Oh dear, another groaning, and colonialism is fun, you should try it some time ...

The energy wars are heating up as a fine Xmas season distraction, as the mutton Dutton and his cohorts, including the beefy wind-farm hating boofhead based in Goulburn, intended, with Shane Wright and Mike Foley presenting this as an EXCLUSIVE in the Nine rags, Dutton says nuclear will cost $331 billion. Chalmers adds $4 trillion to that (soft paywall).

The pond rarely strays into Nine rag turf, but this opening salvo will give an idea of this take on the fuss:

A nuclear Australia would grow 12 per cent slower every year until 2050, according to government analysis of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s power plan, with economists warning that less energy for the country will lead to a smaller economy.
The long-awaited economic costings of Dutton’s nuclear energy policy, released last week, revealed the opposition is banking on an electricity grid that ends up 40 per cent smaller by 2050 than the government’s plan, which predicts the country to be almost entirely powered by renewables.
Government figures revealed to this masthead project that under Labor’s energy plan the economy would grow at 2.12 per cent a year. But under the opposition’s plan for a smaller grid, the figures state the economy would grow at 1.89 per cent a year.
That equates to a 12 per cent difference in annual economic growth, compounding each year.
The government has not provided this masthead with the analysis used to produce these figures.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, while not revealing his expectation of how large the economy will be, said the cost to Australia under the opposition’s proposal would equate to $4 trillion by 2050.
“What these characters are proposing is a recipe for less growth in a smaller economy, with less energy at higher prices,” Chalmers said, referring to CSIRO findings from earlier this month that nuclear energy is at least 50 per cent more expensive than renewables.
“It means an economy which is $294 billion smaller by 2050 and the lost output between now and then would be about $4 trillion.”

This provided an opportunity for the beefy boofhead to stride on to the scene and declare it all absolute and utter nonsense. You know because ...

Meanwhile, the Graudian was hosting Simon Holmes à Court with The Coalition’s nuclear energy plan takes a sharp turn away from a cheaper, cleaner future. His argument could be summarised by the lede: After 22 failed energy policies, the Coalition is being guided by a roadmap to higher bills and higher emissions.

Over at The Conversation, it was possible to read John Quiggin, More coal and gas, less renewables: what a nuclear power plan for Australia would really mean. 

Or you could head to the ABC for Joanna Lauder and Tim Leslie and What can we actually learn from the Coalition's power modelling, with many graphs, enough to gladden the heart of an ABC finance report, and featuring several unicorns, including CCS and SMRs:

CCS? SMRs?

Not helping Aunty, and naturally the reptiles are hell to leather in the opposite camp, with Dame Groan leading the charge this day with an epic groaning in favour of nuking the country to save the planet.

This involves many bizarre contortions on previous stances, and here a little pre-history might be handy. Being lazy, the pond wanted a reminder that Dame Groan was in fact a climate science denialist.

Too lazy to burrow back through the pond itself, the pond did a little digging and came across this in Reneweconomy, Economist Judith Sloan turned her arrows to the new head of the National Farmers Federation, Fiona Simson, who in an interview with The Guardian last week dared to admit that she took climate change seriously:

In a piece titled “You’re fashionable Fiona, but get a grip on the facts,” Sloan said she was appalled that the NFF should decide it should act on climate change.
“My advice to the NFF and Simson is to stick to your knitting,” Sloan wrote. “Getting into bed with climate change enthusiasts is a quick route to the introduction of a raft of new policies that will damage the farming community.”
Farmers are tough, she said, and would deal with any changing weather patterns, just like they always had. “It’s time the NFF began to stand up for the farmers rather than take fashionable positions on topics that are poorly understood by its leadership.” And she threw the NEG in for good measure.

There were other examples, such as Judith Sloan’s nonsense attack on Victoria’s renewable energy scheme

Over at Independent Australia, in The Australian's continued support of climate change denialism, you could find Dame Groan being given an honourable mention - honourable strictly in the sense of the reptile use of the term:

The Australian was at it again on Saturday with an article by Judith Sloan in which she quoted Richard Lindzen as 'a leading figure in climate science' in order to make 'an important point'.
But Lindzen is a contrarian who angered climate scientists by writing to President Trump, urging him to withdraw from the UN Climate Convention.
Since 2013, Lindzen has received $25,000 a year from the Cato Institute, founded in part by the billionaire Koch brothers, and $30,000 from Peabody Coal for testimony in legal proceedings.

