Older readers of Bankstone News will remember The Master as a beardy character portrayed in vintage episodes of popular time travelling drama Dr Who by Roger Caesar Marius Bernard de Delgado Torres Castillo Roberto (and more recently by non-beardy types like Derek ‘Del’ Jacobi, John ‘Slight Everyman’ Simm and <shudder> some woman.
But lately, it seems, he’s come back regenerated as a new registration scheme for motorcycles and scooters.
You’re right, it IS confusing!
Thankfully – as ever – Bankstone News is on hand to explain…
Apparently M-A-S-T-E-R was some kind of secret code all along, standing for Motorcycle And Scooter Tagged Equipment Registration, and now he’s playing a vital role in MAS crime fighting by making TE six times less likely to be stolen than MASs that haven’t been R’d and T’d.
Let’s look at the data.
So far this year, 66,423 new MASs were R’d in the UK. Of the 42,254 that were marked by the Master, just 78 have been reported stolen. Meanwhile 285 of the 24,169 MASs that were not protected by Master have been nicked. This means that all those who have yet to submit themselves to the Master’s protection are way more likely to get pinching and must abandon their perverse and futile resistance.
Steve “Ken” Ward, CEO of the Motorcycle Industry Association (MIA), the organisation that was behind the Master’s relaunch as a registration system in 2013, reckons it’s all turned out nicely. The encouraging data cited above, he argues, make it abundantly clear that all manufacturers who aren’t yet working with the Master should reconsider their resistance forthwith.
But how does the Master do what he does?, you are probably wondering (you’re always wondering something, aren’t you). Well, he uses a sophisticated array of technology to mark (both visibly and invisibly) the MASs’ major component parts, providing a unique ‘fingerprint’.
This marking includes tamper-evident warning labels, microscopic datadots, ‘stealth UV’ etching, and a number of unique radio frequency identification transponders embedded in parts.
All of this links to a database shared with dealers and police, so they know if a bike has been nicked. Meanwhile a prominent self-destruct label warns thieves (and triggers alarms), putting wrong ‘uns off nicking it in the first place.
It’s genius, basically. And every bike should have it.
If you’d like to know more, you could always click here for some of what we like to refer to as further information.
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