Extracts from The Yardstick, number 11, April 2000

The Imperial Traders’ Register gives details, with their permission, of the prominent rebel retailers. Well over a hundred traders are included, representing many different trades, from blinds and fabrics to picture frames and petrol pumps, from a pet shop to a tomato grower, and from every part of the British Isles. David Delaney has been collaborating closely with Tony Bennett in compiling the register.

It is kept up to date on an Internet site, which welcomes links from other sites and as well as printing of copies for distribution. It was commended by Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph on 27 February, who also reported further on the crucial case of Mandy and David Stephens, the Leigh-on-Sea butchers, following the Southend Council meeting on the 24th at which it was decided to take no action against them, despite an Infringement Notice having been served on them on 6 January, allowing 28 days’ grace which had expired on 3 February.

As we go to press, not a single prosecution has been initiated by any Local Authority anywhere. Indeed, several celebrated rebels, such as Bruce Robertson and José O’Ware, have in effect been told to stop pestering their Trading Standards Officers, who have more important matters to deal with!

Another barrister, Neil Addison, practising in Newcastle upon Tyne, has pointed to a further reason why Trading Standards Officers may be breaking the law. Section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 states that it is an offence to compel any person to do something which that person is not legally obliged to do. This aspect is currently being investigated.

Meanwhile, there are already several distinct and equally compelling grounds for holding the metric regulations unlawful (in addition to Michael Shrimpton’s conclusive line of attack) as announced in our press notice released on 29 February, headed Metrication law — Government wriggles on the hook.

If no local authority dares to prosecute, BWMA will have the satisfaction of declaring to the whole country that the regulations are a "dead letter" and may be safely ignored. However, that is not good enough, because the regulations would still remain nominally in force – Britain would remain officially a completely metricated country — and the authorities would continue to apply pressure everywhere, to do everything possible, short of prosecution, in order to extend metrication.

But there is another possibility — which is now also being investigated — of bringing about a test case in a court of law, for the purpose of exposing the unlawful nature of the regulations, even in the absence of any prosecution. That would be by applying for an injunction against any of the Councils that have served an Infringement Notice upon a defiant retailer, in which case the injunction would be granted if the judge held that the regulations (with which the Notice required the retailer to comply) were unlawful. All affected traders could then have grounds to claim damages. By the time you read this, of course, the situation might have become clearer.

Councillor Austin Spreadbury of the London borough of Enfield, a BWMA member, received a written reply from the relevant Committee Chairman, to his question on metric enforcement, which declared – as have many Local Authorities – that the Council would "give priority to complaints where there is evidence of a trader suffering loss as a result of a competitor continuing to trade in imperial units."

To give another example, Southend Council’s Chief Trading Standards Officer, Colin Gabell, stated on 12 January that David Stephens the Leigh-on-Sea butcher, "has got an unfair advantage over his competitors."

So it appears that the only reason that might compel a Council to prosecute is if a trader commits the offence of giving customers what they want by continuing to serve them in imperial measures, thereby gaining more business at the expense of competitors who are losing business as a consequence of converting to metric, and who complain accordingly. The universal presumption among local authorities that imperial measures are far more popular is the justification for banning them! Obviously, this official self-contradiction would be exposed in any prosecution brought to court, while the media would have a field day!

The UK Weighing Federation has announced that as at the end of February, some 122,000 weighing machines (scales) had been replaced or convened to metric, comprising 63,000 owned by supermarkets and other multiple retailers and 37,000 owned by independent traders; leaving another 38,000 machines still measuring in imperial units.

The significant facts are firstly that these 38,000 are all in the independent sector (supermarkets and other multiple retailers having gone completely metric) and secondly that this figure means that as many as 40% of all private shopkeepers - 2 out of every 5 - continue to trade in imperial units, which is certainly more than we had dared to hope.

Let us trust that this proportion continues to rise as the number who decide to convert back to imperial, in order to regain lost business, exceeds those who succumb to bullying by the authorities. The latest figures are confirmed in a letter to Jeffrey Titford MEP dated 17 March from one of the leading weighing machine manufacturers, that goes on to say:

"However, we are now getting stubborn resistance from our remaining customers largely due to the adverse publicity and campaigns run by pressure groups. We are also getting complaints from some of those customers we have converted that our advice was wrong and we have put them to unnecessary expense! Our trade association, The UK Weighing Federation, has been in touch with the DTI to obtain clarification and to suggest some Government PR to counter these campaigns. Unfortunately, we can get no satisfactory reply; it appears that the major concern is about negative headlines and the creation of ‘metric martyrs’! … This situation is becoming farcical and as people try to implement the Government's legislation our reputation is being damaged.

