I looked out of the window in work earlier and saw my trusty Accident sitting alongside a car from Poland and one from Austria. Elsewhere in the car park there are vehicles from Germany and Spain, and there have on occasion been French and Czech examples hiding amongst the locals.

Mine is the only car without the blue-flag-and-country-code tag.*

The UK is the only EU country which doesn’t provide tagged numberplates by default. You can ask for them specially, but they are rare in NI. This is probably because nationalists don’t want a numberplate saying they aren’t Irish, and unionists hate the way it says “GB” instead of “UK”, which implies that NI isn’t British.** Oh, and they hate the EU too. Even non-EU countries are getting in on the act, with Isle of Man cars sporting a fetching equivalent in red.

Less forgivable, and potentially dangerous, is the UK’s bloody-minded resistance to metrication. Since the removal of imperial speed-limit signs in the Republic a couple of years ago, the UK is the last bastion of non-metric units in Europe, and second-last in the world (the other being the USA). Confusion on crossing the Irish border will doubtless soon (if it hasn’t already) be a significant factor in some fatal road accident.

Just bloody Get It Over With, dammit.

* Unless you count the BMW with the BMW badge where the stars should be.
** It makes my blood boil not for political reasons, but because the people who made the decision obviously didn’t know what they were talking about. I choose to believe in stupidity over conspiracy – the latter requires too much competence.