Red Tape at its Finest - The DVLA

I'm feeling a lot of anger towards the DVLA today. DVLA stands for Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. They are the people who issue UK driver licenses. And they are useless.

I'm finally changing my Canadian license to a UK one. This should have been done a few years ago according to my insurance and they are a bit ticked off it wasn't done before. Ticked off enough to strike me off our car insurance policy until it's changed. So no driving for me until this is all done.

Okay, no big deal, just send in all my paperwork and my Canadian license and my passport. Within 15 working days, I should get my new license back. Of course, there will be the problem that the DVLA say that Canadian licenses don't specify if I can drive a manual transmission, so it will likely say that I'm only allowed to drive an automatic. Never mind the fact that Albertan licenses DO in fact have a classification for people who can only drive an automatic on them, that doesn't count according to the DVLA. I don't know what they want - to have sat with me when I did my test in a tiny manual hatchback that wintery afternoon of 1987? Of course neither of our cars is automatic, just like 84% of the cars on the road in the UK.

So I go and spend loads of money on sending all the documents special delivery and also enclose another prepaid special delivery envelope to get my passport back in (as they send that before the license is ready). This week there was a special delivery for me but I wasn't in to get it. I figured it was my passport but it had to wait until G was back from his business trip so he could chauffeur me over to the main post office in Maidenhead to pick it up.

I went to pick it up today and see that it wasn't just my passport, it was ALL of my documents. Apparently, I forgot to tick one box. The box that asks if I need corrective lenses to read a number plate (license plate) from 20.5 metres away. I left that blank for two reasons. One, on the form, it says if you already have a license, don't bother to fill that out. Their own form says to leave it blank! Two, if they had bothered to look at my Canadian license, they would see that I do have that classification requiring corrective lenses. But noooooooooo, that might mean they would also see that I'm not limited to the classification of driving only an automatic!

What really gets on my nerves, is they ask you for your phone number and email in case there are any "problems" with your paperwork. If this was not a case for contacting me, I don't know what would be?!?!

I am so steaming about this. So bloody blinkered and useless to be unable to contact me to ask me. Instead send it all the way back to me so I can once again pay loads of money to send it to you registered mail and be even longer without the ability to drive safely insured. Twats. Twatty twatty twattery to top all twattery.

Warnings!

Both of these signs can be found in Cookham village. They scream "Look out! There are criminals about!" to me. And yet, I don't get the feeling that Cookham suffers that much crime. Yes, I've read that some cars have been broken into for laptops, satellite navigation systems or mobile phones; but it's not like it's a huge number of vehicles.

So why the very visible signs all over the place? I would think that it's only common sense not to leave valuables out on display. Why do the police have to tell us? Is that their way of passing the buck back when someone reports a car break-in? A sort-of "we told you so"?

Britain has lots of these warnings. On the radio there are regular community announcements telling you to be careful of all sorts of things. People coming to your door and offering services or telling you to not put boxes of expensive Christmas presents out for the paper recycling collection too early or in one piece (in that criminals could scope out what you got and decide if your home is worth breaking into). There's a couple such ads on TV right now too. One has a couple showing a would-be burglar around their house, showing how their burglar alarm doesn't work, how their valuables are out on display, how flimsy their back door is, etc etc. The other has a guy in a bar showing the would-be thief his new flashy mobile phone and telling him he'll just leave it on the table while he goes to the toilet so he has a good opportunity to take it.

Coming from Germany, where this type of ad or warning isn't common, I don't know quite what to think. So rather than letting myself get worked up by an ad, I went and read the EU crime and safety survey. Actually, I didn't read all 118 pages of the report, I read the press release summaries for the UK and Germany and skimmed through some of the points in the report.

All in all, the UK does have a higher crime rate than Germany. In fact, the UK has the second highest level for theft from cars out of the 18 countries measured. Only Estonia is higher. Germany in contrast, has the second lowest rate. But that isn't quite as dramatic as it sounds. Germany's rate for theft from cars is just under 2% and the UK's is 6%. So four more out of every 100 cars will be broken into. I admit, I don't want our car to be one of those extra 4 (or the first 2 either), but I'm not sure it justifies the warning signs. I think having signs like that just creates an atmosphere of fear. Perhaps others think differently...

