overstated, given demand (or lack of) for refined heavy crude (N.A. "tar sand" reservoirs) and LNG buyers. US market position is weak. That's why POTUS DOD predictably relies on military intervention to destroy competitors' P&E.

The "gordian knot" of geopolitical allegiance by petrodollar domination (hence GBP "currency manipulation") is quite tangled. But it doesn't make much sense anymore to draw conclusions from oblique G7 "virtue signaling."

To be clear, I see no sign that Netherlands has agreed to participate in a US led naval effort in the Gulf. Do you have evidence to the contrary?

I am not so certain that the USA and the UK will seriously challenge Chinese and Russian air and naval presence in the region. That horse may well have left the barn. More likely is a furious effort to assign blame, which will likely be doomed.

As I summarized, Saudi Arabia is in a bind. It needs guarantees of security China and Russia can provide, but also wants the $60/bbl oil price that continuation of the Trump 'maximum pressure' campaign is providing. So MBS is trying to ride two horses at once. That, IMO, means he is likely to allow events to determine the outcome. The establishment of Russian naval and air bases on the Iranian coast combined with the announced increase in presence of the Chinese navy in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf will be two major events. We will see if they occur on schedule as announced. Chinese naval escorts for Iranian oil tankers through the Straits and the Gulf will, if it happens, be the third event.