"Clive Page" wrote in message
...

One notes with surprise that an extraordinary number of shop-fronts and
commercial vehicles appear to have been re-painted in the brief period
during which the area codes were 0207 and 0208, and not to have been
re-painted afterwards. What a pity that nobody told them to wait for
the second number change of the pair. :-)

I would hardly say 'with surprise', Clive. The whole exercise was so
spectacularly mismanaged and the misinformation or disinformation that was
received by the general public at large made such a shambles a foregone
conclusion. If I had been the owner of a property or vehicle that had been
erroneously numbered as a result of this mismanagement then I would have
been making a considerable amount of noise about who would be compensating
me for correcting the situation!

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
. ..

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

True. Then again, it had become quite meaningless anyway with large-scale
commercial registrations or with garage chains registering vehicles in
their
head office area before shipping them to their salesrooms.

And of course there's the notorious dodge used by most coach companies: they
register their coaches in Northern Ireland which for some strange reason has
never adopted any of the ABC 123A, A123 ABC or AB05 ABC formats used by the
rest of the UK - hence their coaches don't bear any recognisable clue about
their age, to prevent the punters worrying about travelling on 10-year-old
(but imacculate) coaches. Take a look at the next few coaches you see, and
you'll see that I'm right!

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter
location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

Yes, Yorkshire is an oddity in the new system, in that the Yorkshire
registration district only covers South and West Yorkshire (YA to YO being
Leeds office and YP to YY being Sheffield office). For some reason East
and
North Yorkshire are lumped in with Teesside and Tyneside as the North
registration district, split into three offices (NA to NM at Newcastle, NN
to NT at Stockton and NU to NY at Beverley).

And of course so many cars have personalised numberplates these days that
you often cannot tell anything about a car's age or place of "birth".

It probably says something about my personality, but if someone offered me a
personalised numberplate I'd say no thanks: if a code exists, it seems only
right to use it and not to buck the system. Plus I don't want my car to
stand out from all the rest.

Whoever decided that '0' should represent March registrations and '5'
October? What happens if, at some time in the future, they decide to use
every month as a registration month?

I presume that this possibility was considered and rejected when the
numbering scheme was planned. The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) + 50.

I'd better shut up or you'll be thinking that I'm as obsessive as my mate
the walking look-up table ;-) Oh, too late...

I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing! Especially from someone who has the
registrations table saved in a Word document!! ;-))

Have a Happy New Year, Martin.

And you!

PS: I have to confess that I have all the STD codes saved as a Word
document, mainly so that if someone gives me a phone number I can tell
roughly where it relates to...

"Jack Taylor" wrote in message
...

"Clive Page" wrote in message
...

One notes with surprise that an extraordinary number of shop-fronts and
commercial vehicles appear to have been re-painted in the brief period
during which the area codes were 0207 and 0208, and not to have been
re-painted afterwards. What a pity that nobody told them to wait for
the second number change of the pair. :-)

I would hardly say 'with surprise', Clive. The whole exercise was so
spectacularly mismanaged and the misinformation or disinformation that was
received by the general public at large made such a shambles a foregone
conclusion. If I had been the owner of a property or vehicle that had been
erroneously numbered as a result of this mismanagement then I would have
been making a considerable amount of noise about who would be compensating
me for correcting the situation!

I'm usually fairly clued-up about technical changes like this, but I hadn't
appreciated that there was an interim time when 0208 xxx yyyy and xxx yyyy
were valid: I thought they went straight from 0171 xxx yyyy to 020 7xxx
yyyy. What a shame the Oftel made such a dog's breakfast of the changes in
London and didn't have the foresight to go straight from 01 xxx yyyy to 020
7xxx yyyy in one go :-(

I've seen quite a few vehicles which even to this day bear phone numbers
such as 01532 xxxxxx or 01734 xxxxxx, having blindly applied the "insert a
1" rule to codes that changed completely - eg to 0113 or 0118.

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

The 1966 vehicle registrations letters can be found on my web site, in a
link from http://www.btinternet.com/~terry.harper/gallery.htm at the bottom
of the page. There were earlier lists which used to appear in each year's AA
handbook. Back when H and HX and lots of Mx combinations were Middlesex, for
example.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
75th Anniversary 2004, see http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

In message , Clive Page
writes
Hence the continued confusion, or at least lack of concern with putting
the space in the right place when quoting a number.
If there was meant to be a space, then just type it in and see just how
far you get before getting number unobtainable.
--
Clive.

