(The insurance company has been asked more than once to switch it so it's in my name, with her as a ND. Muppets.)
It's more a case that in the UK, to get insurance on a vehicle, you need to designate either a licensed driver or (for cases such as car hire companies) insure it for any driver with a suitable license. (In the case of hire companies, their policies will usually have extra restrictions, particularly age-based.) The minimum required level of insurance is third-party - i.e. you are insured for what damage you may cause to other people.
(There are also insurance policies that cover a driver for multiple arbitrary vehicles - such as a car mechanic picking up or returning customer vehicles.)
It is, of course, illegal to drive a car on the road with no insurance policy covering the combination of you and it.
To get an MOT (as it's still known - the annual vehicle health check) pass, you need the vehicle in question to be tested. (This is required for cars over three years old, on the assumption that a new car should be in good enough condition.)
To get a tax disc (the displayed certificate that the car is taxed), there must be both currently valid insurance for that car and a currently valid MOT. Again, the tax disc is per vehicle.
Any car that isn't displaying a current tax disc (whose colour changes from period to period to make it easier to spot expired ones) will not be legal to take on the road. However, the presence of the tax disc indicates that at the start of its period, there was insurance and MOT - not that those are still valid now.
(Actually, allowances are made for cases of driving the vehicle to a MOT testing centre. Driving a failed test case away from the centre is another matter.)
As a case in point, my car was initially registered a few days after the start of the month. The insurance policy and MOT are due for renewal on the anniversary, but the tax disc, being on a calendar month granularity, requires renewing a few days earlier. So I always end up relying on the about-to-expire MOT and insurance for that. So I could drive for the best part of a year without the insurance or MOT before it became obvious.
There's a recent addition: the SORN (statutory off-road notification) if the car has been previously registered, but you don't want to tax/test/insure it for a while.
]]>There's a reason the US Marine Corps isn't popular in China ...
]]>[*] The one exception I can think of off the top of my head is: if the VOSN certificate has expired, it is illegal to drive the vehicle on the public highway except to take it to a VOSN testing centre. (If you're stopped? Tell the cops which centre you're taking it to, they'll phone to check, and if you've got a valid appointment you're off the hook ... for a couple of hours.)
]]>(As a side benefit, by definition, it would finally solve grand theft auto.)
]]>Yes, very true.
Back in 1940, Roosevelt's price for backing the UK and getting sucked into the war was the shutdown of the British empire; the USA inherited the relics of the European imperial system and didn't know what to do with it (other than install local dictators instead of colonial governors and continue business as usual). Continuing that kind of operation builds ill-will among the colonized; and the last part of the world where the US is still actively trying to maintain its grip is the Middle East.
The long-term solution is to find a replacement for fossil oil addiction (which is economic heroin) and then shut down the support for the local oil autocracies. An average human lifetime later, relations with the former colonies should begin to normalize ...
]]>Vietnam: invaded colonized by France in the 19th century. Let's run the time-line, shall we?
1919: the bodyguards of a certain US President Woodrow Wilson give the bum's rush to a petitioner at Versailles during the post-WW1 peace treaty -- a Vietnamese chef and waiter who wanted to plead for US support for Vietnam's independence.
1940-41: Vietnam colonized invaded by Japan.
1945: Vietnam invaded liberated by the US/allies. French rule is resumed. Unfortunately the anti-Japanese resistance don't get the memo, and have expanded their mission statement from "kick out the Japanese empire" to "kick out all empires, we're ready to go it alone".
1949: the North Vietnamese kick the living shit out of the Waffen SS in exile French Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu.
1950-53: The former waiter makes speeches asking for US aid in setting up an independent democratic Vietnam. The CIA bureau in Tokyo has a single Vietnamese translator who is in the pay of the Chinese (who do not want a US client state in Indochina) so certain bits of his speeches are distorted in translation.
1953-63: the USA gradually backs itself further and further into supporting a corrupt dictatorship in the south ("they're tough on communism, you know") while the north -- despite being run by a guy who started out more or less worshiping the USA as a beacon of hope and freedom -- ends up as a Soviet client state.
The rest we know. And who's laughing now?
]]>(Why the hell did we agree to scrap so much of Bletchley Park's hardware? Or did we? Who knows what GCHQ sat on for so many years — it took them 25 years to admit to having invented an equivalent to RSA.)
To be fair, the Germans were also actively researching in all three fields.
]]>However, I suspect it may have involved a somewhat revanchist British Empire.
]]>As for the Mk IX, it will only have been a handful of years old when the Meteor F.4 came out, so I can't see them all being scrapped that quickly.
Let's say it's 1948, and there's a need for anti-insurgency actions in Malaya. You've got a three year old F.4, or a six year old Spitfire Mk IX. I suspect that the Spit might actually be better for the job.
Of course I'm using a particular mission profile, and I would assume that the Meteor will be the better aircraft in many of the rest.
]]>Sure, the Mk IX will have been the older aircraft, and out of production for a while, and the XII may have been more desirable (though less manoeuvrable). But there were a heck of a lot of them made, and it does take time to replace your entire stock of any aircraft.
(Just look at how long the USAF flew B-52s. Oh, wait, that's have been flying.)
]]>