And so to one piece of Dame Groan pre-history in full, published not so long ago on 3rd July 2018, under the header You’re fashionable Fiona, but get a grip on the facts, NFF boss Fiona Simson is onside with Josh Frydenberg’s NEG but what about the interests of farmers?

It began with a snap featuring the naughty Fiona Simson of the lost 'p', President of the National Farmers' Federation. Picture: Adam Taylor:

Then Dame Groan went at her in full climate science denialist mode. The pond apologises for this lengthy bout of pre-history, but it reveals much about Dame Groan and her record of climate denialist groaning:

Last week, Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg invited several carefully ­selected players from the energy sector to Canberra to lend support to the national energy guarantee. His aim, no doubt, was to try to change the minds of some of the doubters in the partyroom.
We can dismiss the invited representatives from emissions-intensive trade-exposed operations — the so-called
EITEs — because they are exempt from the emissions reduction target and most of them don’t really care about the NEG. As long as their exemptions remain intact, they will be happy.
Then there are the industry ­associations, some of which are ­really just a front for the three big energy companies — the so-called gentailers because they own and operate generators as well as ­retailing businesses. The NEG is just about all these gentailers could ask for and will, in all likelihood, lead to even greater market concentration. So what’s not to love?
But then we had the National Farmers Federation, represented by Fiona Simson, who came to Canberra to offer up her organisation’s support for the NEG. Once upon a time, the NFF was a force for good when it came to public policy. The NFF was one of the driving forces behind lowering tariffs and other protective devices, as well as arguing for industrial relations reform. These days the NFF is unrecognisable, failing in its primary role to stand up for farmers and the agricultural sector.
This is what Simson had to say about the NEG. “I think the NEG for us is some sort of ETS (emissions trading scheme) potentially. It certainly talks about carbon and putting a value on that. There will be a price on that and there we go.” There we go, indeed.
By the way, Fiona, the one ­aspect of the NEG that could be useful for farmers is the inclusion of carbon offsets, both local and international. The market for Australian carbon credit units is developing. Allowing retailers to meet their emission reduction targets under the NEG by purchasing these credits would be cheap and effective, while providing useful cashflows for some farmers.
But Frydenberg is ruling out the use of offsets, partly because he fears the NEG would look very like a cap-and-trade scheme. He would prefer a more expensive cap-with-no-trade scheme — go figure. (By the way, without the use of offsets, the ongoing subsidies for local renewable energy under the NEG are much higher.)
If Simson had her wits about her, she would be lobbying very hard for offsets to be included in the NEG. But my guess is she doesn’t fully understand the ­details of the policy.
If that’s not bad enough, Simson’s view is that “dissenters need to get out of the road of settlement. Consensus needs to be reached … the key to unwinding the destruction (of the last decade) is policy certainty.”
In Simson’s world, farmers need to get behind climate change. “I think farm representation and farmers generally have come quite a long way in their attitude to climate, climate change and climate variability and dealing with all of these things, and accepting some of the facts behind the science.”
What she doesn’t seem to ­realise is that anything that ­Australia does to reduce its emissions is meaningless in terms of ­affecting global climate trends. This point at least has been conceded by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. She also is ignoring the immediate hardships that many farmers face through electricity prices, in some cases imperilling the profitability of their operations. For instance, many farmers who are reliant on irrigation that requires pumping are feeling the pinch. Ditto dairy farmers and those who need large cool rooms.
Having demonstrated her lack of insight into energy policy while endorsing the NEG, she now ­potentially imposes a much greater risk on the farming community by allowing environmentalists and green groups to dictate the terms on which agriculture (and aquaculture) is carried out in this country.
For the greenies, it is a magnificent concurrence — the head of the NFF says she is all aboard the climate change bandwagon, so she should have no objection to the size and scope of agricultural ­activities being compulsorily ­restricted to deal with the challenge of climate change.
She should be under no illusion that these groups are essentially against agriculture. They want to restrict the size of livestock herds, to limit broadacre farming, to slash the volumes of water available for irrigation, to severely restrict land clearing and to shut down aquaculture. We’d all be vegetarian or vegan if some environmental zealots were to have their way.
There are clear threats to the farming community from the ­demand that the agriculture sector meets our Paris climate agreement emissions reduction target — agriculture generates an estimated 13 per cent of Australia’s emissions. As noted by The Australian’s environment editor, Graham Lloyd, claims are being made that the “Australian cattle, sheep and pig herds will need to be cut by ­millions of animals to meet agriculture’s share of the cut to carbon dioxide emissions”. The livestock sector accounts for 70 per cent of emissions from agriculture, with beef cattle production making the largest single contribution.
And just to show that the government is on to this issue, one of the suggestions in a recent government paper is to reduce the overall size of the livestock herds. If the NFF were really on its game, it wouldn’t be wasting time supporting the NEG but, rather, dealing with these external dangers to farmers’ livelihoods.
Let’s face it, with the suspension of live sheep exports from Western Australia, the future of sheep farmers in that part of the country is now bleak, which no doubt will be a source of considerable pleasure for environmental groups.
Something you also may not know is that oysters, clams and mussels are big belchers of ­emissions. A study from Cardiff and Stockholm universities has shown that they produce greenhouse gases on a par with herds of cattle. From the bacteria in their guts, these ocean creatures produce large amounts of methane and nitrous oxide.
Environmental groups have always been opposed to aquaculture — witness Tasmania’s salmon farming — now here’s another excuse to restrict what is a very promising economic activity.
My advice to the NFF and Simson is to stick to your knitting. Getting into bed with climate change enthusiasts is a quick route to the introduction of a raft of new policies that will damage the farming community.
Most farmers are hard-nosed characters who will adapt to changing weather patterns as they always have. It’s time the NFF began to stand up for the farmers rather than take fashionable positions on topics that are poorly understood by its leadership. The NEG is the prime example. 

