Free Britannia

I have just had to renew my driving licence, as we old codgers are obliged to do every three years once past the age of seventy. Last time it was very easy. This time, though, the gummint wanted all sorts of information it already had, simply to prove to itself that I really am me. NI number, Passport number .... you name it. I suppose the justification is "anti-terrorism"

I am not saying this was a huge inconvenience, though I did have to rummage about a bit to find the paperwork ....

My point is: I have held a UK driving licence since my late teens, over half a century now.

And this is the moment when I need to "prove my identity" already?

And this on a day when we discover that our borders are as porous as a torn-up filter paper, and every Tom Dick and Harry has been allowed to come and go at will without even a check by the immigrants who staff the Border Service!

If I were not so preternaturally calm, I might feel a minute frisson of annoyance!

When you are suffering from Senile Dementia, just forget to renew it. You will find the car will still go the same, even if you can't remember where you've been. It will still probably manage to find its way home.

Tony

It's not about identity though is it.

It's about making you feel that you have nowhere to hide.

Do as we say, jump through our hoops!

COMPLY YOU BASTARDS! CONFORM!

How can I put this gently?

Oh yes, I know.

Anybody over the age of 73 simply should not be allowed to drive a car on public roads. They're a danger both to themselves (irrelevant really, at that age), but more particularly to other road users, as they have a tendency to drive the wrong way up motorways, forget where they've put things & search for them whilst driving & have their parcel shelf obscured by big boxes of tissues, chequered blankets & yellow signs saying " Grandchild on Board" .

You've got a free bus pass! Make use of it, for God's sake.

Fortunately, at age 60, I'm still quick-witted, relatively compos-mentis & agile enough to be able to spot any driver under 20 or over 70 around me at 100 metres & take both types as potential missiles out to kill me & take appropriate defensive driving measures.

But if I ever make it to 70, I'll certainly stop driving, one way or another.

The government is well within its rights to make especial checks on seniles driving cars, despite their inability to know their NI number (it's on your pension statement & NHS card, so write it in chalk on the wall?)

But if I ever make it to 70, I'll certainly stop driving, one way or another. saith the Tonester.

No you won't. As long as you feel safe and in charge of your vehicle, and can still avoid the young lunatics of 60 out on the roads, you will renew your licence and carry on driving. And every chance they get, the even younger socialist "public service worker" lunatics who decide these things will make your life harder, as only they know how.

Blimey Bear.. there was I thinking that you were in your 50s... (not sure why).

I reckon there are idiots of ALL ages on the roads...

Down here, it seelms to me that about 75% of drivers have a mobile 'phone almost permenantly clamped to their face as they drive along at 120kmh...

Drive safely.

Thank you Mo. For making me feel youthful again, as well as wishing me safe driving! The young Master Toads in their little red cars are the ones who scare the life out of me, especially as they rush around the car parks looking for somewhere to park.

We don't use the car as much as we did, but I think that is because we no longer take to the road out of boredom or "for something to do". This is not a matter of age, but of a reluctance to pay through the nose for fuel and use it without good cause. We do take the car to the woods, of course ..... but for Toby the Dog rather than for the "convenience" of us Bears!

Our parent's generation were in the habit of taking a Sunday Afternoon Drive for recreation. I don't think people do that so much now. We take it out for the weekly Aldi shop, and that is about it.

Morris,

That was your 666th post. I tend to notice these things, as my BSA650 that I paid £37 for in 1970 had a registration number 666 ALE. Your avatar looks absolutely nothing like my mental image of you. I assumed you were of medium height, always about 60 with a slight beer belly, round face, curly beard with an old traditional pipe in your mouth. ScepticTone however, looks exactly like I imagine him.

http://classic-motorbikes.net/images/gallery/9552.jpg

I just typed all that out again, as I pressed submit and it just disappeared. So there may now be two of them somewhere.

Tony

That happens to me, sometimes, Tony.

