From the HUN and the Victoria Police to seven billion people and a plague of Perrottets on a dangerously over-populated pond ...

(Above: is free to kill just another, more polite way of saying, free to conduct political assassinations?)

Because the pond is lazy, it always picks the low hanging fruit from the very bottom media branches, but every so often, it's worth tipping the lid, doffing the hat, doing a nod (but damned if we'll curtsy) to someone who's done the hard yards.

The most excruciating, tedious yards imaginable, which is to trawl through the HUN files, and come still smiling and smelling of roses (imagine that, in a sewer), as Andrew Crook has managed in Get Baldy: Herald Sun's blatant campaign to knife Simon Overland.

Say no more, just read the piece if you want to know a little bit more about the perverted power wielded by the HUN in Melbourne, a gift of its big circulation, and its willingness to swing the axe with Murdochian vigour.

Well the pond's no defender of Simon Overland - come to think of it the pond's only policy position in relation to the Victoria police force is to avoid them whenever humanly possible - but the HUN's defence of its outrageous behaviour is beyond risible.

Media Watch had a go at the story too, and what a wonder it is. It reminded the pond of that old nursery rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked Melbourne house,

Reading a crooked paper which, like the cat, needed the occasional delouse ...

These days the HUN costs more than a crooked sixpence. And there are some who will look you straight in the eye and say that the Murdoch empire plays it straight in the antipodes ...

Meanwhile, moving right along, the evidence that the entire NSW state government is seeking permanent tenure as resident squawkers at the deep end of the pond strengthens as we celebrate Dominic Perrottet's singular effort The Earth needs more people. 7 billion isn't enough.

The header is so startlingly stupid that the pond felt compelled to read the rest of the piece, and sure enough Perrottet - the Liberal MP for Castle Hill and the third eldest of 13 children - is entirely serious.

Apart from lashing Paul Erlich and looking forward to the planet reaching ten billion people in the future, Perrottet produces extraordinary evidence that NSW is likely to be fucked under the current NSW government:

While population scaremongers see people simply as resource consumers, the fact is - given the right social conditions - an individual can produce a far greater amount than he or she consumes.

Uh huh. No doubt that's why Africa has been in jolly good shape in recent decades.

And the fact that humanity has not been able to survive, but grow and prosper despite increases in population is testament to human ingenuity and innovation.

Uh huh. You know, he really should get out in the world a little more. It's the pond's fiercest wish he goes to a place where food is in short supply and things are rough, and settles down for a month eating the scant meals many people endure.

You don't have to look far to discover that the FAO proposed that there were 925 million under or malnourished people in the world in 2010, a splendid drop from the 1023 million in 2009. (wiki here). And estimates suggest that some six million children die of hunger every year. (wiki here).

All the pond asks is that the children keep dying out of sight of Perrottet, so nothing interferes with his rich fantasy life, and he can continue to blather this kind of nonsense:

In this light, the birth of our seventh billionth person is not a cause for fear, but rather a joyous celebration of the human potential and spirit. Welcome to our planet.

Yeah, favoured seventh billion one, and while you're at it, pray to the absent god you're not one of the ones that starves to death.

At the turn of each century for the past few thousand years, you wouldn't be a wild-eyed prophet of doom, a cynic or a nay sayer to predict that the century to come would see wars, strife, droughts, famines, fires and floods, pestilence and other troubles. Because by the end of each century you'd have been proven right.

And if, as we get stuck into the twenty first century, you laid a bet that the usual routine of human misdeeds and human suffering might be a tad complicated by the population rising to perhaps ten billion (or even nine), including but not limited to matters related to climate science and pressure on resources and a desire to live unsustainable lifestyles in unsustainable ways, the pond would love to be around to watch you collect your winnings, and perhaps down a celebratory bottle of that drink that's all the rage in 2099, Antarctic champagne.

Instead we'll do the honourable thing, help out in relation to population pressures, and shuffle off to Buffalo.

Meanwhile, back in the la la land of the state Liberal party, it seems MPs are ever ready to embrace the giant Ponzi scheme of the Catholic church, which forbids contraceptive devices and encourages population growth, provided of course that said growth continues to grow the number of people available for tithing by the church, and never mind the fate of the planet or all those who sail on the good ship Gaia ...

In his maiden speech to the NSW state parliament, Mr. Perrottet said ...

I pay special tribute to Ian Campbell, who passed away earlier this week. Ian was a great man; he was the former co-ordinator of the Hills St Vincent De Paul Society and he introduced me to the society. I am of the firm conviction that it is the Liberal Party that best embodies those ideas of freedom and service. John Howard called the Liberal Party "the political custodian of the liberal conservative tradition". Traditionalism with its emphasis on virtue and libertarianism with its foundation of freedom are both vital and necessary strands of the fabric of conservative thought. I believe the Liberal Party is at its best when it embraces both. In my time here I intend to draw on both of these traditions that have guided my own beliefs. I believe that the family is the cornerstone, the nucleus, of our society. As John Paul II said:

As the family goes, so goes the nation and the whole world in which we live. (here in pdf form)

Uh huh. Coming from a family of thirteen kids, so goes the nation, and so the world, which is to say a veritable plague of Perrotets.

No doubt all spruiking this kind of nonsense:

I acknowledge and pay tribute to the role that faith has played, particularly our Judeo-Christian heritage, and the role that it will continue to play in our development as a people.

Followers of Mr. Perrotet might also enjoy his speech to the NSW parliament on the subject of breastfeeding, and his use of gas to get through twenty hours of labour.

Perrotet was part of the great David Clarke v. Alex Hawke feud before the last state election, with Hawke losing and Clarke winning in the matter of Castle Hill pre-selection (the Poll Bludger), and naturally the likes of Miranda the Devine gets favourably mentioned by Perrotet in despatches.

Not to worry, except when the rock Perrottet feels the need to be asinine in The Punch, managing to give optimism a bad name and instituting delusionalism as a guiding force in the future planning and management of New South Wales.

On the other hand, a capacity for feral stupidity in The Punch doesn't seem to have hurt Sophie Mirabella's career. So it goes in politics ...

Finally great news for followers from afar of The Australian's paywall.

Dame Slap (aka Janet Albrechtsen) doesn't make her usual Wednesday appearance on the opinion pages, at a time when Laura Tingle has been set loose from the AFR paywall.

Pay for intermittent, frantic, apoplectic, apocalyptic rants, or get for free calmly expressed, coherent insights?

Your choice, we merely report in a fair and balanced way and you decide ...

Meanwhile, you can brush the redbacks out of the purse and pay to read Gra Gra.

What's that you say? Pay to read Gra Gra when we could hire Laurence Olivier to work on our teeth?

Take it away Larry, and yes, it's safe, it's safe.