I've been reading through He Did It His Way and I noticed that when he gets the 'uber wallet of infinite cash' (linked to one of his many vaults of course) he gets a full driver's license as well. I sit just me or does this seem rather stupid? Giving a 16 year old boy a driver's license is like giving a baby absinth!

Its not just this fic either! Any other indy!Harry fic that he goes to the Goblins in has him receive a credit card and driver's license before its even legal for him to have them! Credit cards can't be gotten until you're 18 in England (don't know about the US), debit cards can be got but its still pretty rare, and a full driver's license has to be earned first. Provisional I can understand but a full driver's license when he's never even touched the wheel of a car before is just stupid. Not to mention you have to be 17 before you can even get a provisional license over here!

I blame these 16yr old yanks who don't bother to research the damn country a story's set in before adding in things like that! (No offence to Yanks in general, just the peope who would give a credit card to a 16 year old)

Aekiel

 

I think the point is more that it can be used as id, proving that he is an adult in the Muggle world after he has inevitably been emancipated.

 

Taures correct on that part, but it is also that a lot of americans can't get their heads round the fact that not everywhere in the world is america. Do you know that Bush thought Wales was in the US. That forget to research the other country and see what the differences are.

 

In America the State Issued photo id drivers licence is the "national id card".
Used as proof of age to buy booze, proof of id for cashing checks, using charge card and boarding airplanes. It is not a great system and has many flaws.
What is used in England or better London were not everyone has a car?

 

IM not sure if its the same in England but in Scotland there are a number of different thigns that can be used as ID for official things. Your credit card, passport, any bank statement or official document with your name on it, everyone over the age of 16 has a National Insurance Card, which is required to get a job, or at least, the number on the card is required to get a job, and the card itself can be used a ID in some circumstances. A Drivers Licence can be used as ID yes, but it is not the only form or the most common. For banking and such like you have a bank card that carries your name and account number on it.

Something else that gets to me about Americans writing HP fanfiction is when they call a mobile phone a cell phone. Yeah its called that in the US, but not in the UK.

About Drivers Licences in Britain, you can apply for your Provisional when you turn 17, and you get it by passing a theory test. When you turn 18 you can apply for your practical test and if you pass you get your full licence. A provisional lets you drive on public roads so long as there is a fully qualified compus mentus driver in the front passenger seat with you. Before you get your provisional, you are allowed to drive on non public areas, like if your parents own a farm, then you can drive on the farm tracks, or Industrial Parks or school grounds, things like that, any large car parks.

 

Err... this is HP world, people. I think the point is that goblins and wizarding world don't give a shit about muggle laws. Nor do they know what exactly you can use with various documents they issue. "What, you can drive one of those metal cans with it? Pff, why don't you just floo or apparate?"

 

That may be how they do it in Scotland, but it's not like that in all of Britain.

In England, you can apply for your Provisional licence at the age of 17 and it is given to you, no tests or anything (though alot of forms to fill in). With this licence, you are allowed to dive on all roads except for M roads, as long as there is a qualified driver over the age of 21 in the passenger seat.

You then have to apply for your theory test, and after passing your theory test you can book a practical test, which if you pass you are given a full license.

But this is irrelevant, IP is right, no-one in the magical world (except for a few wackos) care about cars.

 

In a way, you're both partially correct. No one in the magical world is going to give a damn about what the things are for, but be that as it may, why do they, ie the goblins, bother with the things in the first place. I'm sure you need some sort of passport to travel internationally, even in the magical world. Just make it look muggle. It's just a pointless overused and annoying piece of plot.

 

I don't mind so much about the fact that he is given the lisence, what bothers me is that he instantly knows how to drive a car and doesn't crash like the rest of us do (or is that just me?)

Anyway, Taure is correct about how lisences work in the UK.

Maybe we could give him a 50cc moped/motorbike - you can get those at 16...

I think i might be onto something here...

 

Actually, you learn HOW to drive a car in one 1-hour lesson. Everything else is just practice.

 

Actually, the Ministry appears to use cars, and even elevators. If I recall correctly, the Ministry sent a car to pick up Harry and friends in GoF to take them to Kings Cross. But I have a feeling that it is fanon...

 

Yes, people do need to research more. But it's not entirely their fault, as will be explained in the future rant.

You have to stop the America bashing.

This may seem hard to accept for some of the "Let's all jump on the Americans are stupid Bandwagon!" people, but really, we're not that stupid.

It's just that, well, we don't get any English media here. Besides the random hit song, great movies like "Shaun of the Dead", and books like Harry Potter, media corperations/organizations run an almost complete embargo on foreign media/entertainment. My only continous source of English media is EuroNews and BBC from FTA satellite.

