I agree about the MOT btw, I find it a royal pain in the arse because it's not like the tax disc where you get a reminder and do it online
When I let mine lapse by accident, I was sorting out the MoT for my car when I thought "I don't remember doing the van this year... oh crap", checked and discovered that I had indeed not done the MoT for the van 6 months earlier.
IMHO an annual check is a good idea, no matter how many miles you do - things still corrode when sat on your drive. I find the tax disc annoying because it's tied to emissions and claimed to be a "green tax" to discourage people from having vehicles that do poor mileage, yet I still have to pay that (quite expensive) same amount each year for my van despite the fact it only does a few hundred miles a year - I don't have a big problem with "green taxes" but I think they should be proportional and I don't see how charging the same for a vehicle that does a few hundred miles a year as one that does tens of thousands of miles is proportional at all. I would prefer the annual tax to be abolished and a proportional rise in fuel duty so that the total tax revenue would be unaffected. Although I know that if they did abolish tax discs they would use it as an excuse to increase fuel duty disproportionately.
the 25,000 mile a year car frankly never passes it's MOT so probably isn't really technically roadworthy for a short while before it's MOT given that it's being driven around with those failures prior to the test, whilst the 3,000 mile a year one hasn't failed an MOT for about 5 years now and never needs anything doing to it so it shows what a farce the MOT system really is - it's highly inconvenient and doesn't solve the problem it's meant to solve, low mileage cars are getting penalised for the sake of it, and high mileage cars are driving around unsafe regardless.
Last MoT for my van (which, as mentioned, does a few hundred miles a year): new brake pads + discs (corroded discs - something that low mileage vehicles suffer from), insecure headlamp (a plastic clip had aged, gone brittle and snapped. Official replacement VW parts would have involved replacing the entire headlamp mount for about £80, so it has been replaced with a couple of stainless steel nuts, which cost pennies and will probably outlast the official plastic thing :)
In fact, everything my car has failed on in the past few years (which does significantly higher mileage) has been essentially age related rather than mileage related - all the mileage related stuff tends to get checked and replaced when I service it, so the higher mileage actually just ensures that parts have been replaced reasonably recently and therefore won't be failed.