The Grandparents’ Blog

Now I am in my late sixties, I believe I need to rant a bit more often – so here goes!

UK motorists are being converted from the old paper driving licence that slowly disintegrates over a driver’s lifetime.  This conversion has been going on for the last ten years or so.  When we returned to the UK after a two year stay in the USA, we applied for replacement licences, to replace our paper ones surrendered  when we were licensed to drive in the State of Georgia.  So far so good, for a pound or two we were offered the new, improved laminated photo ID licence by the UK DVLA.  We appeared to have the option of choosing the old paper based licence but, given no other information, we opted for the new improved version.

Ten years later and we are now faced with the renewal process. 

That’s right, every year from now on at least 2,500,000 or so drivers will have to replace their licences – and no longer for a few pounds.  Currently it costs £17.50 plus a new photo of passport quality and size.  The reason for this!  We age – our photo gets out of date.  We might not be recognisable from our photo in the future!  Please note, neither of us has showed our licence to any official in ten years – yes once or twice we rented cars but car rental companies rely on credit card checks rather than the photo licence. Furthermore, my picture, once scanned and laminated by the DVLA (in 1999) resembles a video game bad guy (remember Duke Nukem?) – I looked anywhere from 55 to 75 (I still do).  Now, will my new photo make me look anywhere from 65 to 85? No matter,the licence is still only good for ten years.

Hang on, I will be seventy in three years, guess what, new licence again, new photo and, kerching! another £17.50 (+). That is how I believe it will work, no one at the local DVLA can tell me for sure.  So time for some sums.  Assuming there are about 30 million licensed drivers in the UK, 2.5 million will be replacing their licences each year plus another 250,000 of newly-seventy’s caught in the renewal gap/trap. That is almost £50,000,000 pounds for a fairly futile exercise, sounds like yet another source of tax revenue, of course we can all be confident that it costs the DVLA at least five times that much to administer – it always does!

Great, we will all have computer digitised identification, including passports and wait for it, there is the new national personal identity card coming.  Tell me, as an OAP can I get a grant to cover all these "essential" identity documents? I could always use my fuel allowance (what’s left over – yeah right – as my grandson says).

Yes, in Georgia, you now renew your photo licence every five or ten years, it costs about the same as in the UK.  But you show your licence for everything in the US.  Even a sixty year old can be "carded" when he tries to buy beer at the supermarket (yes it happened to me)!  So a photo ID license has its uses in the States. BUT – do we need all these costly digitised IDs here in the UK?  End of rant!