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David Fickling
@davidfickling
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
This is pretty astonishing. BBC projects that the Liberals/Green/Left/Social Democrats will have 359 seats in EU parliament, vs 358 seats in the previous one.

So much for the wave of change!
The populists-nationalists seem to have gained ~35 seats but overall the non-centrist right is up by only about 19, probably in large part driven by the collapse of the UK Conservatives
Clearly the main centre-left and centre-right factions have weakened a lot. But this is a *party political* problem, so why do we report it as a change in the hearts and minds of voters? What's amazing to me is how consistent broad political opinion looks, in both directions.
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
It doesn't get enough attention outside the energy world, but Shell now has a markedly different model to the other oil majors -- and it's not just or even *mainly* about gas
There's still a lot of ballyhoo about Shell's pivot to gas since the BG takeover etc but iirc the oil/gas mix in its production isn't that much different from eg. Exxon.

The much more interesting thing is how the whole company has been turned into a cash cow.
Their reserve replacement ratio is the lowest among oil majors, ~50%. If you want your oil reserves to sustainably continue current output rates you need 100% minimum reserve replacement.
Read 10 tweets
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
Shocked they missed the opportunity to really hammer home a Ferris Bueller reference here
In real life the economics teacher was played by Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein who had this response to the Mueller report: spectator.org/madness-of-the…
Also the guy who inspired Ferris Bueller himself works at the law firm that handled Trump's response to Mueller and is a potential nominee for the Southern District of New York bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Read 3 tweets
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David Fickling
@davidfickling
Is anyone looking at the millions of tons of #RareEarths sitting untapped inside phosphogypsum deposits scattered all over central Florida?
This paper estimates that they're at 0.04%-1% concentration and there's 1bn tons of deposits, which translates to 400,000 tons to 10m tons of rare earths or up to a century's worth of global demand at current rates.

osti.gov/pages/servlets…
I say "deposits", really I mean waste/tailings.

I presume the difficulty of safe extraction is why no one is interested in this, but ... if you're really worried that F-35s won't be able to fly because of a rare earths import ban, it's worth thinking about.
Read 3 tweets

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Yascha Mounk
@Yascha_Mounk
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ PVV has long commanded an important share of the vote. Now, a new far-right populist movement, Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Freedom, is overtaking it.

Baudet will likely come in second. Together, he and Wilders will have 20%-25% of the vote.

9/n
In Austria, the far-right FPÖ may only come in third.

But together with the formerly center-right ÖVP, which has since thoroughly "populistified," and failed to stand up to the FPÖ in coalition, the current government will probably get over 50%.
And of course will perform strongly in plenty of other countries, too.

From Spain, Vox will enter the parliament for first time. In Germany, the AfD will increase its share of the vote. In many smaller Central European countries, populists will dominate.

11/n
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Ian56
@Ian56789
The #BBC are Neoliberal Fascists who work for the Neoliberal Establishment, the Bankers, the international Oligarchs & Big Money interests.

The BBC are big supporters of the EU and so is Goldman Sachs.

They are the ENEMY of you and me.

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The ONLY difference between North Korea propaganda & UK Establishment's propaganda channel the #BBC, is that Brits are forced to pay to watch the propaganda & lies.

BBC & North Korea propaganda fulfill exactly the SAME purpose Domestic Control

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The #BBC is a combination of George Orwell's "Ministry of Truth" & Goebbels "Ministry of Propaganda".

No Authoritarian Regime ever had so much success in deceiving its own people as the UK does with the #BBC
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MissMAGA2016
@MissMaga2016
Today, the left & #Democrats/COMMUNISTS protested IN FAVOR OF #MADURO in Washington, DC.

In FAVOR OF the #Venezuela DICTATOR, Maduro.

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J.N. PAQUET ✒
@jnpaquet
How @DailyMailUK twisted the results of @Survation poll and created a nice little frontpage to support Theresa May with some beautiful YESes in red and some lovely supporting words, even though the front page does not actually reflects the results of the poll...
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Large margin 14% to support a #PeoplesVote!
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Christophe Barraud🛢
@C_Barraud
🇨🇳 #CHINA Q3 GDP Y/Y: 6.5% V 6.6%E (slowest growth since Q1 2009)
*NBS spokesman Mao Shengyong said that the international situation was bringing “downward pressure” on China.
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🇺🇸🇨🇳🇪🇺 In a volley of filings, the EU, #China and the U.S. this week escalated disputes over new U.S. metals tariffs, the European response to those levies, and Chinese intellectual property practices - Bloomberg
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Matthew Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
The latest election in Europe:
Sweden

A thread
On Sunday, Swedes go to the polls in the latest election in Europe. Let's first put the election in wider context
Some pundits & journalists during the 'Macron Spring' in 2017 tried to argue that populism had peaked and that, among others, people like me were wrong. Let's take a look at what's happened since ...
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