Celebrate your Scottishness with a numberplate. Or not

IT is, in case you haven't been watching the news, a great time to be Scottish.

Sean Connery, the Scottish Roger Moore, once said he'd live to see his homeland regain its independence in his lifetime and lots of us down here laughed and gingerly pointed out that, of course, he lives in LA. But now the SNP have won their majority north of the border and it'd be silly to bet against the prospect of them holding their long-promised referendum on the subject. James Bond himself could yet live to see the day when motorists get past Carlisle and are asked to show their passports at Border Control.

Naturally, the DVLA's chosen to celebrate by offering all true Scots what they've always wanted; a personalised numberplate which spells out WA11 ACE which - provided you don't live in Wigan with a dog called Gromit - is supposed to be the ultimate expression of Cool Caledonia for your car. Only it isn't. It's a vanity numberplate which will make you look like a berk.

Obviously it's meant to read out “Wallace” but it doesn't; what it actually says is “Wa Eleven Ace”, and it's the same story with all personalised plates in this country. One of my own favourites was a Toyota Land Cruiser proudly wearing “G1 LTY” upon its plates, which if you're a gangland crook presumably means “guilty” but is completely unintelligible to anyone else.

I have a set I use at classic car shows, but they're only a £15 bodge job only to stop Internet saddos from cloning my car details if photos of my pride and joy make it into cyberspace. To stump up silly prices for the real, road legal deal - and in the case of WA11 ACE you'll get stung for £2,000 by chaps in Swansea - just shows you have more money than sense.

You can, for instance, pay £10,000 to have 15 0 on your numberplate, but to do that you'd have to dismiss a) buying a brand new Fiesta, b) buying any number of classic cars which would impress the ladies far more or c) giving a substantial amount of cash you clearly don't need to charity. American vanity plates are fine - you can get anything you like for $45, as long as nobody else has it - but in Britain it's a bonkers scheme. It is motoring merchandise gone mad.

To be able to justify having WA11 ACE on your car you would have to be not only a diehard Scot but obscenely rich and so cast-iron cool that a personalised plate won't damage your street cred.

Or Sean Connery.