back to article DVLA declares J14 HAD on BU14 SHT and SL14 AGS

Blighty's Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Authority (DVLA) has announced a list of vehicle registration numbers which won't be available to wags looking to take advantage of the latest "63" and upcoming "14" plates. The 14 plate will hit the streets in March next year, and the authority's staff have weeded out potentially …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Khaptain Silver badge

    Not so obvious

    I learned to speak Hebrew many years ago, it was far easier than trying to understand some of these plates

    I still can't see what the following are TR14 DDS, LU63 FER ( Lucifer ?)

    and what's wrong with SK14 NKY ( Skanky, I presume)

    And this takes a fair bit of imagination SP14 STK.....( Spastic ?)

    The only one that was remotely intelligent was HU63 NOB .... As it used both of the numbers, whereas the others only used one, or required the fusion of the the two....

    Someone at DVLA has a very OR16 NAL job...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not so obvious

      But then UR16 NAL ought to be included or they could be accused of taking the piss

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Not so obvious

        I think they hit A5 NAG with this

    2. Sarah Balfour

      Re: Not so obvious

      HU63 NOB...? SOMEONE ought to buy that and secretly affix it to Bojo's motor... I don't get 'BU14 SHT; I'm assuming it's 'bullshit' but, surely, 'BU11 SHT' makes more sense...? You can't have OM6 WTF, either.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    TR14 DDS - triads.

    -1 DVLA

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Being an ex- DVLA employee, technically DVLA don't sell you the registration, you lease/licence it from DVLA. The registration mark is the property of the Secretary of State for Transport (the position, not the individual), what you purchase is the right to display it on A vehicle.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Technically, you buy the plate from a registered plate producer.

      You can't rent or own a "number". "Numbers" are entirely conceptual.

  4. dervheid

    NO63 NDS

    That is all

  5. TitterYeNot
    Joke

    DVLA

    So this is the DVLA's attempt to stop people embarrassing themselves in public and looking slightly knobbish.

    Hang on, doesn't that mean they should stop selling personalised number plates full stop?

  6. katjap
    Facepalm

    You must have some very sensitive people on your side of the pond to be so offended by a number plate that says SP14 STK that you have to ban it. Very sensitive indeed.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      "Spastic" is a lot more offensive on this side of the briny than it is stateside.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. JimmyPage Silver badge
      WTF?

      @katjap

      this from a country that banned "WTF" in licence marks ?

    3. Anon5000
      Thumb Down

      No senses of humour allowed

      Shirley only a disabled motorist would choose to have the number plate CR14 PLE and thus is not offended bye it.

      Red tape bureaucrats with sense of humour surgically removed.

      1. You have not yet created a handle
        Trollface

        Re: No senses of humour allowed

        Ohhhh.. I read it as CRAPPLE and assumed Apple had been in discussions with the DVLA!

  7. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    If people are stupid enough to pay the money, and others are stupid enough to try to interpret them let them.

    If the DVLA droids actually thought about things and introduced a decent system when they changed the regularions (2001?) we wouldn't be discussing it ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      DVLA have no involvement with creating or ammending regulations. Any ammendments are done by central government.

  8. wyatt

    BO11LUX isn't on the askMID database, DVLA must have retrieved it.

    1. Khaptain Silver badge
      Coat

      Then I suppose that M I4 NGE, is not available either

    2. JimmyPage Silver badge

      BO11LUX isn't on the askMID database

      or it's not insured

    3. jacobbe

      UT02SER

      B'ah. That just means its not insured.

      Last time I heard, the owner who paid £400 for it, had it up for sale for £22,000

  9. frank ly

    History

    I once saw the famous PEN 15 on a car in the late 70's. I can't even remember what car it was on. Is that still around/allowed? (You have to ask questions about the character of someone who wants that on their car.)

    1. thesykes

      Re: History

      I remember seeing OBO 110X on TV when I was younger, possibly on That's Life or something.

      Seems that one is still in circulation.

    2. Mike Wilson

      Re: History

      I saw PEN 15 on a white Roller, a Silver Cloud I think, near Kew Bridge (London) in around 1974. Made my day.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: History

      About fifteen years ago, PEN15 was on a read Porsche 911 in the South London area. There's some plonker who drives a top of the range BMW around Hampstead with the number plate MAF1A. My Siciiian wife spotted it at a petrol station in Belsize Park and actually made a point of telling the driver he was a twat!

