Road Tax Discs

Of course, they're not road tax discs. They're "vehicle excise duty" discs. They haven't been "Road Tax" since 1937, but a surprising number of motorists still call it "Road Tax" and feel aggrieved that the funds raised don't go towards maintaining the roads.

For those not accustomed to these paper discs, they are used to indicate that the holder has paid an appropriate fee to allow the car to be on the road.

Or rather, they used to be used for that purpose. They are now obsolete; we do not need to display them. Law enforcement officials are able to use computerised lookups to discover whether the appropriate fees have been paid. And so these discs will soon become something from the past - the way things used to be.

Oh well, I'll keep my collection, just as an historical curiosity!