The reflective back vynals that plate suppliers use to make plates are supplied to them with their own unique serial number. So you would need erase the serial number on the back of the plate to help prevent the kind chap who obliged with making the new plates being traced.
I dont think the Police would agree its a waste of police resources Phil, as its just another excuse to prey on the easy target motorist to increase revenue with pointless fines! Catching criminals costs serious money, catching motorists for stupid reasons creates serious money! In defence of the Police though, the uninsured and the wreckless drivers do need policing, but someone say having a Man Utd logo in place of the Euro logo does no harm to society, the law on reg plates should be very simple. If the No plate recognition camera's can correctly identify the car reg from the plate, then no offence could possibly have been committed. The camera's simply use a system of preprogrammed logic to identify a reg plate, I'm sure that with sufficient training even the traffic officers could become educated enough to consider that the reg plate at a glance can only be interpreted to be read as the reg number for that vehicle. Maybe the Police are more stupid than we think they are, hence why reg plate reg's are so stringent!
Cheers
Ste