That and the fact that the US is rather big and diverse compared to England. As such, there isn't too much reason to visit England unless you have the money and are itching to visit overseas. Most people have the "Well, let's visit Hawaii before we move on to England..." mentality. Either that or "Caribbeans....England....warm Caribbeans...not so warm England. I'm going to the Caribbeans..."

So unless you knew that people in other countries call a cell phone/mobile phone/mobile/reciever/speaker (Last two are direct translations from some MidEast countries) why would you try to research it? And it's not something that you pick off from a TV show, English class, or everyday life and remember it forever.

Lastly, Americans aren't as big on traveling in Europe as Europeans are (For obvious reasons, one of which it costs alot and another that we have alot to see right here.) So...we don't get exposure to English vocabulary. I know I'm lucky enough to have a family that can afford travelling to Europe and one that does so quite often.

So...Americans aren't stupid.

There are plenty of idiots scattered throughout the world and no...Canadians are not sooooo much better. Neither are the English.

/End Rant.

 

Yeah, but it seems they pretty much use charms to help them drive them through traffic and anything else. They don't exactly need to worry about laws and regulations to use on the road. Do you really think that Earnie, the Knight Bus driver had even heard about drivers licence (other then how to oblivate a cop if he ever ask him for that)?

 

I really have to throw my support behind Amer one this one.

The 16 year old with a credit card might be a bit of a stretch, but even in HS there some of us who got credit cards through our banks at 17.

Americans in general aren't culturally stupid, nor are we culturally stubborn, it's just that we have such an expansive diversity here in the states that it becomes a very blurred line what cultures begin with what.

We could research all we want, but turn the corner, see an European on First Twenty First St., New York, that has so solidly blended into American culture that it's all become integrated on a great scale.

Not all of us travel to Europe and dive right into researching that country. Hell, all I know about Europe is you guys drive on the wrong side of the road and that you have funny accents that make great Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart comedy.

If you asked me about Japan, I could spout of thousands of facts, talk about the linguistics, fawn about their culture and all that shit. Doesn't mean I'm biased against Europe (Or any other country), it's just that seems to be the culture that I've become interested in.

That's just kinda how it is in America. You're going to get those people who research Europe respectively, the ones who research Japan, or China, or Africa or any of the other thousands of outside cultures.

San Francisco, California for instance. I could go their right now and catch a taxi, driven by a Middle Easterner with pictures of his family in traditional Islamic clothing on the back seat, to Chinatown. Where I could eat a plate of steam rice and vegetables cooked by people who speak nothing but Mandarin or Cantonese. Catch another taxi driven by a Mexican who's speaking Spanish, but trying to conform to English so we understand each other and who's trying to help his family in Mexico, down to the wharfs on Pier 39. While there, I could have crab soup in a bread bowl with a Jamaican fellow with dreadlocks while we discus what it's like fishing out on the Bay's waters, the entire time laughing about time we have spent up in Ghirideli Square with the crazy Caucasians who are sightseeing from good ole' Europe.

See my point? There's so many diversities that we can't ALL conform and be expected to know every aspect of every place in the world. Just because not all of us have focused our attention from wherever you're from doesn't make us culture morons.

But we are Yanks. ^_^

 

No, it's canon. But it's PoA and it's a limo.

 

Yeah, so, you don't get exposure automatically. Woopedy doo, so what. If you are writing anything based in another country it is only common sense and good manners to research basic facts that you are using.

And something else. No americans as a whole are not stupid. Its just that the majority of Americans have an innate sense of cultural superiority to everyone else in the world. And you are unwilling to see that other cultures have better, more correct, whatever, things that you.

An example, you say that we drive on the wrong side of the road. Thats incorrect. Technically you lot drive on the wrong side of the road, because we've had road laws long before the US even existed.

 

Dear God in heaven. Please don't tell me we're taking this argument back to the revoloution. lol

 

Some of the people on this site are so jingoistic lol...

You know, technically both the US and the UK drive on the correct side of the road (I didn't say right to avoid a load of terrible puns lol) as in each country, according to that country's laws, that is the correct side.

Mordecai, I think the point Amerision is trying to make is that it's not that these American writers can't be bothered to look up the Britishism of their Americanisms (for example mobile phones being what Brit's call cell phones), it's that it doesn't even occur to them that British people would call these items anything different, due to the lack of exposure to British culture.

Here in Britain we have a massive amount of exposure to American culture: everything from Friends to Buffy teaches us a bit about how America works, but they have none of that. So don't be too critical, if we had been born and lived in America, we would be no better.

 

Britain is half the size of an average American state. The US is practically the size of Europe (hence why the majority of Americans don't hold passports). A country's leadership does not reflect its populace.

Take all these factors into account before this explodes into a huge transatlantic flame-war.