Somewhere, out in the furthermost stretches of the Ether, or else in one of those parallel universees we hear so much about, there is an entire FreeBritannia Forum stuffed full of our lost posts.

Gawdelp the poor denizens of that place!

"I assumed you were of medium height, always about 60 with a slight beer belly, round face, curly beard with an old traditional pipe in your mouth."

No, I'm in my (late) 40s, have no beard and have never smoked, apart from the odd spliff in my 20s.

I did once own a Honda 250 with the plate ending ALE...

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1129436--experts-say-ontario-is-failing-to-weed-out-at-risk-drivers-over-80

Experts say Ontario is failing to weed out at-risk drivers over 80

Seems to be a hot topic.

I was glad when my Dad gave up his license without a fuss when he hit 80.

I've spent years trying to persuade my wife to give up her license. And she turned 40 this year, which really scared me (and other road users).

I once let her 'use' an automatic I had at the time. She complained that as it was automatic, it shouldn't need a brake pedal. That was after she'd driven it 80 miles down the motorway in sport mode and used half a tank of petrol.

I remember a former neighbour, who may well have gone to his eternal reward now, and the story of his driving test. The test had just been introduced and the examiner was clearly new to the whole process and not entirely sure how to adminster it fully; whilst reversing round a bend he managed to mount the kerb and his a lamppost...despite this he still managed to pass and so could renew his licence without any additional testing well into his late 70s (when I knew him).

In China, your driving licence expires after (I think) 5 years.

Then you have to re-take the test.

I am told that most people just pay somebody to take the test for them..

There is a whole army of people who take the tests every day.

Of course, they give a examiners some cash, but that's not unusual in the Middle Kingdom.

Morris wrote:In China, your driving licence expires after (I think) 5 years.

Then you have to re-take the test.

I am told that most people just pay somebody to take the test for them..

There is a whole army of people who take the tests every day.

Of course, they give a examiners some cash, but that's not unusual in the Middle Kingdom.

Trying to cross a road in a Chinese city was a nerve-racking experience. There didn't seem to be any rules, and a driver who picked me up at the airport didn't seem to realise you had lanes for each direction.

Bestbear wrote:This time, though, the gummint wanted all sorts of information it already had, simply to prove to itself that I really am me ... And this on a day when we discover that our borders are as porous as a torn-up filter paper, and every Tom Dick and Harry has been allowed to come and go at will without even a check by the immigrants who staff the Border Service!

Pathetic isn't it, old boy.

This country really has lost the plot when a stalwart ex-Military chap like yourself has to submit to the whims of some drooling DVLA bureaucrat just to keep his driving chit. Were you an Army officer by any chance?

At the same time, the incompetent ratbags in government cannot manage to ensure basic border checking even though the country is clearly under increased threat from lunatic foreigners.

What would Field Marshal Montgomery have to say about all this? I'd certainly like to know.

T.J. wrote:I remember a former neighbour, who may well have gone to his eternal reward now, and the story of his driving test. The test had just been introduced and the examiner was clearly new to the whole process and not entirely sure how to adminster it fully; whilst reversing round a bend he managed to mount the kerb and his a lamppost...despite this he still managed to pass and so could renew his licence without any additional testing well into his late 70s (when I knew him).

My old man, who was born in 1913 was never required to take a driving test. When licences first came out you just filled out a form, sent it off and they sent you one.

At least that's what he said.

Morris wrote:In China, your driving licence expires after (I think) 5 years.

Then you have to re-take the test.

I am told that most people just pay somebody to take the test for them..

There is a whole army of people who take the tests every day.

Apocryphal stories abound here in the North West of England about Pa*is getting driving licenses by paying a professional P*ki who can just about manage to steer correctly when not on heroin,to take the test for them, as they all look the same, have several Social Security names, mostly including 'Mohammed', 'Iqbal', 'Razeem', etc.

