Let's try and stop the epidemic of idiotic antisocial behaviour that seems to be sweeping the country: illegal number plates/registration marks. You know the ones where people have altered the spacing to make a rough approximation of their name; used some godawful font; added an extra screw or two; squished up some characters to try and make another character.

What's the point? They may think it's a bit of harmless fun, but there are plenty of other, legal ways to personalise your vehicle. Number plates are there for a reason, to identify a car owner quickly and easily, particularly in the event of a crime or an accident. The more this behaviour becomes commonplace, the easier it will be for real criminals to hide. For me, it's a sign of the decline of society, lack of respect for others and for a fair law. It's not cool, these people deserve to be ridiculed, the sooner this 'trend' is stamped out, the better.

The police seem unable or unwilling to tackle this problem.

Consider printing out these 'parking tickets' (Colour PDF, Colour image, B&W PDF, B&W image) and 'ticketing' cars you see with illegal plates.

These spoof parking tickets were inspired by the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s

Guidelines

Before ticketing vehicles in your area, it is important to take note of the following important points. We cannot take responsibility for any trouble you may get into with them so please follow our sensible guide to avoiding this.

* To issue a ticket, simply identify a parked vehicle with an illegal numberplate and slip the ticket under the windscreen wiper on the passenger side.
* Avoid folding the ticket. Part of the point of the campaign is that passers by can read the information too.
* Don't issue tickets to moving or occupied vehicles . This might distract the driver and cause an accident.
* Stick to the public highway and never go onto anyone's private property to issue a ticket.
* Use the lightest of touches when issuing the tickets, and take very great care not to damage the vehicle in any way.
* Never use glue or tape, or attach tickets to vehicles with anything else. People in America have been sued for this kind of thing.
* Avoid knowingly ticketing the same vehicle more than once. The tickets should be a gentle hint to help vehicle owners think twice about their choice – not a tool of harassment.
* Please share these guidelines with anyone you pass tickets on to as well.

Some illegal numberplates are worse than others. The worst offenders can alter spacing, font and misrepresent characters while others just alter one space. So where do you draw the line? Well as far as we are concerned, the law draws the line as it sets out clear and definite rules, so it's zero tolerance to any deviation from that. However, we thought it might be interesting and quite fun even to come up with some sort of 'scoring' system to measure plates against each other. Hopefully it will help to encourage further discussion and comments on the flickr photos too. So we have come up with the following:

each space added - score 1 twitpoint
each space removed - score 1 twitpoint
incorrect badge/logo - score 1 twitpoint
incorrect font - score 2 twitpoints
misuse of screw - score 2 twitpoints
altering a character by squashing it/removing part of it etc. - score 3 twitpoints

Examples:


addition of space between C and 2 = 1 twitpoint
removal of space between 2 and A = 1 twitpoint
total twitpoints = 2



incorrect font = 2 twitpoints



misuse of screw = 2 twitpoints
incorrect 7 character = 3 twitpoints
removal of space between 7 and Y = 1 twitpoint
addition of space between o and o = 1 twitpoint
total twitpoints = 7