Take my money by force and then sucker punch me.

Nobody likes a smart arse, so I won't spend too long outlining why I believe I have more than a reasonably decent ability to comprehend the written word, at least words written in English  that is, cos if you shove a page written in Mandarin at me I might well want to frame it as a lovely example of modern art.

I wasn't a bad student. Oh sure I was a little subversive and I wagged quite a lot of days and I was fairly cheeky to the Nuns, and I didn't do anything I didn't want to do, but my results were more than OK. Yeh, Dad in his tough love way always managed to point out some small flaw in my report card, but I reckon he was secretly quite proud, him being a bit of a smart arse himself.

School led to Teachers' College where the study of semantics and syntax and linguistics were the extensions of your basic comprehension and grammar and punctuation and paragraph writing. Nah the science teachers didn't do all this and neither did the PE folk, but I wanted to teach high school English so this was what was necessary.

After 15 years studying the English language, I was more than proficient, and then I've subsequently 'top upped' over 30 years,  and even if age has slowed the old grey matter a little and the Chemo brain kicks in from time to time, I can still manage to make meaning of stuff. No I don't want to ply my way through an aero-space manual and learn how to build a rocket, and sometimes the details about blood test results are taxing, but I can read the newspaper and all manner of blogs and novels without having to sit side by side with a dictionary or keep asking someone, 'What does this mean?'

So imagine my surprise when I received the latest epistle from Alan Stone from Transport and Main Roads - TMR, Queensland, to find that I had to go through it para by para to see what it was all about.

12 whole paragraphs of Departmental gobbledigook, lucky me! It was like he was being paid per acronym and there was enough legal-ease committee double speak to choke a giraffe.

But in a nutshell, this is what he and his little group of committee minions had to say.

There are SECRET DOCUMENTS ( CMP and the NVMP ) that outline what the TMR have agreed to in terms of their contractor's process and noise allowances. No-one is allowed access to these SECRET DOCUMENTS. Hitler would be so proud.

But he, ALAN STONE has had a little look see at the SECRET DOCUMENTS and some SECRET DATA and now in his seemingly incontestable opinion, his workers have always been in complete compliance, with legislated noise allowances.

EXCEPT THAT IN PARAGRAPH 6 HE ADMITS THAT NOISE LEVELS HAVE BEEN EXCEEDED BUT THAT'S OK, BECAUSE THERE IS A LITTLE CODICIL IN THE SECRET AGREEMENT THAT ANY NOISE AT ALL IS ACTUALLY OK.

Are we in NAZI Germany or North Korea? Can the Government now just do any damn thing they like and keep us all in the dark? Are they allowed to make SECRET AGREEMENTS to the devastating detriment of the local people?

So today the Queensland Government is sanctioning SECRET DEALS that put at risk the health and well being of local people - and the irony is that these local folk are the self same people who are funding all this secrecy. Yep we are forking out for all this manipulation and lies and bullshit. We are paying the wages of the people who cannot or will not call a spade a spade - instead it's an ADD - an alternate digging device. We are paying their rent and clothing their children. They have their noses stuck so firmly in the trough of our money that they are now immune to rationality and reason.

It cannot be a big leap from this situation to the establishment of some Government sanctioned and funded secret dumping grounds for global nuclear waste, or secret compulsory medical testing on every second child born to families of mixed race parents. Yeh I know it sounds extreme and unlikely and the stuff of Sci-Fi, but so too does what is happening today - appalling and underhand.

TMR have secret deals and approvals in place which they believe allow work to be carried out which exceeds noise levels set down by the Environmental Protection Agency. They have effectively set themselves up as being above the law.  And they are funding all this by sticking their hands into the public purse.

It has taken me close to 3 months of writing and reading to unravel all the bullshit. Initially the noise drove me to donning my Sherlock cap, but I am way past the noise now. The mismanagement and the lies and deceit and the semantic plays on words used to justify ANY DAMN THING AT ALL, at our expense, just makes me see RED.

Here it is in a nutshell:

TMR - a Queensland Government Department has signed CMP / NVMP  documents with their contractors. These documents cover practice and noise level compliance. These documents are secret and contain clauses which allow the contractors carte blanche to work however and whenever they choose even when the noise generated is well in excess of EPA legislated levels. The data collected and used to test compliance is secret, and in any case is moot as TMR have agreed to allow the contractor to do whatever they want.

I am surely not the only person, amazed and appalled. I feel especially violated when I consider that the Queensland Government and TMR are grabbing my cash in one hand and sucker punching me with the other.

How very fucking dare they?