I must say, one does have to drive very defensively in P*ki-intensive areas round here, as they normally drive like Frenchmen on crack, but mainly try to get one to bang into the back of them when suddenly stopping in the middle of the road in an old jalopy for no reason, then 3 or 4 of them debunking & staggering about shouting 'whiplash, man', while four or five fresh Pa*kis suddenly appear from hiding & snap the scene on their mobiles.

It's tough OOP North, even for southern Jessies from Burnley!

That rear shunt scam happens everywhere, though, and most especially in areas inhabited by followers of the Prophet. There seems to be no religious reason for them to treat with infidels honestly, perhaps even a holy obligation to screw them in a jihadi sort of way. Infidels don't matter in Islam, as we see from the recent case of the abuse of young English girls. They are not like the good veiled Muslim girls, after all.

I think one needed to renew the Driving Licence every few years when I first had one, but I am not certain, the old grey cells not being what they were .... In those days it was a little red book, as I vaguely recall. Then they introduced the license for life, and if you moved house they gave you a scrap of paper in a plastic wallet instead of the nice little book ... then they scrapped the wallet. If you have either one of these early issues, and never, ever moved house, then your entitlement to drive never stops even if you reach seventy. The one upside, which is surprising, is that they don't charge us oldies twenty-five quid to renew it.

As a peripatetic military/clerical sort of cove I moved often, so I come under the renewal-every-three-years at seventy trap. My service was the Royal Air Force, by the way, M'Lord. I have only recently stopped missing it!

I still have the 'scrap of paper' sort, seeing as I've not moved house in the past seventeen years. I must say, I rather enjoy having the scrap of paper as opposed to the photocard and counterfoil type. It does mean though that when driving abroad I have to carry my passport with me in the car.

And speaking of driving abroad, I see the french have increased their list of 'things you must have'.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars ... fines.html

And if, like me, you do not drink at all? Why should I carry a breathalyser at all? Let alone the recommended 'two' - so that if you use one and you then get stopped - you can prove that you still have 'one'.

Mind you - driving in France you're more likely to get stopped by Les Douanes than Les Flicks. I was stopped once by customs and they gave ma right going over to see if I was carrying a large amount of money or whatever. They were oh so wrong to stop me and when they asked me if I had more than 20,000 Euros on me - I just burst into laughter. 'Okay.... you can go......zut!'

Interesting stuff about licenses, etc.

I still have my original paper one in the plastic wallet, issued in 1978 & valid until 2021. I think if you acquire a points penalty on your license you have to send it off & they replace it with one of those horrid plastic renewable photocard things, but that's never happened to me, as since my license was first issued I've never ever been stopped by the police, never been caught by a speed camera, never had any points on my license & never had an accident (apart from two, which both involved motorcyclists driving into me head-on whilst they were on the wrong side of the road, & in which the motorcyclists emerged very much (VERY VERY MUCH in one case, God rest his soul), more traumatised than me. And that's in nearly 40 years of driving in peripatetic sales-oriented jobs, driving in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain & Italy, etc.

Oh, I tell a lie. I was once stopped by two heavily armed Gendarmes on motorbikes in France in the early 80's on an autoroute. For absolutely no reason other than to check 'Vos papiers, s'il vous plâit, monsieur". Which were all in English, natch, but they duly inspected them, pretending to comprehend the words, whilst quietly slipping off the safety on their machine guns in case I did a runner in my 10 year old orange Austin Maxi, which no doubt they thought could outrun their giant 1000cc BMW bikes..

The stuff you have to carry in France, apart from the breathaliser, do kinda semi-make sense, & at least we don't have to paint our bloody headlights yellow any more to drive in France, since the, ahem, EU told them to stop being so bloody awkward & stupid by having yellow headlights.

I regret the passing of the yellow headlamps in France, I used to like them, and they made life more colourful.

In so many ways though, Europe has been homogenised, especially so with the introduction of the Euro.

when they brought the rule in about carrying reflective vests, the police said that if drivers put the vests on the car seats, like covers, then drivers would not be stopped for a check.

So almost everyone did this.... for about three weeks, then everything was forgotten...

