Good spirit will win through.

*Warning* Rant ahead.




Background : In Britain our car license plates used to start with a letter followed by two or three numbers and then three letters. (i.e. R 345 ABC or T 24 OSR). The first letter represented the year the car was sold. (e.g R = 1995, S = 1996, T=1997 etc.) The rest of the plate was random.


Rant : About three or four years ago the council introduced new parking ticket machines in our 'pay and display' car parks. The council spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the new pay machines. They had a new system on them, where you had to put the numbers (just the numbers) of your license plate into the keypad before you paid for your ticket. The numbers of your plate are printed on the 'display ticket' so the parking warden can check they match your license plate.
The reason for this is to stop 'the public', when leaving the car park, giving the remaining minutes on their ticket to another person who had just entered. This practice used to spread goodwill amongst people when someone approached them and said '..there you go, I still have an hour left on this ticket if you could use it'. It was a kind gesture and, after all, the parking space had been paid for already. The new system was just a cynical ploy to bleed more money out of us all.

More Background : The license plate was changed a few years back and now all new cars have two letters then two numbers followed by three letters. (i.e. GN 02 ABC or HB 52 DEF) The first two letters are a code which are supposed to identify where the car was bought(silly idea) and the numbers work like this. The first number is either a 0 or a 5. (0 means first half of a year and 5 means second half of the year) The second number is 2 for 2002, 3 for 2003 etc. So 52 was bought second half of 2002, whilst 04 would be first half of 2004. *yawn*

Karma : With the amount of new license plates growing in size because the new cars are replacing the older ones then most plates contain either 02, 52, 03, 53, 04, 54 etc. This means the kind, good natured people will be able to share tickets easier with fellow 52'ers or 04'ers and the tight-arse f**kwits who thought up a scheme which cost us all that council tax money should be sacked.

Rant over..... I hhhhhthannngu