Fast forward six years, and here we are today, with Dame Groan suddenly keen to nuke the country to save the planet. 

You might say that she's taken up knitting and got into bed with climate change enthusiasts and accepted that the weather isn't the climate, or you might think she's still taking fashionable positions on topics that are poorly understood by the leadership mob in the lizard Oz hive mind.

Whatever, Anti-nuclear Bowen is stuck in a fantasy world of his own, The Energy Minister simply refuses to acknowledge what’s going on in virtually every developed economy around the world and some developing ones too.

As usual, as the reptiles are wont to do these days, it began with a snap of Satan's little helper, Chris Bowen holds a press conference in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Holding a press conference and gesticulating is a major thought crime, ably illustrated, and it set Dame Groan off ...

Picture the scene. It’s a “town and gown” event being held at the University of Chicago. An entrepreneurial businessman approaches a well-known economics professor. He outlines his business proposition, describing the market, the potential demand, the technical requirements, the costs. The professor’s response is simple: if it’s such a good idea, it would already exist.
Of course, the story is apocryphal, but the message is clear: compelling propositions become reality because they stack up. When it comes to nuclear energy, this is precisely what has happened in 32 economies, with more jumping on board each year. These countries are investing or facilitating investment in nuclear energy because it makes perfect economic and strategic sense.

Picture the scene. Dame Groan hunched over a keyboard, wondering how she could square off her lecture to Fiona with her current desire to blather about perfect economic and strategic sense. Perhaps in a genteel dressing gown. Then read on:

The one person who doesn’t seem to see the logic of this is Chris Bowen, our Climate Change and Energy Minister. He would rather spend his time playing a never-ending game of puerile political football rather than focusing on the best means of ensuring reliable and affordable energy with a minimal carbon footprint. He simply refuses to acknowledge what is going on in virtually every developed economy around the world and some developing ones too.
He is caught in a time warp of yesterday’s thinking, spouting the outdated tropes about nuclear being unsafe, expensive and slow. The fact that Labor politicians released pictures of three-eyed fish points to the lack of substance of Labor’s objections to nuclear as one source of energy for this country.
The reality is that nuclear is moving very quickly overseas. Even climate fanatic Ed Miliband, the UK Energy Secretary, has stated that nuclear power will be an essential part of the government’s net-zero plans. The government has called for private companies to participate in the process, with the government willing to help.

