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S’not offensive is it?

July 14th, 2007 · Posted by Skuds in Life · No Comments · Life

Is ‘snot’ offensive?

Apparently the DVLA think it is, hence the ban on number plates starting with SN07 in Scotland. Don’t they have better ways to use their time? It doesn’t even say SNOT it just looks a bit like it if you want it to, and presumably if you find snot offensive you won’t want it to.

More to the point, why do we have so many bizarre rules around number plates? I’m not a candidate for personalised plates myself, or as they are often more accurately called ‘vanity plates’ but I can’t see the harm in them.

I can’t see a good reason why anybody can’t have anything they want on their number plates, subject to certain conditions for unequivocally offensive plates like FUCK OFF or BIG COCK. It would avoid this childish cat & mouse game of drivers trying create words using a combination of leetspeak, spacing and strategically-placed screws to create words if nothing else.

I know the usual excuse given is that its easier for identifying cars. The example given is of eye-witnesses to a crime being able to say that they saw “a red G reg cortina” but I don’t think that ever held much water and it holds even less now – since we ran out of alphabet and swapped to the new quarterly registration the layout of plates has no significance for me – I feel like those 70’s pensioners who were confused by decimalisation. Besides which, if the car involved in a hit & run or a getaway had a number plate reading DEREK I reckon eye-witnesses would remember the whole thing and not just the year signifier.

And another thing. Apart from allowing anything, we should do it on a first-come-first-served, fixed price basis: none of these auctions or differential pricings which must cost as much to work out and administer as they ever bring in in additional revenue. Make it just like Internet domain names.

Not that I feel strongly about it, I just find the whole business of number plates petty and complicated. I am always reminded of that Viz top tip which was something like:

Too tight to get personalised number plates? Why not simply change your name by deed poll to your current one like I did!
X328GBD, Brentford

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