bousozoku said:
You're right, of course. There must be a whole trade in number plates in the UK, as I've seen several advertisements in Car and Top Gear. However, the plates always have to start with a letter, don't they?
There is a massive trade in UK number plates. Not all numberplates have to start with a letter. The early numberplates issued in the UK were formed from either 1,2 or 3 digits followed by 1,2 or 3 letters. or vice versa. i.e 999 AAA or AAA 999. The UK has never really planned ahead on number plate and of course rapidly ran out of available combinations - and kept on running out of combinations. There was a series of number plates that followed with 3 letters, 1,2 or 3 digits followed by another letter. Then came a letter followed by 1,2 or 3 digits and then 3 letters. And now we have progressed onto a system which should be ok for the next 50 years: 2 letters, 2 digits, 3 letters. So you can imagine the possibilities for designing number plates that somehow represent a word. Remembering that not all letters have been permitted to be used ( I for example since it can look like 1)
Despite the fact that deliberately misrepresenting a numberplate to look different from that intended (such as putting a 1 and 3 close together to look like a B or putting a black screwcap between 11 to look like H) is an offence, the UK government has capitalized on this market by auctioning off those number plates that would be the most marketable if misrepresented - turns out that the do-gooders from years ago didn't want number plates of this type appearing so they didn't issue them for new car registrations. Of course this turned into a big pot of gold for the government who sold them off.
For me I just say thank you to those who willingly paid extra tax to the Government when they purchased the numberplates and pay tax again each time they get fined for displaying the plate incorrectly (though this doesn't happen too often)
I realise that this all sounds very anal but the question was asked and I elaborated a bit