    4. micheal

      Re: History PEN 1S

      Steve Parrish had it on his Merc Sports

      1. Shrimpling

        Re: History PEN 1S

        Steve Parrish still had it back in August this year... he also owns 6OCK.

        www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/news-and-views/racing/motogp/20131/august/you-ask-steve-parrish-answers/

        "You have to ask questions about the character of someone who wants that on their car."

        He claims it was to stop his wife driving his cars.

      2. DiViDeD

        Re: History PEN 1S

        I do remember, when I lived in South Wales, there was a neighbour with a dark grey 5 series BMW, plated ADM 1N. To his favour though, he also had a bright red Ferrari plated RAT 10N.

        There was also a Daimler I often saw with the plate JOI 1N, but he'd put the fixing screws in the centre between the I and the 1, making JOHN

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: History

      I saw it in the early '80s parked outside the student house I was living in. It was Lotus of some sort, an Esprit if memory serves.

    6. Sarah Balfour

      Re: History

      One of my mum's late friends had that as her number for years; she didn't mean it to be offensive - it was supposed to be 'Peni's' but, obviously, you can't have punctuation on plates.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I need a break from the Reg...

    Am I the only one who saw CR14 APL and thought of crApple?

    1. Michael Habel

      Re: I need a break from the Reg...

      no you wern't

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: I need a break from the Reg...

        I fell into the same trap....

  11. Miek
    Coat

    It's rather clear that the DVLA cannot spell properly.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Back in the dawn of time my teenage chum had a Triumph Herald with 505 EXY as the plate.

    I bet he wishes that he still owned it :)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wy would he still wish he owned a Triumph Herald?

      1. JimC

        Heralds were neat, that's why. Just as long as its got the original bonnet, not the later pseudo-vitesse one.

    2. xyz Silver badge

      Woman down the road from me has

      O S0 5EXY

      and back in '99 I was terrified my new Merc would turn up with V 51 GNS. Luckily I missed it by 8.

  13. Crisp

    Dirty minded people at the DVLA

    It's a bit of a stretch to see those strings of letters and numbers. The DVLA are acting like schoolboys that have just discovered that they can look up "rude" words in the dictionary.

    1. VinceH

      Re: Dirty minded people at the DVLA

      Wait! What?

      You can look up rude words in the dictionary!?

      But these things are available in schools! BAN THEM!

      1. Irony Deficient

        Re: Dirty minded people at the DVLA

        Wait! What?

        VinceH, where will the kids go on weekdays if schools are banned?

        1. VinceH
          Childcatcher

          Re: Dirty minded people at the DVLA

          Down the mines, where they belong!

  14. Great Bu

    Let's face it, we're all just marking time.....

    ....until August 2019 whan we can get all those '69' plate cars - they can't ban them all !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let's face it, we're all just marking time.....

      September 2019

  15. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    What a load of sh11 tee

    Talk about tenuous, and prudish.

    By this criteria, I'm sure there are many older plates already out there that would fit the criteria.

    Vanity plates are so sad anyway. Besides, why would I want a plate that was easier to remember? Harder to get away with fleeing an accident that way :-)

    1. Sarah Balfour

      Re: What a load of sh11 tee

      That'd be 'criterion' - criteria is plural.

      Yes, I'm a pedant. GFY! ;oP

  16. MYOFB
    WTF?

    A bit late aren't they?!

    I can confirm (as I've seen it with my own eyes more than once) there is a vehicle in the northwest of the UK bearing the registration number: PE51 NIS. They missed that one by a country mile and then some.

    Offensive? Fuck Nooooo!!

    Funny? Sure is.

    DVLA (or any government dept for that matter) should get a life or over themselves. There's too much misery in this country (let alone the world) to be so anal about such innocuous things. Anything that brightens my day by making me smile or laugh is more than welcome in my world.

    Even though it could be construed as "toilet humour", it produced a positive outcome even if only for a few seconds. I'll take that each and every day of the week thanks!!

    ICON?

