Something useful for you lot...
 

If you need to know if your car or the car you are driving ie you borrowed it of a friend to use, here's a website, possibly from dvla but not sure.

Basically put the vehicle reg in and it will tell you wether the vehicles on the national insurance database with valid insurance.

http://www.askmid.com/

Hmmmm it know what my car is and that its insured.

Most websites know what the model is from the reg but im skeptical that they have a connection to the national insurance database :S