Bose-X, apologies for thread drift.
Gets my goat when "non-commercially minded" people - and that includes the CAA running the show - fail to understand that nothing's free in this world.
Equally, gets my goat when people - like the CAA, again - have a monopoly and work inefficiently and overchange. Like licence issue fees more than double the fee for a passport or driving licence. They are not operating commercially and competitively, they just charge what they like because they are a monopoly.
Now, good point about "how do you know if your examiner is actually an examiner".
You used to have R, GR and X ratings in microlights, for example. So one might be Xnnnnn or GRnnnnnn.
Now we have just got our licence number as a reference. So with my new FE authority, my number hasn't changed.