Just heard on 't tranny... From (some unheard date) people turning up with scrap to cash in will need photo ID (driving licence, passport, etc) and a recent utility bill in their address/name.
Might be a good thing and the genuine scrap collectors will be able to arrange something. Of course, the pikeys will simply forge stuff.
Fecking marvelous more blooming hoops for the honest to jump through. I don't have a photo driving licence or a (valid) passport.
It still doesn't mean that a particular bit of scrap in the heap of similar scrap came from a particular person. That is the weak (broken) link in the chain, if you can't prove that X bit of scrap came from Y person you can't prosecute Y. If you can prove that X bit of scrap is from Z building you might be able to prosecute the scrapy for handling stolen goods.
It's only Northumberland and Cleveland for a six-month pilot starting 3 January.
Ironically [1] the two spam threads that have appeared immediately above this thread on my newsreader appear to be from people who would supply the forgeries.
Nick [1]or should that be coppery or aluminiumally
There was a bloke done recently for trying to sell a bronze plaque stolen from a war memorial. It had been bent over to conceal the names, but the scrappy saw what it was and refused to buy it. The bloke claimed he'd bought it from others he was too scared to name.
It all helps to make the selling of stolen scrap more difficult. The pikeys will melt the stolen metal into ingots before selling it, or strip the marked plastic sheathing from stolen BTor BR cables.
It's a right b***r trying to prove who you are, isn't it? I don't have either a driving licence or even an invalid passport! Sure makes life difficult sometimes. I'm probably one of the very, very small minority that thought there was a valid case for a national ID card. I probably couldn't have got one though, because I couldn't prove that I was entitled to one!
I'm one who thought the identity card would have been a good idea but the all-seeing, all-knowing, can't-breathe-unless-you-can-prove-who-you-are national database would have been a disaster. I no longer drive but I keep my driving licence up to date simply to use it as a de facto ID card.
Nick
If it didn't have a single centralised database behind it, it would be fine. Just store basic identity information on the card, and the ability for multiple decentralised databases to link to the card, via unique numbers to prevent decentralised database1 linking to decentralised database2 ...
...
(OT, but who cares)
There used to be a tongue-twister:
Posh woman to a tinker working on a pot at the side of the road: 'Are you copper-bottoming it, my man?'
Tinker: 'No, I'm aluminiuming it, Marm.'
Hugh
In message , Dave Liquorice writes
Unless you are visiting a scrapyard outside the UK or the RoI, it's probable that an expired passport will suffice.
Aye, the photo driving licence has effectively become a national ID card with a centralised database...
I appreciate the irony. Frankly, I wouldn't have minded if the government had wanted to extend the driving licence system to include non-driving licences so that everybody was on board. My objection was to the range and the depth of extra information they wanted and the fact that it would all have been in one place. If what's held on the DVLA database about me were to be left on a laptop in the back of a taxi it wouldn't make that much difference.
Nick
I use my bus pass!
We have had to do this at our tip for some years, though there are permits issued, we are warned that they will record the info. The thing is though will they keep folk waiting till they check? I doubt it and so it will probably be pointless. The thing is the money is not made at such places its the less than legal middle men who will make even more money now. Brian
Will scrapyards in those regions be getting compensation for the unfair competition?
In message , Brian Gaff wrote
My local council wants proof of residency before allowing cars into the local tip/recycling centre. Council tax notifications with an address is acceptable, as well as any photo ID with an address.
Or make it "free" if you have a permit with you and charge you £5 a car load if you don't .
They do at my local tip. Although on a busy day the amount of time checking is insignificant compared to time waiting for all the cars in front to unload and then getting the next free space.
The thread is about scrap metal dealers requiring proof of ID before purchasing stolen metal from the "man in the street". I suspect that being a cash in hand business and the dealers already suspecting where some of the metal comes from the legislation is unlikely to make any difference to the problem of metal theft.
Laws are only effective on the law abiding. Criminals just carry on in the same old way.
What may curtail some theft is stopping the Police reporting that thieves got away with £10,000 worth of telephone cable whereas in the real world the scrap value was peanuts and £10,000 is the cost in manpower to replace the cable. Even if the cable is expensive to purchase as new it doesn't mean the value of it when scrapped is great.
More hassle. I don't have a photo license, my passport will at some point expire and I couldn't even send my wife instead, as all the utility bills are in my name!
What's wrong with simply requiring all payments to be made in the form of a "refund" onto a debit card? Easy to track when numerous payments are being made to particular accounts. The photo ID/utility bill option could be kept for those (few) that don't have debit cards.
SteveW
More to the point, when they get caught, they should be prosecuted according to the total impact cost of the crime. So rather than being treated as having pinched £500 quids worth of cable, treat it as £25,000 worth of vandalism / theft etc.
Problem with handing over debit card details, is that the transaction can go both ways!
Or payment by cheque / BACS etc. For frequent (i.e. business) users they could open an account with a scrappie, who would then credit their account automatically on production of their scrappie issued trade card.
The difficulty with many of these systems however is that it assumes the scrappies are honest and its only the people delivering them stuff that are bent.
They will be found out by sting operations. They also have a lot more to lose so once a few have been done things will be better.
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