A financial consequence is that having stocked up on metric scales and conversion kits to meet the expected demand solely initiated by metric harmonisation with Europe this stock remains very much unsold with capital unnecessarily tied up. The purpose of this letter is to draw the situation to your attention and to ask for your help in lobbying the Government. We need them to issue clear and unequivocal statements on what the legal position is and what action will be taken against retailers who do not comply with the law."

Jeffrey Titford is unlikely to oblige! This letter perfectly illustrates the current metrication shambles.

The latest noteworthy people who have kindly agreed to become honorary members of BWMA are Simon Heffer, George MacDonald Fraser, James Le Fanu and J.K. Rowling.

The distinguished author and journalist, Simon Heffer, continues to give us valuable support in the Daily Mail. He wrote to Bill Peters: "Of course I am delighted to be asked to be an honorary member of your association. I have never properly recovered from the decimalisation of the currency and have, as you know, often railed in my columns against the obscenity and cultural absurdity of metrication. You will let me know if there is anything more practical I can do to help."

He added the following note: "I recall the words, spoken in another context, of my late friend J. Enoch Powell [of whom he has written a notable biography]: ‘Too often today people are ready to tell us "this is not possible, that is not possible." I say: whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible’."

George MacDonald Fraser OBE is best known for his Flashman series of novels. He served in the Army 1943-47, rising to Lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders, then pursued a varied career in journalism in England, Canada and Scotland, where he was deputy editor of the Glasgow Herald. He has also written many film screenplays. His heartening advice to BWMA: "Splendid – Keep it up!"

Dr James Le Fanu is widely known through his TV appearances and regular weekly columns in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. In a recent In Sickness and in Health article he wrote:

"There is thus [for counting] an obvious rationale for the decimal system, based on our ready familiarity with the number of fingers and toes we possess. The same practical arguments apply to the traditional imperial system of expressing lengths in terms of inches, feet and yards, each of which is based on an approximation of the length of part of the body; the inch being the length of the terminal phalanx of the thumb, a foot being a foot and …

By contrast, the metric system is an entirely arbitrary method of measurement, instigated by the Utopian radicals of the French Revolution, and bears no relationship at all to the parameters of the human body … the metric system is also a dismal failure in practical terms … the arguments in favour of metrication, just as for the changeover from Fahrenheit to Celsius, are entirely spurious. As human beings, we need a practical, workable method for estimating the world around us, and the best way of doing so is by referring to something with which we are all familiar – ourselves."

Dr Le Fanu told Bill Peters that he finds The Yardstick most interesting and that "I am only too pleased to support you in your good work."

Here are two quotations from a children’s book, published in 1997: "Your father, on the other hand, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favoured it — it’s really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."

"’Come back boy!’ she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle — twelve feet — twenty feet. Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and …"

The book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first of a now immensely popular series of children’s books (with world-wide sales exceeding 30 million) by the celebrated writer, J.K. Rowling. In all her Harry Potter books, measurements are in traditional units.

Roald Dahl, the most successful children’s author of the previous generation, whose books are still very widely read, always used traditional measurements. The works of both writers deny the official pretence that children cannot relate to traditional units.

Members will be aware of the passing of Jennifer Paterson, a BWMA Honorary Member. Latterly best known as one of the "Two Fat Ladies", she had long before been an eminent cook and cookery writer. We pay tribute to an endearingly idiosyncratic individual and gratefully acknowledge the value of her support.

Our new notice has been devised first and foremost for shopkeepers trading in traditional units. Though buoyed by a tide of public goodwill and gratitude, these loyal traders have to face official intimidation and menaces individually on their own. Now they can share a "cap badge," a tangible moral support that we hope will become an increasingly evident and popular symbol, certain to attract more custom wherever it is displayed. Already the sticker has been distributed to well over one hundred traders – our "front line" – and will also be sent to sympathetic public figures.

The notice (illustrated here) comes in two forms: one sticky on the front, for transparent surfaces such as windows, windscreens, etc, and the other sticky on the back, for opaque surfaces. Of self-adhesive plastic, about five inches in diameter, it is vividly white against a deep blue.

The notice is already for sale at several outlets and we hope that BWMA Members will avail themselves of several, to use and/or give to friends and local traders to display.