"Terry Harper" wrote in message
...
"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

I know the situation in Yorkshire better than Anglia: at one time UA, UB,
UM
were Leeds, YG was Bradford, CX was Huddersfield and HL was Wakefield.
These
were merged so that all these letters signified "somewhere in West
Yorkshire". I think the size of the region covered was further increased
with the new-style AA05 BBB numberplates. I'm not sure why they even
bothered to use new letters: the A123 BCD format had a two-letter
location
code (CD) so why not continue to use the same code in the new-style
numberplates? Methinks that they took the opportunity to rationalise
(merge)
some of the issuing offices at the same time.

The 1966 vehicle registrations letters can be found on my web site, in a
link from http://www.btinternet.com/~terry.harper/gallery.htm at the
bottom
of the page. There were earlier lists which used to appear in each year's
AA
handbook. Back when H and HX and lots of Mx combinations were Middlesex,
for
example.

Gosh, I'd forgotten that single letters could also be used to denote the
place. Mind you, the whole subject of pre-1963 number plates and the variety
of forms that were used over the years has got me baffled. Interesting to
see that the code included the Republic of Ireland at that time, before the
modern 05-D-12345 or 03-WX-12345 format came into being, the letter/letters
denoting the county - Dublin and Wexford in my example.

Why do modern diaries not carry this list: it used to be in the front of
every pocket diary at one time.

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two digits are
always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles registered between
September and March, the two digits are always (year of the September) +
50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March 2011, if
they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0' to indicate March
registrations and '5' to indicate September and the other digit to represent
the last digit of the year! There will still be plenty of vehicles on the
road registered in March 2001 as aa01 abc. Should be interesting!

"Terry Harper" wrote in message
...

The 1966 vehicle registrations letters can be found on my web site, in a
link from http://www.btinternet.com/~terry.harper/gallery.htm at the
bottom
of the page. There were earlier lists which used to appear in each year's
AA
handbook. Back when H and HX and lots of Mx combinations were Middlesex,
for
example.

Interesting! I shall have to fish out my pocket book, which was (I think)
from about 1971. I notice that EG, EW and FL were all ascribed to
Huntingdonshire and Peterborough. In practise, EG and FL were used for
Peterborough registrations and EW for Huntingdonshire. Additionally, AV was
transferred from Aberdeenshire to Peterborough from about 1974.

Jack Taylor wrote:
"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

The code that they've used is quite cunning:
for vehicles registered between March and September, the two
digits are always the last two digits of the year; for vehicles
registered between September and March, the two digits are always
(year of the September) + 50.

What I still don't understand is what is going to happen in March
2011, if they continue with the present logic, which is to use '0'
to indicate March registrations and '5' to indicate September and
the other digit to represent the last digit of the year!

The logic is to use the last two digits of the year for Mar-Aug
registrations, ditto plus 50 for Sep-Dec, and the same code for Jan &
Feb of the following year. So Mar-Aug 2011 will be 11 and Sep 2011 to
Feb 2012 will be 61. This formula will be valid until 28 Feb 2051, the
last two 6-month periods using the codes 50 and 00.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Clive Page wrote:
In article ,
Richard J. writes
It wasn't a simple change, as a digit which was part of the
exchange code was moved into the subscriber's number. It was
actually the 4th number change that London has endured.

I think it was actually the fifth, as explained below. I think also
that the current inability of people to format numbers correctly
(i.e. in accordance with ITU recommendation E.123) arises partly
from the fact that the last "change" was actually two transitions
about six months apart.

It may have something to do with the fact that people have no idea what
ITU or E.123 are. Please provide a reference to these alleged
standards.

The first transition was the introduction of the "020" code running
in parallel with the old codes, but with the local numbers staying
at seven digits. During this short period you could call (e.g.)
London Transport enquiries from a telephone in London by dialling
any of the following: "222 1234"

Not true. Since there was at that time an 0181 222 exchange as well as
an 0171 222 exchange, the 222 xxxx format would not have been unique.

or "0171 222 1234" or "0207 222 1234" so that the new area codes
were then genuinely "0207" and "0208".

I doubt it. Do you have any evidence of official approval of "0207 xxx
yyyy" formats?

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)