New Tax Discs
 

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 12:30:33 +0000, Greg Hennessy
wrote:



Unnecessarily wasting taxpayers money.

The number of vehicles and licensed drivers on the roads is relatively
fixed when compared to the open ended number to keep track in the current
system.


Form a taxpayers' and risk management. point of view I'd be very
uneasy about dismantling a system that in principle has been around
for 100 years plus (with some work on the number format every few
decades to ensure the continuing supply of new numbers) to introduce
something radically new.

In the US vehicle licensing is the responsibility of individual
states. Some have systems where numbers stay with the vehicle; others
have something like the Swiss system where the numbers stay with the
driver. I wonder whether anybody's done a study on whether one of
these systems is cheaper to administer than the other.

Martin

New Tax Discs
 

Greg Hennessy wrote:
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 19:05:36 -0000, "Dave Liney"
wrote:


The move of the suffix to August did not cause the sales peak.

Of course it did.

There had been one when the changeover was in January and the
changeover month was moved to a time when the demand for new
cars could more easily be met.

That contradicts what I've heard elsewhere. It was moved to August
precisely to stimulate demand. Few people were in the humour to spend
money on new cars just after Xmas.

I don't know where you heard that, but my recollection from that time is
that there was indeed a peak in the New Year, originally in order to
have the cachet of a car dating from the new year, and reinforced from
1963 onwards by the year letter. Car manufacturers tended to tool up
for new models during the August holidays. Thus, the "1966" models were
put into production in September 1965, exhibited at the October 1965
Motor Show, and then lay around unsold because people wanted a 1966
registration. It was for that reason that the year letter change was
moved to 1st August. It was indeed done to stimulate demand, but to do
so in August in order to lessen the huge peak in January.

The distortion of sales was caused by the government's introduction
of
the yearly indentifier; nothing to do with the motor industry.

There was never a sales peak in January, thats nonsense.

I disagree (see above). Your evidence?
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

New Tax Discs
 

Dave Liney wrote:
"Aidan Stanger" wrote...
Dave Liney wrote:

If you actually read what I had posted you would have realised that I
said that the car industry does not want the changeover at 12 months
or 6 months, they would rather have a continuous series.

I don't believe you. Surely the motor industry loves the fact that so
many people buy a new car just because the year identifier on the number
plates has changed?

Most industries would prefer, for the same number of sales annually, to have
them level across the year rather than have a significant dip and peak once
or twice a year.

But most would give that up for more sales annually.

With a fluctuating demand, they have the opportunity to manipulate their
pricing policy to take advantage of it.

I don't think the changeover makes people buy cars. It makes them buy a new
car, if they are going to buy one at all, just after the changeover rather
than in the month before but that is a different thing altogether.

The changeover certainly made people buy cars when it was annual. Did
the change to every 6 months make people realise how silly that was?

New Tax Discs
 

In article ,
(Richard J.) wrote:

"Greg Hennessy" wrote in message
...

In 7-8 characters, they could have easily encoded registration
information using Base36 and not have of the 4/7ths redundancy on each
and every plate.

What's your problem with the redundancy? Isn't some of it needed anyway
to enable the old numbering systems to coexist with the new one?

Redundancy is also inherent in the regional identification coding.

What amuses me is the new concept of "uncherished" numbers introduced by
the new system.

Have you noticed how high a proportion of the plates that have "X" or "Z"
(or both) in the three-letter group, presumably because the DVLA can't
sell most of them?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

New Tax Discs
 

In article ,
Colin Rosenstiel writes
Have you noticed how high a proportion of the plates that have "X" or "Z"
(or both) in the three-letter group, presumably because the DVLA can't
sell most of them?

There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain an X
or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency; have you
done a census?

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address

New Tax Discs
 

In article ,
(Clive D. W. Feather) wrote:

In article
, Colin
Rosenstiel
Have you noticed how high a proportion of the plates that have "X" or
"Z" (or both) in the three-letter group, presumably because the DVLA
can't sell most of them?

There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain an X
or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency; have you
done a census?

I thought it was more than that, hence my question.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

New Tax Discs
 

In article ,
Colin Rosenstiel writes
There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain an X
or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency; have you
done a census?
I thought it was more than that, hence my question.

The problem is that once you start looking, you tend to notice them
more. That's why I asked about a census.

FX: pause

I just did a very crude one while waiting at a bus stop at King's Cross.
21 cars passed with series 3 index plates; 5 had X or Z.

--
Clive D.W. Feather, writing for himself | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Written on my laptop; please observe the Reply-To address

New Tax Discs
 

Clive D. W. Feather wrote:
In article
, Colin
Rosenstiel writes
There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain
an X or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency;
have you done a census?
I thought it was more than that, hence my question.

The problem is that once you start looking, you tend to notice them
more. That's why I asked about a census.

FX: pause

I just did a very crude one while waiting at a bus stop at King's
Cross. 21 cars passed with series 3 index plates; 5 had X or Z.

IIRC they try to avoid combinations that are words, or sound/look
similar to a word, because they want to avoid rude ones and can sell the
rest. You will therefore have a higher proportion of consonants,
especially those like X and Z which are less likely to be part of a
recognisable acronym.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

New Tax Discs
 

"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Colin Rosenstiel writes
Have you noticed how high a proportion of the plates that have "X" or "Z"
(or both) in the three-letter group, presumably because the DVLA can't
sell most of them?

There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain an X
or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency; have you
done a census?

This puzzled me at first, until I realised that there is a 1 in 24 chance of
getting a "Z" in each of one of the columns, which means a 1 in 8 chance of
getting a "Z" in one of the three columns.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
http://www.omnibussoc.org
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

New Tax Discs
 

In article ,
(Clive D. W. Feather) wrote:

In article
, Colin
Rosenstiel
There are 13824 three-letter groups available. 3176 (23%) contain an
X or a Z. That roughly matches my perception of their frequency; have
you done a census?
I thought it was more than that, hence my question.

The problem is that once you start looking, you tend to notice them
more. That's why I asked about a census.

FX: pause

I just did a very crude one while waiting at a bus stop at King's
Cross. 21 cars passed with series 3 index plates; 5 had X or Z.

I did a rather larger census while cycling from Putney to Westminster this
morning. I saw 154 cars with series 3 index plates; 50 had X or Z (32.5%).

--
Colin Rosenstiel