(Ceri JC) wonders why on earth are we still required to display tax discs?
I am not contesting paying road tax (that's a separate issue), but rather the requirement to display a "physical token" to denote that we've paid.
The police run ANPR and clock whether your tax is valid using that (because it cannot be deceived by stolen disc, nor fake copies). Your tax is against a vehicle (which is ultimately identified by a VIN), which already has a unique identifier (number plate) assigned to it, which is already much more prominently displayed on the vehicle. The details of all this are held by the same organisation (the DVLA), within the same database.
You would think that with the drive to cut government expenditure, this would be a no-brainer:
[ul]
[li]Saving postage costs (of shipping the physical tokens)[/li]
[li]Saving the extra bureaucratic process (read cost) of the exemption for the 14 days your disk is in the post.[/li]
[li]Improving the aesthetics of vehicles (by not having to display a disc).[/li]
[li]Improving the driver's area of vision in vehicles with a cab (more of the windscreen is empty).[/li]
[li]Eliminating both theft and fraud of tax discs (as there'd no longer be any physical thing to copy/steal).[/li]
[li]Preventing tax discs from getting wet in open vehicles and needing to be replaced because they're too wet/muddy.[/li]
[li]Saving the public the cost of buying tax disc holders.[/li]
[li]Saving the planet - both in terms of the materials and energy used to produce the disks and the carrying of the tax discs themselves. Tax discs and the average holder only weigh a few grammes each, but 35 million vehicle use them; that's 100 tonnes of unnecessary "cargo" being ferried around 8,200 miles a year. That's the equivalent of 85 extra cars on the road.[/li]
[/ul]
The possible downsides:
[ul]
[li]Vehicle owners might be nostalgic for them.[/li]
[li]A handful of people in Swansea would be denied a meaningful career mailing out tax discs.[/li]
[/ul]
Erm... that's it. There is absolutely no other reason to continue with this waste of time and money.
Seems oddly prescient now...