That's how it works in France, as I have described re the smoking ban and cafe plastic covered terraces...

ScepticTone wrote:...I think if you acquire a points penalty on your license you have to send it off & they replace it with one of those horrid plastic renewable photocard things, but that's never happened to me, as since my license was first issued I've never ever been stopped by the police, never been caught by a speed camera, never had any points on my license & never had an accident...

Actually, old chap, you would also be obliged to get a photocard drivers license if you ever have to change your home address. You are required by law to keep your current address up to date with DVLA under threat of a £1,000 maximum fine.

I had to act as a witness recently for a 62 year old fellow who had been sent a photocard drivers license application form after he tried to get DVLA to update their records with his new address.

It was quite amusing having to sign the back of his photo etc to prove he was legit and not a ne'er-do-well.

I hold the old type license, I wasn't aware there was a photo type in the UK...

They may be bureaucratic jobsworths at the DVLA, but they are efficient bureacratic jobsworths, by Jingo! My new license arrived within 48hrs.

You have to advise the DVLA of any change of address, Mo, at which point you will have to get a photocard licence. I think you have to pay them for moving house, too .... but not just for getting older.

The DVLA's computer system is perhaps the most frighteningly all-encompassing & efficient governmental control tool at work in UK, IMHO. Much more efficient than GCHQ, the second most scary governmental control internal surveillance complex in the UK.

Not only is it there to make sure you pay your road tax & have a license, but it's got everybody's insurance & MOT details on it, along with a photgraph of the ones who have photo licenses, home addresses, etc., so the filth can just scan your registration plate while following you & instantly find out if you're legal, every petrol station has numberplate-recognition cameras linked to it, every speed camera (again with numberplate recognition software) is linked to it, & it works like er, clockwork. Only better. As it doesn't work on clockwork. It's amazingly, blindingly efficient. & run by bloody Welshmen!

I know you anti-government types blither on about the SS & tax & surveillance, but to my mind, the quiet little DVLA, beavering away in its little slate-roofed terraced cottage in Swansea, is the most ruthless tool of the UK State surveillance system that currently exists.

Except in reality the DVLA Complex looks likes something out of 'Thunderbirds' or an early James Bond film's evil enemy's headquarters:



However, it is cool that I can retax my cars online just by inputting the registration numbers, & 2 days later a tax disc is delivered. Saves having to go to the post office & standing behind banks of stinking P*kis cashing benefit cheques for their 'mother/uncle' or sending money to Al Quaida.

Bulldog wrote:My old man, who was born in 1913 was never required to take a driving test. When licences first came out you just filled out a form, sent it off and they sent you one.

At least that's what he said.

UK driving licences were required after 1903, however, no test was necessary to get one until the 1st of June 1935. On that day compulsory testing was introduced for everyone who had started to drive on, or after, the 1st of April 1934.

The ultimate April Fool's joke!

I once knew a Scottish lady whose thoughtful father got her a drivers license the week before the 1st of April 1934 deadline when she had just turned 17. She never even learnt to drive let alone sat a test, (her husband always drove them around), but she was legally entitled to drive until she turned 70 when her license expired. Every time she moved home she updated her address and the DVLA sent her license back without asking any questions.

Bestbear wrote:My service was the Royal Air Force, by the way, M'Lord. I have only recently stopped missing it!

Jolly good show, old boy.

I thought you sounded like a fine fellow!

Old General Smuts did a sterling job when he pushed for the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service to be amalgamated into the RAF.

Lord Flash wrote:I once knew a Scottish lady whose thoughtful father got her a drivers license the week before the 1st of April 1934 deadline when she had just turned 17.

I bet you did, you old roué!

I used to love your brief appearances in 'Blackadder', Lord Flash.



Do you still like wearing dresses? I do.

ScepticTone wrote:Do you still like wearing dresses?

No, old chap, that was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was a brave soul, but rather kinky.

Here I am:

Any relation to Sir Harry, Lord Flash?