Why is the EU flag on every EU number plate

Richard

ewan whose army wrote: »

Its the UK's ISO country code, it pre-dates the existence of Northern Ireland.

You are right though, NI isn't Britain since to be British you have to have come from the Ireland of Britain right?~

The term British can be used to describe things from the UK as a whole (although there are many, including in NI who don't feel British at all).

Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain, therefore making the use of GB odd, though like you say it does predate NI's existence.

ewan whose army

Richard wrote: »

The term British can be used to describe things from the UK as a whole (although there are many, including in NI who don't feel British at all).

Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain, therefore making the use of GB odd, though like you say it does predate NI's existence.

I guess...

Having grown up in England to Scottish Parents, I can safely say both countries are pretty apathetic to NI so nobody really thinks about changing GB.

Richard

ewan whose army wrote: »

Funny if Scotland runs off then wouldn't GB be more inappropriate ?

Yes, you're right. Assuming what's left is still called UK then UK would be the best code.

Alot of people in Britain forget that NI is part of the UK and I guess the NI license plates look very different from the rest (For some reason they kept the old system in the 70s my Dad's friends classic Mustang has the old style UK ones which are like the NI ones ).

The 1904 system covered the whole of the then-UK until GB altered it to include a Year letter in the 60s and then completely abandoned it in 2001. The Republic of Ireland abandoned it in 1987.

All vehicle and driver licencing is being centralised in Swansea, so the DVA in NI won't exist any more. NI will still keep its licence plate system (possibly because it make the government money from selling personalised plates!)

Turns out that the EU parliament are making every EU country have a common design of numberplate. But it was on the daily heil so it may be scremongering crap.

It did say that the EU would make the Irish and German standard of white and EU flags the standard... But from a road safety point of view I wonder if the UK, French and Dutch idea of having Orange on the back makes a car more visible from a distance...

I imagine that's the idea but they may still force everyone to go white front and back. The French used to have yellow headlights and said it was for road safety, but the EU made them get rid of those.

Pro Hoc Vice

keithclancy wrote: »

Official name of Ireland is Éire or Poblacht na hÉireann

So why is it not EI.

Seems like a hangover from the old days

To the best of my understanding its EIR but IRL can be used.

Pro Hoc Vice

CiniO wrote: »

According to wikipedia Ireland used following codes-
1910-1924 - GB
1924-1938 - SE
1938-1962 - EIR
1962-now - IRL

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1961/en/si/0269.html

"(4) On an international motor insurance card the letters EIR are used to indicate the name of the State but the letters IRL may be substituted therefor."

http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0119/D.0119.195003220018.html

I believe everyone just used IRL.

For Aircraft its EI is the designation.

Richard

ewan whose army wrote: »

Turns out that the EU parliament are making every EU country have a common design of numberplate. But it was on the daily heil so it may be scremongering crap.

I think it may well be. I looked on the EU parliament website, and although I can't get the English version of the debate (and I can't get google translate to work) the person who does speak in English says it just affects the registration format (log book etc) and not the number plate format:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20140415+ITEM-021+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN

There is a document here - http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0164:FIN:EN:PDF - which only mentions plates in the sense of the dealer plates which are temporarily put on new cars before they are sold for test drive purposes.

Pro Hoc Vice

keithclancy wrote: »

My feeling is that some drunk Civil Servant working for the UN ended up making up a list one night after one too many a brandy.

Lol, but in reality each state picks its code and notifies the UN same can be changed. http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/conventn/crt1968e.pdf

See article 45 (4).

ewan whose army

Richard wrote: »

Yes, you're right. Assuming what's left is still called UK then UK would be the best code.



The 1904 system covered the whole of the then-UK until GB altered it to include a Year letter in the 60s and then completely abandoned it in 2001.

I wonder if the post 2001 system was based on the Irish system. I am thinking of my car on the UK plates before I imported it when I relocated

PY (Location code, Carlisle) 08 (Year of manufature) CME (Three random letters)

to

08 (Year) - D (Location) - 121811 (Random numbers)

I mean the only difference is that the UK system uses random letters and has far more location codes..

Pro Hoc Vice

ewan whose army wrote: »

Thats what I thought, I mean what does the eu flag even symbolise anyway ? 12 stars? There are more than double that number in the EU so its pretty obsolete has been for 20-30 years now.

http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/symbols/flag/index_en.htm

The stars do not stand for the countries, but symbolise "the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe."

ewan whose army

Pro Hoc Vice wrote: »

http://europa.eu/about-eu/basic-information/symbols/flag/index_en.htm

The stars do not stand for the countries, but symbolise "the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe."

Oh ok..


I just remember having an argument in the office where I work , I actually work for an EU project and none of us knew!

Pro Hoc Vice

ewan whose army wrote: »

Oh ok..


I just remember having an argument in the office where I work , I actually work for an EU project and none of us knew!

That's scary and funny at the same time, but google is a wonderful tool as I had no idea until I looked it up.

ewan whose army

Pro Hoc Vice wrote: »

That's scary and funny at the same time, but google is a wonderful tool as I had no idea until I looked it up.

I just assumed that it was like the US flag and the stars once mean the member nations but then they never updated it!

Huh I also found this proposal from the dutch for a new flag



Its the flag of every member nation stretched out from West to East. (The second one is the UK since Iceland isn't in the EU so it can't be that, then it goes Portugal then Spain..)

Well its an EU funded research project at TCD, I am not reportable to Brussels directly

Marcusm

ewan whose army wrote: »

I just assumed that it was like the US flag and the stars once mean the member nations but then they never updated it!

Huh I also found this proposal from the dutch for a new flag



Its the flag of every member nation stretched out from West to East. (The second one is the UK since Iceland isn't in the EU so it can't be that, then it goes Portugal then Spain..)

Well its an EU funded research project at TCD, I am not reportable to Brussels directly

The US flag has updated the number of stars right up to the current 50 states; that's why it has had so many different versions of the flag. There are 13 stripes representing the 13 original colonies.

The EU flag is the flag of the Council of Europe from the 1950s and even then the CoE had 15 members so the number of stars didn't tie up. I think the confusion is there as almost from the time the EC/EU adopted the flag in 1985, there were 12 members (from the Spanish/Portuguese accession in 1986) and those of us of a certain age will have assumed it was one star for each country. Bizarrely it was never that way.

usernamegoes

keithclancy wrote: »

Never understood why the UK had "GB" on their license plates when Northern Ireland isn't even in Great Britain.

The reason is that it is based on the ISO country codes the makers of which do not use the words Kingdom etc in their codes to avoid issues therefore the abbreviation for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is GB

Richard

Marcusm wrote: »

The US flag has updated the number of stars right up to the current 50 states; that's why it has had so many different versions of the flag. There are 13 stripes representing the 13 original colonies.

The EU flag is the flag of the Council of Europe from the 1950s and even then the CoE had 15 members so the number of stars didn't tie up. I think the confusion is there as almost from the time the EC/EU adopted the flag in 1985, there were 12 members (from the Spanish/Portuguese accession in 1986) and those of us of a certain age will have assumed it was one star for each country. Bizarrely it was never that way.

I once saw a Citizenship textbook in the UK where they had added extra stars to the EU flag because they thought it should have a star for every member.