    Cos I'm sure there's a few cars out there registered with that combination of letters!!

    Wankers!!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's weird what they let through and what they don't.

    There was a Focus (RS I think) near us for years that was "KN03 OFF" Which I think is clearer than many of these banned ones.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spoilsports

    They wouldn't let me have C11NTS for some reason...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Spoilsports

      I should probably add, my name is Clint.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The vanity plate system in Britain is ridiculous. The DVLA make a lot of money by selling plates that could, if you try really hard, be interpreted as a word. Yet it is illegal to alter the font or spacing so that it actually reads like the word you paid for - because that could confuse the OCR on the traffic enforcement cameras.

    They screwed up with the current system by putting a number in the middle of the letters which makes it harder to form a readable word and thereby limits the revenue available from selling vanity plates.

    If they had any sense they would follow the US system. Allow people to have anything they want as their plate - as long as it's unique. That would earn them lots of revenue from vanity plates and people wouldn't have any reason to mess with the font or spacing.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      They should use a system that is more vanity-plate friendly???

      NOOOOOO!! Isn't this country dumbed down enough already?

      1. DiViDeD

        I'm all for dumbed down car rego

        Because it allows me to drive round Australia with the number plate IT GURU

    2. phil dude
      Paris Hilton

      vanity plates, peh!

      of course here in the US you can also hang bulls balls from your bumper....

      P.

  20. kmac499

    Escaped Plates

    As an Avid watcher and spotter of 'cherished' plates here are a few of the ones I've noticed. Personally I lke the ones with a bit of humour in them

    SAR IN on a relatively modest saloon in London

    YE11 SFU on a Mums Taxi \MPV\Van thing Now imagine that rearanged on a fre breathing Lambo or the like.

    STE 4 K on a Butchers Truck

    M1 KES used to be on Ferrari I think (just ask Mike to find out)

    M15S YU or M 15 SYU on a Jag XK8

    M155 YOU on a 1 series BM

    T44 KUP rearranged to T44K UP (in a slightly non standard font) on a horse box

    M155 TLC on a mini Driven by a nurse maybe ???

    Y1 LAY on a Carpet and flooring Van , (Or a geordie chat up line?)

    V15A UK on an X5 bit of a banker

    1 FER on the back of some shiny big red sports car ( probably a ferrari)

    On the ultimate WAG Mobile, an All Black Bentley Continental

    VE 55 SEX respaced to V E55SEX

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Escaped Plates

      H1HBB

      On a Hogs Back Brewery Truck delivering HBB naturally.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: Escaped Plates

        The other neat plate I used to see in Kazakhstan was on a British Truck carrying oil & gas parts from the UK.

        H1KGB

        Think about it....

    2. Soruk

      Re: Escaped Plates

      A while back I saw TB02 FAB on a truck painted with International Rescue graphics!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Escaped Plates

        BJ04 ZOE is my fav, it's on a truck.

    3. Shrimpling

      Re: Escaped Plates

      Somebody near me used to have B16NOB but I haven't seen it recently.

    4. swoosh
      IT Angle

      Re: Escaped Plates

      There used to be a strip club in Edinburgh who had a people carrier with PU51 KAR on it. The club is now gone, but the reg lives on and is now attached to a bog standard Japanese saloon of some sort.

    5. Steve the Cynic

      Re: Escaped Plates

      I once saw a lorry owned by Cosi-Bed (or with their logos on it anyway).

      CO 51 BED

  21. mrfill

    Lennon's Roller...

    ... the psychedelic paint job one, had FUC100C

    1. ducatis'r us

      Re: Lennon's Roller...

      'Fraid not

      http://www.rockstarscars.co.uk/images/john_lennon_rolls_royce_1.jpg

  22. Anon5000
    Joke

    Airstrip One

    In other news, calculators are being re-designed without the numbers 3, 5, 7, 8 and 0 so that children are not exposed to upside down words such as BOOBLESS as this is insensitive to cancer victims.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK "Vanity" Plates

    People actually pay good money for these "non-words" to appear on their car registration plate?

    Unless you can have real words they are utterly pointless.

    Another case of trying to aping the US but getting it horribly wrong. Sigh.