The minimum donation, if ordering only one, is 50p, payable in loose postage stamps, accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope (over 5" square, of course). If ordering several, please send a cheque for at least £1 for 2, £2 for 4, etc, to include postage. Please be sure to specify which type you require, for transparent or opaque surfaces. Orders by post to BWMA, Dept. ESH, Maxgate, Burgh Hill, Etchingham, Sussex TN19 7PE. They will be available at the AGM on 3 June, if not sold out by then!

Dr Kim Howells, the responsible DTI Minister, is still telling untruths, even in correspondence with Parliamentary colleagues and despite our exposure (in The Great Gram Scam) of all the metric myths and fabrications. He persists, for example, in stating "You asked about penalties and enforcement. Magistrates determine the fine in individual cases, but may not exceed £2000 for a failure to indicate the quantity in metric units and may not exceed £5000 for a failure to indicate the price per kilogram or per 100 grams. These penalties are not new. They pre-date UK metrication and the units of measurement directives, and were used formerly to require traders to indicate weights and prices in imperial units."

On the contrary, the use of metric units in the UK as an alternative to imperial for all practical purposes has been legal since 1897, allowing freedom of choice for 98 years until 1995; so to claim that severe penalties were imposed on traders failing to use imperial is untrue.

Prior to 1897, of course, there was no alternative to imperial, since there was no demand for metric whatever, so any trader failing to use authorised units can only have been guilty of short measure, debasement or adulteration or some other fraud, all of which deserved severe penalties. Yet they are what Dr Howells compares with the offence of continuing to use imperial measures today.

As always, too, Dr Howells tells the triple lie which has become the DTI trademark: "the policy pursued by all Governments since 1965: that metric units should be adopted in stages as the UK’s primary system of measurement, in line with the global trend in favour of the metric system."

This is highly misleading since (a) the issue is not metrication but compulsory metrication, which originated in November 1989 at an EC Council of Ministers Meeting which nodded through the first draft directive – prior to which every Government had sworn never to introduce compulsion; (b) the new regulations effectively make metric not the primary but the sole system; and (c) as for the "global trend", the world’s most successful and powerful economy is staying with traditional measures.

Indeed, we have received a report from the USA that the North Carolina Department of Transportation has followed the example of so many other States in deciding that all road construction designs will revert to customary measures.

Geoffrey Martin, Head of the EC’s UK office, tells the same breath-taking falsehoods. His standard letters state: "the EU does not impose policies on the UK", yet at that Council of Ministers’ Meeting in November 1989 decisions were taken by "qualified majority voting," so the UK team could be out-voted. Then he usually continues: "metrication was a decision of the UK Parliament and Government predating membership of the (then) EEC by more than a decade" — that means more than ten years before 1973 — but he can never produce the slightest evidence to prove that the UK Parliament and Government decided to impose metrication prior to 1963. Incidentally, the European Commission’s UK office address, for those who want to write to him, is: 8 Storey’s Gate, London SW1P 3AT.

For sheer hypocrisy, however, the palm must go to Magnus Leminel who — as hardly anybody knows — is the EC’s Acting Director General for Industry, as successor to the disgraced Commissioner Martin Bangemann, the apostle of compulsory metrication. For all we know, M. Leminel may have had to be replaced by now, but whoever occupies that all-powerful position will no doubt continue to use the same stock paragraphs, such as: "I would like to stress right from the outset that, as always, the principle of subsidiarity was strictly applied when drafting the legislation concerned. In areas of Community competence, however, subsidiarity is restricted to the means and measures of implementation of Community legislation, not its substance." In other words: "How you do it is up to you, so long as you do as you’re told"!

This, of course, is a direct contradiction of Geoffrey Martin’s pretence that "the EU does not impose policies on the UK".

The sole justification ever advanced for compulsory metrication is to improve the Single European Market, but it is never explained how the sale of fresh foods and other loose goods, within British shops to the British public, could conceivably affect the European international market. Our masters proclaim "an objective of EU legislation, to eliminate barriers to trade within the European Community". So curtain material has to be sold in centimetres and sweets have to be sold in grams and paraffin in milliltres, to customers who do not understand or want these measures, in order to remove barriers to trade within the EC!

The truth is, on the contrary, that the real motive is to erect barriers to trade between the UK and the USA. To paraphrase the sentiments of that villain Martin Bangemann and his disciples at the DTI, "The UK is in an anomolous position, being on the one hand a full partner in the EU while, on the other hand, sharing a common system of customary weights and measures with the USA, thereby enjoying an unfair competitive advantage over other EU member states in transatlantic trade".

