Before we get into this rant, you BUGgers out there do realise the David versus Goliath battle that’s now a parable about how good can overcome evil was only a myth, right? It was in the Bible so we know it wasn’t true.

You’ll also realise that such outcomes occur in real life so very, very rarely that they make movies about them.

With that background, I’m here to save you all some time and money. If you’ve been pinged with a speeding offence and have this absurd idea that you might have a defence and want to contest the charge ….. DON’T!

If your obsession with seeing this through is largely due to a burning anger that those trying to prosecute you have lied to/gaslit you over and over again and have falsely and perhaps even criminally tried to coerce you into doing the right thing by society and pay the fine immediately, DO THAT! Cough up and move fucking on. DON’T go to a hearing!

Accept from the get-go that as a cranky and spirited little cog in the enormous machinery of state you’ll have a slingshot’s chance in hell of bringing the powers-that-be down to their knees and fatally wounded.

And so we bring ourselves yesterday to Magistrates Court Number 19 in Roma Street where I’m foolishly defending a charge of travelling at 52km/hour in a 40km/hr school zone on Water Street Spring Hill in inner-Brisbane.

Luckily for me, I’m being represented by a respected solicitor briefing a top silk; both old friends doing this at mate’s rates because, to be quite frank, they’ve always seen me as a bit of a lost cause and had this burning desire to help a poor stupid old bloke out. Really nice chaps.

Before we get to how that hearing panned out, I’m sure you are all wondering about this lying/gaslighting I’m 100 per cent sure I was subject to.

As explained above, I did a lot of my research and letter-writing myself over a year or more so as to not inflict that on the aforementioned brilliant legal eagles.

Here’s extracts of replies received by two separate government entities in late 2023 and early.

And do you know what this cynical bastard’s response to these claims was – a view formed from a half-century-plus career as a journalist and three years as a reporter for The Courier-Mail on the very courts I found myself in yesterday – ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT!

The only way that camera operator could have come to that conclusion was if he or she wandered along Water Street armed with a clipboard and the modern equivalent of a box brownie. Sitting in a remote office, they would not have had the vision needed to claim all the relevant signs were clearly visible and adequate.

I told my legal lads at the time that of all the certifications and oaths of service that would appear in the final full police brief, the only one of any real relevance to us, that certification about the how the signs looked on the day, would NOT be in that file when, after a long delay of the police prosecution’s doing, we finally got our hands on it. IT WASN’T.

By the way, my research also taught me that a Queensland public servant who signs a certification knowing it to be untrue is guilty at the very least of a misdemeanor. I think we all know now why it was not included in the police brief.

So I suspect you BUGers out there can now see one of the key strands of our defence. The police clearly thought one single photo of me approaching a “reminder” street sign midway a school zone and not disobeying it wouldn’t cut the mustard.

They had to rely on absolute tosh to prove their case that I had absolutely no excuse for disobeying these clearly visible and adequate signs. Oh, not that one above. I spotted that one. It’s the earlier ones I had wilfully disobeyed!

So, back to court. And things are going pretty well our way but not for the reasons we expected.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Oh, and before I go, want to hear something really interesting at the start of proceedings on Friday morning? Our dear magistrate openly admitted she did not know extended 7am-4pm school speed zones even existed and had to be put straight by the prosecutor. It gave me some comfort to know that by bringing this case to trial I had played my small part in making Her Honour aware of the dangers of perhaps, say, dawdling along Water Street at 52km/hr at 11.06am and thinking it had reverted to 60km/hr two hours earlier! If this happens to her, let’s just hope all the signs have been duly certified as being clearly visible and adequate! If ignorance of the law (traffic rules included) is no defence to us mere mortals, it must be doubly damning of magistrates expected to know this shit back to front and preferably front to back.

Don Gordon-Brown

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