Yes, the entire world is going nuke, and the mango Mussolini is a devout believer in climate science, and never no mind, we're on a roll here, though the pond is forced to wonder why, when the world might be better off tending to its knitting, and talking about the weather acting kinda funny these days.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with their favourite image of fuming towers, in an AV distraction, The Federal government has criticised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear ambition. They claimed households with solar panels would be the biggest losers. The opposition is defending its plan, despite Energy Minister Chris Bowen raising multiple concerns.

Dame Groan loves the idea of towers fuming in the dawn light, and became extremely agitated:

“My message is clear: if you want to build a nuclear reactor in Britain, my door is open. On funding, we are exploring how the government can help private developers bring advanced nuclear projects to market. On planning, we are consulting on a new nuclear planning framework and siting policy next year.” Can you imagine Bowen uttering those same sentences?
In the US, the nuclear industry is progressing rapidly, as large energy users such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google sign private purchasing arrangements with developers of small modular reactors to secure power for their energy-hungry data and AI centres. The Gates’s pilot project in Wyoming, using a novel version of nuclear power, has begun construction.
Around the world, new nuclear plants are being built and old ones are being refurbished. There is even a nuclear power plant being built in Egypt, with Russian technology and Russian funding.
And let’s not forget here the group of countries at the recent climate COPs that have committed to tripling the capacity of nuclear generation in their countries by 2050 – 31 this year. Australia is increasingly looking like an irrelevant wallflower on the world stage of climate action.
It is also why the cost generation estimates put out by the CSIRO must look an ill-conceived and befuddled mess to an outside observer. Apart from the obvious question of why a government-funded scientific organisation is even undertaking such an exercise – estimating costs is an exercise for economists, accountants and engineers, not scientists – the guesses are simply irrelevant. The thing that really matters is system-wide costs. 

Perhaps the CSIRO should stick to their knitting and come and go idly talking of how the weather is acting kinda funny these days.

Then the reptiles slipped in a gigantic snap of their hero, Peter Dutton’s approach to energy integrates zero-emissions nuclear energy alongside renewables and gas. Picture: News Corp

Gas? He's still proposing fossil fuels as part of his comprehensive solution to everything? Naturally Dame Groan was fully on board ...

Note here also the embarrassing result of the latest iteration of this dubious exercise – that coal-fired power is the cheapest means of generation, something the average person in the street probably appreciates. It’s something the Chinese and Indians also fully understand.
The CSIRO nuclear results remain completely unconvincing, particularly those related to small modular nuclear reactors. It is true that the utilisation rate of nuclear plants is very important to the outcome on unit prices. But to assume a low rate of utilisation, as the CSIRO does, is to skew the data towards relatively high costs.
The CSIRO has now conceded nuclear power plants last longer than 30 years – that was the assumption last year. But the methodology employed means there is no noticeable difference in the costs of a plant that lasts 60 years rather than 30 years. The reality on the ground is that even after considering refurbishment and maintenance costs, the last several decades of a nuclear power plant generates very low capital as well as operating costs.
One of the key benefits of having several nuclear plants in Australia is the saving on the renewable energy overbuild as well as the extremely expensive and relatively under-utilised infrastructure needed to connect the intermittent power to the grid. Network costs currently are the largest component of electricity prices; a future with nuclear would constrain their costs relatively to reliance on renewable energy.
It will never make economic sense to build transmission lines at a cost of many billions of dollars for electricity to flow only a quarter of the time, say, and at somewhat unpredictable times. But this is what the Bowen plan involves. Once that transmission line is certified as a “regulated” asset, the costs are passed on to consumers essentially for ever. This aspect of the government’s strategy has been under-reported. 

