Number Plates News

Now It's £60 for Displaying a Rogue Plate

30 June 2009

Under the revised system of fixed penalty charges announced today, the penalty for mis-spacing or mis-representing your numberplate - which is viewed as serious a misdemeanour as driving without a seat belt - will be doubled to £60.

The belting-up issue is, of course, well-proven to save lives - more 300 a year, according to one analysis. There remains, however, a body of opinion that considers enforcement to represent a breach of fundamental freedoms; on the basis that they are harming no-one else, and that the Darwinian principles should be allowed to take their course.

But, number plates spelling words? Not only is the official stance breath-takingly arrogant and patronising, it is hypocritical in the extreme, when one considers the fortunes regularly raked into their coffers by blatantly auctioning number plates which, er, spell names.

Obviously it is unacceptable to use the fixing screws as crude serifs to actually transform a letter or number, but this is not really what irks the reasonably-minded motorist. It is the idea that a registration number must display the required space between its groups of characters.

If you are asked your registration, you might likely reply "It's ABC123D, officer". Never "It's ABC space 123D, officer."

So what earthly reason can there possibly be for insisting on the space in the first place? "Ah, but it's the speed cameras, you see. They can't read them." Codswallop. If an arial photograph can document the number of carp in your garden bond, we can be pretty sure that the recognition systems can cope, with or without the blank in your number plate.