It's All In The Mind

Did you know that the DVLA are now the guardians of our moral welfare? They have a grandly titled Propriety Group committee which regularly sits in judgment on the suitability of new number plates. In the words of their spokesman, "We have a responsibility to ensure registration combinations don't cause offence.

Many people including representatives from motoring organisations are bemused by the apparent need for such draconian censorship. The Association of British Motorists concedes that "If they were really offensive words you'd understand it".

The current '59' and anticipated '10' registrations offer some wonderful opportunities in their random sequences because the sets of numerals can be taken to read 'SP' and 'LO' respectively. So far the Proprietary Group has managed to spot ??59 ANK, ??59 ERM, ??59 EED, ?B10 GAS, ?B10 WAR, ?B10 WUP, FE10 N?? and ?B010 CKS. Now, if you can't see anything wrong with any of these, that's fine. If you can, it must be in your mind.

The essential point that is always overlooked whenever these stories surface is that no number plate can ever, in its entirety, actually spell a word because they all include numbers. There are never more than three letters together within the registration anyway, so that rules out any 'four-letter' profanities. The worst that can result are the schoolboy howlers like 'BUM', 'TIT' and 'POO' etc.

The only debatable exception here is the numeral '1'. The authorised number plate 'font' (or typeface, to give it its correct description) is, without a doubt, one of the worst examples of the typographer's art. Its 'W's and 'M's are the same width as its 'N's and the three characters are barely distinguishable. It is, indeed, a wonder that the speed cameras manage to read them at all. Worse than this, the number '1' has no serif and looks exactly the same as a capital 'I' or a lower case 'L' Nevertheless, the famous PEN 15 is just that, and absolutely not PEN IS

There will, no doubt, be many more examples for the killjoys to ban from the current crop and in the future. Fortunately, they haven't had an awful lot of success in the past, when you consider the number of contentious combinations that have slipped through the net. We have come to delight in marvelous fax pas like F4 GOT and D1 KES. These two actually made it into the Agency's own auction catalogue before being withdrawn after complaints.

Related articles:

Government Relents over Contentious Number Plate Sale

Political Plate Raises Censorship Issues

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