Others have discussed the transmission lines furphy and the notion that it's simply a matter of hooking up a nuke plant. Satan's little helper pointed this out in the Graudian:

The energy minister also pointed to the Coalition’s accusation that the government would “over-build” infrastructure and its claim that nuclear power would need fewer transmission lines.
“If they are to be taken seriously, they need to outline exactly what transmission lines they would cancel,” Bowen said.

At this point the reptiles featured another example of Satan's little helper, Climate Change and Energy Minster Chris Bowen has responded to Peter Dutton’s announcement of the Coalition’s nuclear plan costings. Mr Bowen outlines what he believes are the “three fatal errors” so far in the Opposition's nuclear announcement. “Peter Dutton is a huge risk – a huge risk to Australia’s energy system and a huge risk to Australia.”

That inspired a final burst from the knitting-adjacent Dame Groan:

The fact is that new transmission lines are causing all sorts of headaches in addition to the legitimate objections of rural and regional folk to the unwelcome intrusion on the landscape. The cost of constructing new transmission lines has blown out dramatically. Just take the completely unjustified CopperString transmission line linking Mount Isa to Townsville. Only last year, the Queensland Labor government estimated the cost at $1.5bn; it is now estimated to cost at least $9bn.
No doubt there is a lot of water to go under the bridge when it comes to the nuclear-plus-renewables versus renewables-plus-storage debate. Sadly, it won’t be a sensible debate because Labor is intent on politicising the issues rather than objectively weighing up the costs and benefits.
Labor has dug itself into a hole that may end up costing the country dearly. Bowen has finally realised that his plan can only work with gas as a critical backup. But having demonised gas for so long – and let’s not even talk about the behaviour of the Victorian and NSW governments here – there is now a shortage of gas for domestic purposes. We face the bizarre prospect of importing LNG, with all its attendant costs, to shore up the electricity grid as well as supply gas to the domestic market.
The end result is electricity prices that are highly correlated with the gas price, with gas as the marginal supplier. Having acres of rooftop solar makes no effective difference to this outcome and creates problems for grid stability.
Hopefully, there will be some sensible debate in the New Year. If Bowen is so convinced nuclear has no future in the country – well, apart from ANSTO and AUKUS – then he should commit to lifting the bans because, in his mind, it would make no difference. We could then assess whether there is any real interest in building a nuclear power industry in this country.

Or perhaps we could assess whether the real future is in knitting, and endless talk about how the weather has been acting kinda funny of late.

And while apologising for the length of this Groan-adjacent, knitting-fuelled distraction, the pond must insist on a bonus ...

Keen eyes will note that early this morning Nige was at the top of the far right reptile world ma ...

Again a little placing of the prof in the firmament might help, with Don in publisher row over “cancelled” colonialism book.

Professor Nigel Biggar has accused Bloomsbury Publishing of cancelling his book on colonialism, in which he suggests that the British Empire has been overly criticised. Bloomsbury, a London-based publishing house, has opted to pay off Biggar rather than publish his book despite initially describing it as a work of ‘major importance’. 

Poor prof, but then:

Biggar’s work on rehabilitating the empire is controversial and has been criticised by other academics, particularly in light of an increased emphasis on anti- colonialism within academia and the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ debate. Pratinav Anil, lecturer in History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, wrote The Times: “Biggar makes a good Samaritan of a gold digger. His Cecil Rhodes is an unrecognizable reformer, an altruist among entrepreneurs, rescuing African men from a ‘life of sloth’ and inebriation, donating land to natives, hammering out an interracial peace. This is hard to square with the facts of his life.’ 

And again:

Biggar has previously been criticised for his ‘Ethics and Empire’ project, starting in 2017, at the McDonald Centre at the University of Oxford. Its aim was developing ‘a nuanced and historically intelligent Christian ethic of empire’. Jon Wilson, Professor in Modern History at King’s College London, responded in his blog: “Developing a ‘Christian ethics of empire’ is not an intellectually sound, let alone an academically robust, endeavour – it is a political project much as an ‘Islamic’ or ‘Hindu’ ethics of empire might be.” 
In this collective statement Wilson further stated that ‘as scholars of empire and colonialism, we are disappointed that Oxford is prepared to support such a project.’ 

