'ere, a petition for you all to sign.

Unless I'm mising something if the vehicle had wound up back on the road it would have been me that got the letters about speed cameras, parking tickets and maybe even congestion charges?

The central record of vehicle "ownership" is used for many purposes, some good and some not so good, aslong as it is used for these purposes I believe that it is in all of our interests to keep it as accurate as possible and that an annual SORN is more effective at this as anything else would be.

I think Austins already covered this, a followup letter is fine, but in the event of someone (thats me in thecase I highlighted) forgetting to followup if that letter isn't received an annual SORN serves as a reminder.

I'm afraid that there are perfectly sane thinking people out here that think the current system is OK. They're not trollsand they have thought it through for themselves!

It's hardly suitable. As I said, it can be up to a year after the event that you get the "reminder" and the "reminder" letters aren't guaranteed themselves, if you could forget the followup letter, or if that followup letter isn't received, then the same thing can happen with the yearly SORN reminders.

Not really. It's not suitable as a means of confirming correct transfer of ownership, the fact that it can do so in a very untimely and unreliable fashion is a byproduct of the excessive beaurocracy that it signifies.

I think you've hit a point there, apart from my wish for someone to attempt to justify 'registration' it would seem repetitive SORN is merely an admission that DVLA are not fit for purpose in that they cannot be trusted to keep records! I'm currently attempting to register my new acquisition. Swansea claim they cannot do it because I am not resident in Mainland UK, wherever that is, Coleraine refuse to recognise Swansea's documentation and require me to complete a new registration application by hand. FFS is it any surprise I think they're all a waste of space!

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

It's that big kinda islandy thing, generally known as Great Britain, and consisting of England, Scotland, Wales. If you aren't resident in one of those three, then - no, you don't register your car with DVLA Swansea.

So you're in NI? Right. So you don't register with Swansea. Next.

And that's Swansea's fault? How?

I'm sure the feeling's reciprocated.

However the documentation V5? insists one does!

And there was me thinking it was now joined up government.

I very much doubt they could find their arse with both hands let alone feel their ineptitude exists!

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Re-read it. If you're taking it outside GB, it doesn't.

Whatever, so obtuse that the process becomes incredably boring.

I did and cannot find anything to that effect, maybe it's in the Welsh on the back?

The correspondence from Swansea specifically said Mainland UK, which is ficticious and not GB which is the statutary entity!

How can Mainland UK be fictitious? It's a socking great lump of terra firma, if it doesn't exist I'd have sunk on my way back home tomight ;)

It is a myth!

The country is the United Kingdom, UK for short. The UK is by statute The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Check in your passport if you don't believe me. Great Britain is correctly described above. NB there is no mention of Mainland UK at all. It is ficticious, it does not exist, it isn't, it if it wasn't nailed to the perch it would fall off! It is a connivance concocted by those too lazy to know any better, in particular the various courier companies who feel they need to surcharge carriage to Northern Ireland and have not the whit to describe it correctly. One would expect an part the UK government to know what constitutes the country and to correctly use the statutary description. I think there are specific laws about describing it incorrectly but these seem not to matter any more.

Now I understand what they mean by it but why must they invent a new name for it. Is it not a spade, why call it a shovel! It is Great Britain, NOT Mainland UK.

Anyway managed to register my acquisition this morning, curious, in spite of it being disowned by Swansea, it is not considered a first registration in Northern Ireland.

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Right, here y'go...

The fr "THIS SECTION CANNOT BE USED WHEN TRANSFERRING A VEHICLE BETWEEN GB AND NI. THIS _WILL NOT_ PRODUCE A REGISTRATION CERTIFICATE" The capitals and underlining are THEIR emphasis, not mine.

The back of section 11 - Permanent Export - says "Transfers between GB and NI must be notified to the appropriate licencing authority"

The instructions are quite clear that any export - which it seems fairly emphatic that GB to NI is - should see the main bit of the V5C handed to the new owner and the purple section 11 sent back to DVLA.

I fail to see how it could be much clearer, really.

Them bits were no longer with the V5 I had. The back of all I had was in Welsh!

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

So what bit DID you get?

SFAIR the V5C, the bit with all the vehicular details, as space for the new keeper, me, couple of of signature boxes, that's about all, can't check because DVLNI (Belfast) kept it, assuring me I would get a new one in the post.

Quite why they cannot exchange the information without me having to copy it longhand onto a duplicate piece of paper for them to type into some blackhole escapes me. Mind you their capacity for losing information on transfer is legendary these days, so maybe it is better that we remain in the mid 19th century? At least they've progressed beyond cleft stick technology, now using the penny post! Mind you they still haven't grasped the concept of the credit card, progress there has reached the heady heights of debit cards. The gentleman checking that forms are filled in right @ front of house couldn't grasp the concept that he should take note of my comments and cause action on them rather than me fill in a complaints form. He is the face of DVLNI, IT IS his job to respond to his customers!! I guess he'll be out of one soon enough. I'm led to believe Coleraine will be assimilated by 2009!

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Just a single double-sided page?

Front is a title page, back has the details on?

No back had same as front but in Welsh.

GbH ("GbH" ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Fuck knows what it was, then, but it doesn't sound like the half of the V5C you should have been given.

It wasn't awfully helpful in terms of instructions! I think Swansea could have been more useful since they saw it all! 'You done it wrong' is not awfully helpful!