No.{42}

 

A No.42 was scored somewhere in Epsom town centre yesterday morning on a small, dark car which was probably foreign. A registration plate which started '42 GTF '. I don't now know whether the last two characters were letters or numbers.

So no evidential image and no check with Car Check - which last, at my level of access at least - requires a complete number plate and which does not, in any case, do foreign. Or exotics from this country.

For once, Gemini declined to play, as snapped above, but I fed him reference 4 and then he got going, opting for Spain. Which worked quite well, except that they go for four digits at the beginning, not two.

I then poke him again, and he switches back to old British. If he is right, this ancient car was in pretty good condition!

So while he continues to impress with comprehension, thus saving a lot of bother composing search keys that work, some dialog, some interaction, is usually needed: just asking the question is not yet enough. And in this particular case, not even then: in the absence of a photograph, there is just not enough information for him to go on.

A second circuit in the afternoon, taking in the Screwfix whitebeam.

The Russian vine adjacent was looking pretty vigorous. Too bad about the tree underneath.

Plus a party of travellers have taken up residence on the patch of green at the junction of Blenheim and Longmead Roads, the first such incursion for a while. A police officer was in attendance. I think across the stream from Longmead Road, as orange spotted above. 

A bit careless this morning, as it took two goes to get the orange spot in the right place - despite passing the spot several times every week.

PS 1: on this occasion, Gemini's detail is easily checkable. But will I bother - having passed up on the last such opportunity? 

And while I think of it, I might add that while Gemini is all for flattery - a bit like those waiters who are always telling you what an excellent choice you have made - Bing goes in for the slightly more subtle touch of returning my own blog as an occasional search result, something Google does not do unless you push him.

PS 2: a couple of items from the FT caught my eye, amid all the chatter (clutter?) about Messrs. Starmer and Trump, references 5 and 6. 

Reference 5 is all about how fertility rates are falling across most of the world, leading to aging populations in which the old are a drag on the young. A chunk of this can be explained by housing problems - certainly in the UK and the US. Another chunk can be explained by the rise of social media. One symptom is the number of poorly educated young men, not in a long term relationship, and tending to the right politically. I was surprised to read that a declining world population is not going to help much with the climate crisis, to which end reference 7 has now joined my reading list.

'... The failure of successive governments creates an opening for the snake-oil salesmen — Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski. Reform UK states that it can reduce taxes while improving public services by cutting waste in government by £50bn, a claim which no reputable economist supports. The Greens propose a return to the methods of old — indeed prehistoric — Labour: taxing billionaires, large-scale nationalisation and further borrowing to pay for such goodies as a four-day week and ending tuition fees. Its skills policy is to end testing in primary schools. It’s hard to imagine a more rapid path to national bankruptcy...'

Reference 6 is all about a hobby horse of mine, the way that the electorate of this country has been led into believing that it can have something for nothing, or as Bogdanor has it, that the country is rather richer than it in fact is. We can have it all and there is no need for even painful slightly trade-offs.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/no41.html.

Reference 2: https://www.carcheck.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_United_Kingdom. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_vehicle_registration_plate.

Reference 5: The Big Read  Demographics and population: Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once: Homes and phones are part of the reason for the demographic shift changing our world - John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 6: Voters expect a prosperity our politicians cannot deliver: The markets will not allow the UK to borrow to maintain a standard of living that we have not earned - Vernon Bogdanor, Financial Times - 2026.

Reference 7: Is less really more: Comparing the climate and productivity impacts of a shrinking population – Mark Budolfson, Michael Geruso, Kevin J. Kuruc, Dean Spears, Sangita Vyas – 2025. National Bureau of Economic Research, MA. Population Wellbeing Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Bogdanor. An eminence of the soft right. The source of the striking snap above.

Group search key: registsk, aisk, 20260515.