    Oh and having the year in the registration so you burn through the combinations faster is stupid too.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

      Re: UK "Vanity" Plates

      The current year-in-numberplate system will last us until 2049, though.

      Whilst on the subject, what was the original purpose of the year in the reg? And what is its current purpose, other than letting someone (potentially) know whether a vehicle is old or not

      1. VinceH

        Re: UK "Vanity" Plates

        At least part of the purpose is, as you mention, to identify the age of the vehicle - or at least to prevent the vehicle looking newer than it is; you can't apply a registration mark to a car if the car predates the year of the mark*. This was also true with the LNNN LLL plates, where the first letter identified the year.

        * Although there are ways around it, such as (IIRC) importing a vehicle with the number you want and then transferring that number.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: UK "Vanity" Plates

          Vince, thanks for the reply.

          I'm sure that as a kid, we had a car that seemed newer than it was because it was imported second-hand from Ireland by the previous owner, and then registered over here with new plates. I guess that would fit in with your importing loophole.

          It's always something I never really thought was strange - having grown up with it. It wasn't until a few years ago when a friend visiting from abroard questioned it that I started to wonder. After all, accurate age info. Is readily available when needed these days!

  24. Don Jefe

    Start some campaigns that recognize perfectly benign plates as horribly offensive things. Some of the combinations in this story are really reaching anyway, just go all out and confuse the hell out of the DVLA.

    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Happy

      OY! ARE YOU CALLING ME A "R277 BTX"???!

  25. Ken 16 Silver badge

    0 FFS WHY?

    I was annoyed enough when they didn't use '13' registrations in Ireland this year. The only people who can make words out of license plate numbers are the people who buy them and the ones who sell them, noone else cares.

  26. M7S

    If you really want to cause confusion and upset

    Think of a three letter word not currently banned, for the sake of example, lets choose "mim"*. Start something on the internet, mumsnet or the Daily Mail website might be good, about how this is a secret term for something really vile (remember "hobby"? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/nominet_review_of_registration_policy_dot_uk_domain_names/)

    Then whip up a furious campaign about how hundreds of vehicles are driving around with this message concelaed in their registration (eg LB56 MIM), exposing the kids to this vile term and they should all be revoked before the kids google it and clearly the DVLA don't care etc etc, the sort of meaningless froth which panics public figures into soundbites.

    *if this is a term for something nasty already, your author is in genuine ignorance of this.

    I say M15 SPY for sale many many years ago. I wonder if there's a "BT repair van" with blacked out windows and the registration NS4 parked around the corner from the Ecuadorian Embassy? On the topic of offensive registrations, does Eadon (where is he by the way, the place doesnt seem the same without him...) drive around with L1NUX?

  27. clatters

    Two minutes of (ahem) "research" and I found these

    WA14KER (WANKER)

    for £1,599 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=WA14%20KER&price=1599

    PS51LAP (PISSFLAP)

    for £250 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/buy.html?plate=PS51%20LAP&price=250

    AA14NGE (MINGE)

    for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=AA14%20NGE&price=399

    AN14LLY (ANALLY)

    for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/howtobuy.html?plate=AN14%20LLY&price=399

    DH11DOS (DILDOES)

    for £399 http://dvlaregistrations.direct.gov.uk/buy.html?plate=DH11%20DOS&price=399

    Hours of fun to be had...

  28. Kash

    WTF is wrong with the word AL14LAH?

    Why is having a number plate saying god or Allah or Jehovah or Jesus or Bhudda offensive?! Why have they only banned AL14LAH, not JH14 OVA, BU14 DAH, JE14 SUS ?!

    1. Sarah Balfour

      Re: WTF is wrong with the word AL14LAH?

      Simple. They're obviously members of the EDL.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The problem with the DVLA is that they only look at English plates, my wife being dutch is always amused with all the KUT plates about (apologies to any dutch readers) I was very tempted to get her RS11 KUT for her (RS is the initials of her rather odious ex-husband) but he knows enough dutch to complain.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dirty...

    Pretty sure that I've seen a fancy sports car driving around Harrogate with a classy "8 POO" (or was it "8 P00?" licence plate; and I know someone owning a car with "P26 UBE" on its plates...

This topic is closed for new posts.