The MOT test

[paulob1]

yes i think thats more the truth, no tax or MOT...its a system that is easily abused and the rules put in place to catch them actually annoy honest decent drivers more than the criminals.

 

My personal examples

 

80 pounds for not SORNING my tax free M62

80 pounds for not SORNING my tax free stalwart

80 Pounds for not having a tax disc 11 days after the old one had expired. Even though the new one covered the whole of the month once it was taxed...and I was in the car park of the post office going to get my tax disc. the reason for the delay, tax and MOT run out end of december, you try to get an MOT before the end of the year, so its wait until the New year, and then one day leads to another and you are at the 11th big deal. I had a very very nice foreign speaking man from the DVLA who could not speak english properly trying to tell me I had to pay up, and I should have walked to the post office to collect my tax disc.

 

I refused to pay every single one of the fines. Choosing to let the courts decide what is right. i never paid a penny. I dont mean to be a rebel but this is madness gone beyond.

 

I have over 40 vehicles all with various tax discs, some free some not, all are a pain in the administration butt...and sometimes I forget that the bike that has stood in my garage for the past 5 years needs yet another form to be filled in to tell them it is still there...how stupid is that.

 

THE DVLA make up rules and statistics to help them justify more fines to keep themselves employed. (simplistic I know but not overly so) They will use these stats and manipulate them to say just what they want...REMEMBER THE BIKE FIASCO A FEW YEARS AGO...45% of all bikes are untaxed. They forget to add that of those 45% SOME 90% ARE ACTUALLY OFF THE ROAD..this was their attempt to have chips fitted to the number plates of cars...that one nearly got through, luckily they were found out to be not telling the whole truth.

 

It is only partially about road safety, road sensibility and road responsibility...and in my personal opinion, only very very very partially to do with the latter issues. it is more primarily another tax department. ANYONE THAT THINKS DIFFERENTLY HAS HIS EYES SHUT OR WORKS IN GOVERNMENT FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE OR EVEN WORSE THE DVLA.

 

The MOT is just another part of the process of control, money extraction and job creation. The latter commendable but not at our expense...

Edited May 19, 2011 by paulob1

[ArtistsRifles]

That takes us into the other area the crooks get way with it a lot of the time - number plate cloning.

Some few years ago I got a rather nasty letter from the authorities telling me a car I owned had been seen on the road in an unfit state, checking showed it had no tax or MOT and therefore I was being fined a rather large number of ££'s. I rang the phone number given - not sure if it was DVLA or a satellite - and objected saying it wasn't me so I wasn't paying. Upshot was the onus was put on me to prove it wasn't me or my car else the accusation stood. I still declined to pay so a couple of days later there is a knock on the door and two coppers are there to talk to me about my "offence". All I did was open the garage door and let them see the old car with the registration number that was claimed to have committed the offences sitting there festooned with cobwebs and partially stripped, obviously not having turned a wheel in yonks then show them the V5 which clearly stated I had owned it for a few years. Got an apology from the police but nothing from the <censoreds> who issued the letter!

 

Biggest joke of all was the car was built in 1963 thus was actually tax exempt and the plates had been seen on a 1980's vehicle of the same marque.

 

Doesn't matter how conscientious we are when it comes to getting things taxed and tested and insured - the crooks will ALWAYS ignore the same rules no matter how much they are allegedly tightened because the current system does not implicate or punish them, rather it takes the easy option of picking on the innocent victims.

Probably as an easy form of "stealth" taxation if one were to be brutally honest.