VELOlogy: no, it’s not the study of bicycles

Untaxed Vehicle

Want your bike club, indoor cycle track or cycling newspaper to sound French and sophisticated? Call it something ‘Velo’: works like a charm, just ask Velo Club Lincoln, the Manchester Velodrome or Velonews.

If I own lots of bikes would the posh name for that be a velologist, then? No. Are you ready for the real definition?

Velology is “the study and collection of vehicle tax discs, a circular certificate placed on the windscreens of road vehicles to prove that vehicle tax has been paid.”

The velologist who wrote the velology entry on Wikipedia knows his onions (got to be a man, hasn’t it?) because he stresses vehicle tax, not road tax. Top man!

Velology was created by combining the acronym VEL (Vehicle Excise License) and -ology.

IPayRoadTax.com Zero BED

Neil Jones has 120,000 tax discs, reveals The Metro newspaper today.

I wonder if he’d like another to add to his collection? The iPayRoadTax fake tax disc doesn’t mess around with VED (Vehicle Excise Duty), it gets into BED (Bicycle Excise Duty).

If you feel as though you might be a closet velologist I can heartily recommend a subscription to The Velologist, a quarterly publication sure to sate your every GVED desire. And should you own a pre-1973 motor car and you wish for a DVLA-licensed antique fake tax disc to go with it, Earlswood Reproduction – “The Tax Disc People” – should be your first port of call.

However, best to steer clear of the velological geeks on Flickr: the British Road Tax Disc Group gets the name wrong straight off the bat. Poor form, chaps.