----- Original Message -----
From: "Gavin Broad" <invest@portsmouth-mann.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 10:00 PM
Subject: [MV] 3 inches matters after all.
> Hi Richard and List,
>
> It would seem that this is a good time to "go european" (I really don't
> believe I said that! :-)) and challenge this at Eu level.
>
Hmmmmm, well, I'm English and slightly xenophobically the "Europeans" start
at the other side of the English Channel which has served us so well for all
these years and I wonder what the now tiny and fast dwindling band of two
World Wars vets think of being ruled from afar, cynically it has come/is
coming after they've virtually all gone; likely depends on the chances of
that nice Mr Blair retaining office after the next petrol blockade or the
ostensibly harder anti-EU line being touted as a vote winner by that nice Mr
Haig.
On this score bear in mind with the French rates of vehicle duty and
half-price fuel they can actually ship a truck over here to do two 38 mile
on-contract trips a week in the Midlands cheaper than a UK firm, this helps
to understand the upset about fuel costs here.
> Alternatively, what do the British regs say about how long an (e.g.)
> French-registered vehicle can stay on the road in the UK without leaving
> the country?
>
A grey area. Certainly the plod do notice foreign registered students cars
and after some months observation to show they are not transient they lean,
politely, on them to re-register in the UK under our rules or take the car
back home.
The MV scene could be heavily impinged if some civil servant jobsworth
starts looking very closely at specs and we would have to fight the
registration refusal, even so its not illegal in a band from 2.52m to some
greater width as all you need is to notify the local plod, likely after many
of us have clogged their system with trivial paperwork for the odd couple of
mile movement they would likely tell us to B off and stop bothering them.
It is a job for the FBHVC, maybe a similar dispensation along the lines of
our 25yr Historic Vehicle road fund excise duty waiver might be applied in a
minor over-width band owing to the tiny numbers and the insignificant annual
mileage, there are no documented records of any such MV causing any road
hassles. In truth if you park any FV600 chassis MV next to a "legal"
tractor unit attached to a 17.5m long, triple axle, 40 ton semi trailer it
does almost pall into insignificance, the surplus 1 1/2 inches is only the
reduction hubs anyway not the actual bulk of the vehicle.
Even so I am considering officially "correcting" my V5 registration document
by filling out the changes section on the reverse to correctly read "FV623"
instead of "Stalwart" in the model designation, it is after all absolutely
correct and somewhat less meaningful to the clerics of officialdom. . . . .
. . . . .
Richard
Southampton - England
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 01 2000 - 21:37:47 PST