Future historians will show that this was the secret purpose of compulsory metrication – to destroy the great economic and cultural benefit that Britain has always enjoyed by virtue of this common heritage of weights and measures. From the EU’s point of view, it is bad enough that the UK and USA share a common language, but they can’t make it a criminal offence to speak English, so the one thing they can do is to make it a criminal offence to use the "inch-pound" system that we also share.

The following further observations regarding the shoddy government report on metrication have been sent to us by John Strange.

"I must comment on the disgraceful DTI Report (The Adoption of the International System of Units …) following the excellent article in The Yardstick of August 1999 (No. 9).

They’re lying, of course. We’re not getting the self-styled système international d’unités. What we’re getting isn’t a system at all but merely a collection of what I call Common Market units. The EC Directive 80/181/EEC makes it quite clear that we are getting these SI units plus a heterogeneous selection of non-SI units. So far from improving the system by introducing extraneous units they are actually destroying its unity.

The seven SI base units are listed in 80/81 in chapter 1 of the Annex, Section 1.1. This is followed by Section 1.1.1 in which the Celsius scale is introduced. It is not asserted there that the degree Celsius is a metric unit. The Directive itself gives the clue, for the listed base units are all followed by reference to a Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures but the degree Celsius is not. On the other hand, the authoritative Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (78th edition, 1997-98) explicitly states that we should not use metric prefixes in conjunction with Celsius. Therefore, and bearing in mind the fact that the SI admits of only one unit for each type of magnitude (see below) and given that the SI unit of temperature is the kelvin, I conclude that the degree Celsius is not a metric unit.

For many scientific and technical purposes, this fundamental principle of the metric system – having only one SI unit for each type of magnitude – is a great advantage: e.g. the metre for distance and ampere for electric current. But some magnitudes cannot be measured in terms of the seven base units. So speed is measured by combining the metre and second to give the metre per second and quantity of electricity is measured by combining the ampere and the second to give the ampere-second.

Such units are called derived units; some are given names of their own, others are not. Thus, the ampere-second is called the coulomb. Consequently, the hour (3,600 seconds), the kilometre per hour (5/18ths of a metre per second) and the ampere-hour (3,600 coulombs) are not SI units. Indeed, the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics states explicitly that the hour is not metric.

Here are some non-metric units, together with their metric equivalents, whose use is nevertheless permitted by the EU and which seem to be passed off as metric by our supine government.

Non-SI unit ---- SI equivalent
"x" degree Celsius ---- 273.15 + "x" kelvin
hour ---- 3,600 seconds
kilowatt hour ---- 3.6 megajoules
ampere hour ---- 3.6 kilocoulombs
kilometre per hour ---- 5/18 metres per second
metric ton (tonne) ---- 1 megagram
litre ---- 1/1000 cubic metre

The use of the terms metric ton or tonne and litre is allowed within the metric system because they are decimal multiples or submultiples of metric units. On the other hand, the calorie of 4.1868 joules is not allowed by the Directive but is used by nutritionists, apparently with impunity.

Here, finally, are a few factual errors from the schedule headed "Relevant imperial units, corresponding metric units and metric equivalents".

Nautical mile (UK): 1853.184 metres – they’ve tried to give everything else exactly, so why not this?

Inch of water: about 248.532 pascals at a temperature of 62F and pressure of 30" of mercury – they have assumed that the mass of 1 cubic metre of water is 1 megagram, but even at its most dense (39F) it’s about an ounce short of this amount and at 62F the mass of 1 cubic metre of water is very nearly 997.76 kilograms.

Therm: 1.05505585262 kilojoules – this is the stupidest mistake of the lot, for they tried to calculate 4.1868 x 453.59237 x 5 / 9 but got their sums wrong!

Finally, on page 7 (footnote 3) of the Report it is stated that the fluid ounce is 28.412 millilitres, but in fact it is slightly in excess of 28.413 (28.4130625 to be precise – and why not be precise?)."

The US standard railway gauge is 4ft 8½ inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English emigrants built the first American railroads.

But why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

But why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did they use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old long-distance English roads, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long-distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. Many of these roads have been used ever since. And the ruts? Roman chariots first made the ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of damaging their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made by or for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the manner of wheel spacing.

Thus, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4ft 8 ½in derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot – this being a comfortable width for harnessing a pair of horses.

And now, the twist to the story. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The engineers who designed them might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but they had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is only slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is just as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So the major design feature of Space Shuttles – the world’s most advanced transportation system – was determined by the breadth of a horse’s backside.

[Thanks to David Delaney who received the above from a friend via the Internet.]

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