UK Driving Licence Rant

At centre top the orange covered licence is from 1926. Issued by a County Council it is a simple single-fold piece of high-quality card. Opening it up the driver's details are on the LH side and the blank RH side is headed "Endorsements" in Old English lettering. Moving clockwise are licences from 1961, and 1974 both issued by County Councils. The dark red one from 1974 is quite nice little item in cloth covered-card with a reinforcing scrim on the hinge.

Some time after 1974 licencing was taken away from County Councils by the DVLC and economies started to appear. . . The fourth licence illustrated, from 1977, consisted of a single sheet of A4 paper in pink and green, cleverly formatted to be folded 4 times to fit into a neat plastic pouch (also supplied) and resulting in a durable item scarcely larger that the earlier versions.

The final licence on the right with which all present day drivers are familiar, needs no description. It is euphemistically named the Photocard Licence and every time I come across it I feel the need of a good rant. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against the idea of a plastic credit card-sized licence with one's photo on it. It is a very good idea, but apparently, at the time it was mooted, the technology was either too expensive or just not up to storing all the data needed on a plastic card.

At this stage one would have thought an obvious solution would have been to keep the earlier licence and added a decent sized photo to it, as in the manner of a passport. But no, instead of rethinking and backtracking (perhaps it had gone too far and too much money had been spent) they compromised by keeping the inadequate card with a vanishingly small photo and supplementing it with an A4 sheet of flimsy paper on which all remaining data could be stored (including endorsements), i.e. we were to be saddled with an inconvenient marriage of 15th & 20th century technologies giving us two items to look after instead of just one. When they were first issued, this problem of keeping them together was obviously forseen and a special plastic wallet was supplied, but this has long since been discontinued and the driving public has been left to shift for itself.. . .

To compound the annoyance the licence holder is sternly warned that neither part of the licence is valid by itself and both parts must be produced together whenever required.

Well thanks a lot! I hope the Government Minister responsible for pushing this dog's breakfast through feels ashamed of himself - but I doubt it.

An Arundel Tomb

This 14th. century tomb to Richard Fitzalan, 2nd Earl of Arundel and his wife Eleanor is in Chichester Cathedral, moved there from Lewes Priory after the dissolution of the monastries. Their poses are unique. Her right leg is crossed over her left so that she is slightly turned to her "Lord", her right hand is lightly clasped in his ungauntletted left. Their feet rest on their pet dogs. It has been made famous by a wonderful poem by Philip Larkin. Here is the last verse:-

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

from "The Whitsun Weddings"

Last Lines 1

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

From Middlemarch (1871–72) by George Eliot.