Inside every German lives a Policeman

That's the title of an article from The Telegraph. The author talks about how Germans always feel the need to tell you the right way to do things. And she's right, they do do that, for better or worse. But what I found amusing was one of the examples she listed as perhaps "worse behaviour" is one of the things I think is worse here in the UK. She writes:

For anyone visiting Germany for the first time, one of the things that you notice almost immediately is the orderliness of the country. It is striking to see that all cars are parked in the direction of the traffic. Imagine trying to impose such rules in Britain, or even more ridiculous, in Bangkok or Mexico City.

This is one of the more annoying aspects of driving in the UK; the fact that cars are parked in either direction on both sides of the street. The number of times G or myself have turned onto a street and suddenly panicked is countless. We turn the corner and seeing all the cars facing us we both fear that we've turned the wrong way onto a one-way street. The feeling usually only lasts about 10-20 seconds, until we realise we must be on a two way street because there are street signs facing us, but it's pretty upsetting at first. On this point, I really wish the Brits would take a page out of the German book.

Transporting the Troops

So we have bought a car. We've had a rental the last 2 weeks, which I've been bravely driving around without incident. But that has to go back on Thursday, so we bought a car. We bought it at a "car supermarket" which is something I hadn't heard of before. Basically, it's a company with lots and lots of cars. The turnover of cars is so high, they can afford to keep the price pretty low. You don't haggle, you don't get to test drive. You can sit in it, start it up, but that's it. The place we went to deals mainly with cars that had been used for companies, so they have a fair amount of mileage on them for relatively new cars. However, they are also several thousand less than the new price for 6-month old cars.

We bought a black Ford Focus. Ford Focuses are apparently Britain's most popular car, so there were several to choose from. For those who like all the nitty-gritty details, it's a 1.4L LX Focus. We did have our eye on a Sport model, but it was already taken when we went back, so we settled for our second choice. There's not a lot of difference between the 2 anyways, and this one was 300 pounds less with less mileage, so we can live without the alloy wheels. It's pretty roomy in the trunk and has 4 doors, so getting the baby and baby equipment around shouldn't be an issue.

The young fellow serving us was pretty amusing. He had had a bad day when we went in to make a down payment on it and was ticked off with all his colleagues and the entire place. So absolutely no hard sell on any of the extras, he just wanted to get out of there. I'm off to get a banker's draft made up for the rest so we can pick it up tomorrow. I'll maybe try and post a picture or two in a few days, both of the car and the area.

In England

My first post from the United Kingdom! The invasion is complete, the entire c'lonial force is now in the same country. So much happened in the last few days, I don't have time for a full update right now. I'm at the library and only have a short amount of time to use the computer - we don't have access from at home yet - so just a few short points to tell you about:

• I love our neighbourhood. This is already pretty clear to me. It's pretty rural, but it makes a great change from the busy street we used to live on with the heavy traffic noise.
• I still go to the wrong side of the car to get in, but am fairly okay with driving on the wrong/left side of the road. In fact, we were watching TV last night and I was confused as to why Tom Hanks was driving on the right in the movie.
• Still several things left to do in Germany, like officially deregister, but everything can be done from here via email or fax. I was so busy the last few days I'm really happy to have left, to be honest. I think homesickness will hit sooner or later though.
• Paperwork in the UK is just as bad, if not worse, than Germany.
• At a later point, I will have to write about how frustrating I find it to have switches on all the electrical outlets.
• Lots of boxes still to unpack, but G made a good start without me and we did some more on the weekend. Part of it is finding a good place to put things, not just unpacking them.
• Getting used to an English keyboard again is amusing to me. Lots of misplaced letter Zs instead of Ys and funkz punctuation.

Time's up on the computer here, so more another day. Hopefully a post about the last frantic 48 hours in Germany.