In short, perfect material for the lizard Oz, and so Fake history is flourishing across the West. Just consider these three cases, Throughout the English-speaking world elites are falling over themselves to believe the very worst of their own countries. Take these three cases from Canada, Britain and Australia.

Naturally the reptiles began with an illustration of an example of the local malaise, Bruce Pascoe reads his book Dark Emu to students. Picture: News Corp, a favourite reptile target in recent times:

You immediately what sort of world you're entering when an Oxford don opens by blathering about 'leets. It's the same sort of 'leet prof that would blather about "fake history", as if that was an acceptable variation on "fake news":

Throughout the English-speaking world elites are falling over themselves to believe the very worst of their own countries.
Let’s consider Canada. In May 2021 an Indian band in Kamloops, British Columbia claimed ground-penetrating radar had discovered “soil disturbances” that evidenced unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 “missing children” in land associated with an Indian Residential School.
The media quickly sexed up the story into one of “mass graves”, with all its connotation of murderous atrocity. On May 30 the Toronto Globe and Mail published an article under the title “The discovery of a mass gravesite at a former residential school in Kamloops is just the tip of the iceberg”. In it, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, professor of law at the University of British Columbia, wrote: “It is horrific. But it is not shocking. In fact, it is the opposite – a too-common unearthing of the legacy, and enduring reality, of colonialism in Canada.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered Canadian flags to be flown at half-mast on all federal buildings to honour the murdered children. Because the Kamloops school had been run by a Roman Catholic religious order, some zealous citizens took to burning and vandalising churches, 85 of them to date. The dreadful tale was eagerly broadcast worldwide by Al Jazeera.
Yet, more than three years later, not a single set of remains of a murdered Indian child in an unmarked grave has been found either in Kamloops or elsewhere in Canada. Indeed, not a single attempt to disinter an alleged grave has been made. 

Strange, the pond could have sworn it read an Ian Austen story in the NY Times, updated March 2022,  How Thousands of Indigenous Children Vanished in Canada, The discovery of the remains of hundreds of children at the sites of defunct schools in British Columbia and southern Saskatchewan has rekindled discussion of a sinister time in Canada’s history. (paywall)

OTTAWA — Across Canada, many Indigenous communities are beginning the lengthy process of identifying unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools and investigating the deaths of children who attended the schools, where generations were abused and sometimes died.
The remains of more than 1,000 people, mostly children, have been discovered on the grounds of three former residential schools in two Canadian provinces since May.  
In late June, the remains of 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were discovered at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said.
The discovery, the largest one to date, came less than a month after the remains of 200 people, mostly children, were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia. In July, the  Penelakut Tribe in British Columbia said it had uncovered about 160 undocumented and unmarked graves.
The federal government and several provinces have earmarked millions of dollars for Indigenous communities to search for remains, a process that will likely take years to complete.
These schools were part of a system that took Indigenous children from their families over a period of about 113 years and forced them to live in boarding schools, where they were prohibited from speaking their languages.
This summer’s burial discoveries have given new impetus to the nation’s debate on how to atone for its history of exploiting Indigenous people. Many are asking how so many children could have wound up in those burial spaces.“For many Canadians and for people around the world, these recent recoveries of our children — buried nameless, unmarked, lost and without ceremony are shocking, and unbelievable,” said RoseAnne Archibald, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the country’s largest Indigenous organization, in a July media release. “Not for us, we’ve always known,.”

And so on and on, and for those not wanting to intrude on a paywall, The Conversation featured We fact-checked residential school denialists and debunked their 'mass grave hoax' theory.

For no particular reason, the reptiles decided to rub it in with an "allegedly", in Red dresses along the highway signifies the children who allegedly died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Then it was back to the 'leet Oxford don, merrily blathering on ...

