GB plates scrapped
Discussion
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/04/changi...
Very quietly sneaked out last week. As of September you'll need UK stickers/plates instead.
Why the f
k would anyone have thought this needed doing? Thats if they thought at all - obviously no consideration given for people with existing stock or needing to arrange new stuff.
Very quietly sneaked out last week. As of September you'll need UK stickers/plates instead.
Why the f
k would anyone have thought this needed doing? Thats if they thought at all - obviously no consideration given for people with existing stock or needing to arrange new stuff.pquinn said:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/07/04/changi...
Very quietly sneaked out last week. As of September you'll need UK stickers/plates instead.
Why the f
k would anyone have thought this needed doing? Thats if they thought at all - obviously no consideration given for people with existing stock or needing to arrange new stuff.
It's an obvious output of Brexit isn't it?Very quietly sneaked out last week. As of September you'll need UK stickers/plates instead.
Why the f
k would anyone have thought this needed doing? Thats if they thought at all - obviously no consideration given for people with existing stock or needing to arrange new stuff.Evanivitch said:
It's an obvious output of Brexit isn't it?
Huh?We had to have 'GB' on our plates or a sticker regardless. Except now they're making everyone with a GB sticker or plate change it to 'UK' for no apparent reason. Nothing to do with Brexit AFAICS.
Even if your car has GB on the number plate, you'll have to put a 'UK' sticker on the car as well if driving abroad. Utterly pointless.
Funk said:
Huh?
We had to have 'GB' on our plates or a sticker regardless. Except now they're making everyone with a GB sticker or plate change it to 'UK' for no apparent reason. Nothing to do with Brexit AFAICS.
Even if your car has GB on the number plate, you'll have to put a 'UK' sticker on the car as well if driving abroad. Utterly pointless.
I thought the EU had a harmonised system with the EU flag and country identifier on the number plate itself. Now as a result of Brexit you can't get a 'UK' plate with the EU flag incorporated and have it remain legal on it's own in Europe, you need the sticker.We had to have 'GB' on our plates or a sticker regardless. Except now they're making everyone with a GB sticker or plate change it to 'UK' for no apparent reason. Nothing to do with Brexit AFAICS.
Even if your car has GB on the number plate, you'll have to put a 'UK' sticker on the car as well if driving abroad. Utterly pointless.
Funk said:
Evanivitch said:
It's an obvious output of Brexit isn't it?
Huh?We had to have 'GB' on our plates or a sticker regardless. Except now they're making everyone with a GB sticker or plate change it to 'UK' for no apparent reason. Nothing to do with Brexit AFAICS.
Even if your car has GB on the number plate, you'll have to put a 'UK' sticker on the car as well if driving abroad. Utterly pointless.
Good to see they're correcting the error. GB doesn't include Northern Ireland, so it's right to change it.
Evanivitch said:
My mistake, I thought Northern Ireland had used a separate number player identifier to GB prior to Brexit, but appears not.
Good to see they're correcting the error. GB doesn't include Northern Ireland, so it's right to change it.
My view too. They should also stop referring to the British Olympic team as "Team GB" for the same reason. It should be Team UK.Good to see they're correcting the error. GB doesn't include Northern Ireland, so it's right to change it.
Eric Mc said:
Evanivitch said:
My mistake, I thought Northern Ireland had used a separate number player identifier to GB prior to Brexit, but appears not.
Good to see they're correcting the error. GB doesn't include Northern Ireland, so it's right to change it.
My view too. They should also stop referring to the British Olympic team as "Team GB" for the same reason. It should be Team UK.Good to see they're correcting the error. GB doesn't include Northern Ireland, so it's right to change it.

The problem is Ireland - it always has been. Many of these international designations were introduced just at the moment when MOST of Ireland left the UK (1921). Before 1921, the simple situation was that, even if Ireland was still part of the UK, the international agreement would have been Great British cars would carry GB plates and Irish cars (even though part of the UK) would carry IRL plates.
The Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921 messed up that nice neat arrangement.
All UK civil aircraft carry a "G" prefix - which is not really correct either as the "G" comes from "GB", not "UK" - and Northern Irish based aircraft also carry a "G" prefix.
To make matters even more complex, the Isle of Man, which used to have "G" prefix aircraft, now have an "M" prefix of their own.
The Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921 messed up that nice neat arrangement.
All UK civil aircraft carry a "G" prefix - which is not really correct either as the "G" comes from "GB", not "UK" - and Northern Irish based aircraft also carry a "G" prefix.
To make matters even more complex, the Isle of Man, which used to have "G" prefix aircraft, now have an "M" prefix of their own.
Bill said:
AIUI we have GB by international convention, has this changed or is this another half-arsed nonsense from a government who've just put a customs border in the Irish Sea?
FWIW, ISO 3166 alpha-2 denotes 'GB' as the code for 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland', but also has 'UK' exceptionally reserved for the United Kingdom (and also observes that 'UK' is used by European Commission whereas it almost always uses ISO 3166 alpha-2 elsewhere).So, when we were part of the EU, we used 'GB' on the number plates even though the EC officially prefers 'UK'. Now we're not in the EU, we're finally going with the EC's choice. I'd call that top trolling.
Note we also go with '.uk' as the internet Top Level Domain designation, but '.gb' was actually registered at one point, used in a few instances and then all but abandoned - you cannot currently register a '.gb' domain name, as far as I'm aware.
The brouhaha is all down to the sensitivities of 'Great Britain' as a geographical entity, excluding Northern Ireland. Personally, had I been running the ISO categorisation effort back in the day, in order to avoid issues over historical geographic spats I'd have given them all numbers, in hexadecimal, and told them to STFU and get on with it.
Edited by eharding on Monday 5th July 11:15
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