Judging by the evidence collected by Chris Champion and Tom Flanagan in their best-selling book, Grave Error: How the Media Misled us (and the Truth about the Residential Schools), it looks increasingly probable that the Kamloops story, and the ones that followed it, are myths.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the Church of England has committed itself to pour an initial £100m ($198.4m) of its assets into an investment fund for “black-led” businesses around the world. This was made “to address … past wrongs” in response to the discovery that the Queen Anne’s Bounty, a forerunner of the church’s endowment, had “links” with African chattel enslavement.
A document entitled Healing, Repair and Justice explains. “The immense wealth accrued by the church … has always been interwoven with the history of African chattel enslavement,” it tells us. “African chattel enslavement was central to the growth of the British economy of the 18th and 19th centuries and the nation’s wealth thereafter … The cruelty of a multinational white establishment … has continuing toxic consequences resulting from the denial of equal access to healthcare, education, employment, justice, and capital.” Every one of these claims, however, is either dubious or false. The Queen Anne’s Bounty was hardly involved in the evil of slave trading at all. Most economic historians reckon the contribution of slave trading and slavery to Britain’s economic development as somewhere between marginal and modest. 

Of course Nige, busy making plans, is very keen on the notion that colonialism was and is a jolly good thing, and it's true that things have worked out splendidly in places such as Africa, South America and the middle east, and the pond hates to lower the delusional tone by including the reptiles' snap of a truly dreadful man...Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Picture: AFP

A fair idea of the prof's level can be gauged by the opening line in the next gobbet ...

Slavery was perpetrated on black Africans by other black Africans long before it was perpetrated by white Europeans. And between abolition in 1834 and the present day multiple causes have intervened to complicate and diminish the effects of slavery.

Yeah, nah, nah, they did it too, and anyway we stopped doing it, in the end, and anyway, we turned them into butlers and maids and such like, and they were ever so jolly grateful too, and anyway didn't the bible approve of slavery?, so what's wrong with having the odd slave or three?:

Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. 1 Corinthians 7:21-22
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ. Ephesians 6:5
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God. Colossians 3:22
Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven. Colossians 4:1
Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise ... he is proud, knowing nothing.... From such withdraw thyself. 1 Timothy 6:1-5
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God. Titus 2:9-10
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. 1 Peter 2:18

At this point came a rather unfortunate reference, a welling of a Welby:

Consonant with his church’s policy, then archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby preached a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral, Zanzibar on May 12, in which he criticised Christian missionaries for treating Africans as inferior and confessed that “we (British) must repent and look at what we did in Zanzibar”.
That is odd, since what the British did in Zanzibar during the second half of the 19th century was to force the sultan to end the slave trade. Indeed, the cathedral in which the archbishop was preaching was built over the former slave market.
And here’s what pioneering missionary David Livingstone wrote about black Africans in 1871: “I have no prejudice against (the Africans’) colour; indeed, anyone who lives long among them forgets that they are black and feels that they are just fellow men …. If a comparison were instituted, and Manyuema, taken at random, placed opposite say members of the Anthropological Society of London, clad like them in kilts of grass cloth, I should like to take my place among the Manyuema, on the principle of preferring the company of my betters.”
Australia’s equivalent is the extraordinary career of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu. Published in 2014, this argues that Aboriginal people, far from being primitive nomads, developed the first egalitarian society, invented democratic government, eschewed “imperial warfare”, pioneered complex fishing technology, and were sophisticated agriculturalists. Such was the morally superior civilisation that white colonisers trashed in their greed, racist contempt and relentless violence.

The reptiles compounded the unfortunate reference with an unfortunate snap of a man in a frock, not that there's anything wrong with men who love to wear frocks, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Picture: AFP, at least if they're honest about their desire to do dress-ups:

Oh dear ...Justin Welby apologises 'for the hurt' caused by farewell Lords speech.

He couldn't even piss off gracefully, which isn't to reckon in all the damage done by his egregious behaviour before he finally made his inept departure:

The archbishop of Canterbury has apologised after being accused of making lighthearted comments about his resignation over serious safeguarding failures in the Church of England.
In his final speech in the House of Lords on Thursday, Justin Welby had referenced a 14th-century beheading, which prompted laughter from some peers, and suggested “if you pity anyone, pity my poor diary secretary” who had seen weeks and months of work “disappear in a puff of a resignation announcement”.
The speech was criticised by a bishop who said she was “deeply disturbed” by the language used, and by an abuse survivor who said it was “tone deaf”.
Welby announced last month he was resigning from his leading role in the church “in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse” after the Makin review.
The independent review concluded that John Smyth – thought to have been the most persistent serial abuser to be associated with the church – might have been brought to justice had Welby formally reported him to police in 2013.
On Friday, Welby said he would like to “apologise wholeheartedly for the hurt” caused by his farewell speech in the House of Lords, which was made during a debate on housing and homelessness.

It's pretty rich when you have to apologise for the apologetic manner of your departure, and Bruce Pascoe should feel proud to be a victim of Nige's assault:

Dark Emu was named Book of the Year and received the Indigenous Writers’ Prize in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. It has sold more than 360,000 copies and has been made the subject of an ABC documentary.
And yet, while enthusiastically praised for challenging conventional views about Aboriginal culture and popularising the topic, it has been widely criticised for being factually untrue. While not a professional academic, Peter O’Brien has forensically dismantled it in Bitter Harvest: The Illusion of Aboriginal Agriculture in Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, systematically exposing the many gaps between claim and evidence.
And in Farmers or Hunter Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate, eminent anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, while vigorously rejecting the description of Aboriginal culture as “primitive”, nevertheless dismiss Pascoe’s claims for Aboriginal agriculture and aquaculture, and expose his editing of primary sources to make them appear to support his thesis. Reviewers have described their book variously as “rigorously researched”, “masterful”, and “measured”.
So, prime ministers, archbishops, academics, editors and public broadcasters are all in the business of exaggerating the colonial sins of their own countries against noble (not-so-very) savages – from Vancouver to London to Sydney. Why?
The reasons are several, not least a well-meaning desire to raise respect for Indigenous cultures with a view to “healing” race relations. But that doesn’t explain the impatient brushing aside – even the aggressive suppression – of concerns about evidence and truth in the eager rush to irrational self-criticism.

Oh dear, the pond forgot one thing. The reptiles slipped in this snap, Silas Wolmby and Peter Sutton in 2012. Picture: Brian Cassey ...

... but the reptiles forgot to insert a snap of the prof himself, and yes, he's an aged, balding, white man, showing incipient signs of bitterness and terseness...

Why he almost might be the Malcolm Muggeridge for the new millennium:

Never heard of the original Muggers? Count yourself lucky ...

And with that thought lurking, see how the prof aspires to a level of Muggeridge offensiveness:

One plausible explanation is the operation of a degenerate Christian sensibility. For Christians, the paradoxical mark of the genuinely righteous person is a profound awareness of their own unrighteousness. The saint is distinguished as the one who knows more deeply than others just what a sinner he really is.
There’s considerable virtue in this, of course, for it tempers self-righteousness with compassion for fellow sinners, forbidding the righteous to cast the unrighteous beyond the human pale.
Yet, like all virtue, it’s vulnerable to vice. For it can degenerate from genuine humility into a perverse bid for supreme self-righteousness, which exaggerates one’s sins and broadcasts the display of repentance: holier-than-thou because more-sinful-than-thou.
In The Tyranny of Guilt, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner captures this when he writes of contemporary, post-imperial Europe (and, by extension, the West): “This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history.
“Since Freud we know that masochism is only a reversed sadism, a passion for domination turned against oneself. Europe is still messianic in a minor key … Barbarity is Europe’s great pride, which it acknowledges only in itself; it denies that others are barbarous, finding attenuating circumstances for them (which is a way of denying them all responsibility).”
In this display of virtue, the penitent hogs the stage: “By erecting lack of love for oneself into a leading principle, we lie to ourselves about ourselves and close ourselves to others … In Western self-hatred, the Other has no place. It is a narcissistic relationship in which the African, the Indian and Arab are brought in as extras.” Maybe Australia’s Aboriginal people, too.
Nigel Biggar is the regius professor emeritus of moral theology at the University of Oxford and author of the best-selling Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.

Oh just fuck off, and allow the pond to finish with a few cartoons celebrating peak Western civilisation in action ...