A selection of articles from this issue
Why it is so dangerous
David Rogers
Many arguments are put forward for the abolition of imperial measures and most of them go unchallenged. There are several reasons for this, none of which reflect well on the nation whose empire once encompassed half the globe.
Arguments, however spurious, presented by Ministers of the Crown, are greeted with the deference inherent in the British character. "If so important a personage says it, who am I to disagree?" Then we say, "but I am just one voice in the wilderness. Who is going to listen to me?" For the rest it is a terrifying apathy born of an age of plenty and carefully nurtured by successive governments. We have been trained to know our place and risk subjection to tyranny as payment for our subservience.
Compulsory metrication is just one example of what may befall when we, the people, lose control over those who govern us; when we stop asking awkward questions; when we forget that laws may exist only with the consent of the people.
Is there a case for compulsory metrication?
"Europe is metric so our conversion will aid industry to be competitive"
This is a bogus argument. Europe is not wholly metric. A host of activities on the Continent are still conducted in British or other traditional measures. British industrialists are not generally stupid people and none would let an order pass to foreign competition by stubbornly insisting on supply in imperial measures. Most British firms already operate in metric where trade considerations and the need to conform demand it. Accordingly, much of our trade within Britain itself is now conducted in metric units where conformity with Europe provides significant cost savings over the maintenance of twin measuring systems. Compulsory metrication will add nothing to this.
"Much of our trade is already conducted in metric"
If this means that many of our standard products are now sold showing metric measurements, this is true, but many of those products, whilst notated in metric, are actually measured in imperial.
The standard size for plywood is 2440mm × 1220mm. How strange that the standard was not set at 2500mm × 1250mm or some other combination set to rounded figures like the old 8' × 4' we grew up with. Could it be something to do with the fact that 2440mm × 1220mm is almost exactly 8' × 4'? And does any builder or DIY enthusiast really pop into the builder's merchants and ask for a 2440 × 1220 of 12mm exterior-grade ply? Of course not. He asks for an 8 × 4 of «" like his father and grandfather before him, and the awkward, mystical millimetric meganumbers are just codes which appear on the bill.
Why are metric nails graded in millimetres as 25, 32, 40, 50, 65, 75 etc? So that they equate with their imperial equivalents. And I have yet to see screw sizes quoted in metric at all. That, presumably, is a nightmare yet to come.
Metric drill bit sizes include 2.5mm, 3.0, 3.2, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.8mm quoted metric sizes geared specifically to match their imperial forerunners.
The same story is told throughout the building and hardware industry of the old imperial sizes simply being given new names in order to conform to the new metric doctrine but the thinking is still firmly established in the "antiquated" imperial system. The new names serve only to confuse.
"Imperial measures are inefficient"
Today I made a rustic rose arch. It consists of four main legs, each of 90", two cross timbers of 60", and several 21" latt timbers for the cladding. These are units large enough to produce length numbers which are easily within the grasp of the simple carpenter's mind. Imagine having to cope with legs of 2286mm, crosses of 1524mm and latts of 533mm. The metricator would argue that a slight adjustment to the sizes would result in easy-to-manage, rounded metric numbers but this does not take into account the customer who invariably has inches and feet scrawled on the back of his envelope and is not overly concerned with my problems of metric conversion. Besides this, I have hundreds of standard parts measurements to remember in my business, and 90" is a great deal easier to retain than 2286mm or even the nearby 2250mm.
Then we have to decide how to notate this arch in metric units. Do we talk in millimetres, centimetres or metres? And let us not forget the decimetre and decametre. It all depends on where you want to put the decimal point. My arch leg, above, is clearly defined as 90" with no room whatever for confusion. Its metric equivalent could be 2.286m, 228.6cm or 2286mm. Misplace the decimal point or commit a small typographical error and the arch welcomes either giants or elves, depending on the direction of the mishap. This does not appear as a significant problem with so obvious a structure, but a dropped "m" or a misplaced point on the original timber order could be catastrophic.
"Many people already think in metric"
This is obvious nonsense. No strapping youth would describe himself as being 1.83m tall, and all have followed their parents in thinking imperial for all practical purposes. They have a decided advantage over many older people in being equipped to operate in metric terms when the need arises, and will do so more often, but their basic understanding of length, volume, weight and space is still firmly set in the imperial tradition.
"Calculation in units of 10 is so much more sensible"
12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone. So much easier when it is 10 of everything to everything else; or is it?
It is no accident that the imperial measurements quoted in the rustic-arch illustration above are in inches with no mention of yards or feet. This is the way I and most other carpenters work. Similarly, in the building trade, metric measurements are quoted in millimetres alone with no reference to metres or centimetres. A mixture of units in either system might lead to confusion but those in the imperial system are more clearly defined. Imperial linear measurements also have the advantage that they can more often be simply divided into whole-number units without resorting to fractions. The foot divides by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12 giving whole-inch results, whilst the metre divides by 2, 5 and 10 only, even to produce so small a unit as a whole millimetre approximately 1/25 the size of an inch.
Weights are theoretically simplified in metric units except that the weight difference between the kilo and the gram is immense. One gram is the weight of a small drop of water (1cc) whilst the kilo can represent a severely bruised toe if dropped from a moderate height. Both are impractical when applied to the domestic kitchen where the pound and ounce provide solid units for the measurement of flour, sugar and other cooking ingredients. As to the illogicality of 16oz to the lb, and 14 pounds to the stone, the main example I can recall of these units being mixed in common use is when describing the weight of the human body, and I am not aware of people being confused by their own weight. We work exclusively in either pounds or ounces, and many people use these units in their everyday lives whilst being rather vague on how many of one make up the other.
"Transition to metric units is already well advanced and its completion will be cheap"
Weighing machines in shops are still generally calibrated in imperial units, not because shopkeepers are awkwardly resisting change but because you still demand your pound of apples. The cost now of replacing that equipment will be 2,000 pounds to 3,000 pounds. You may like to think that the shopkeeper will pay for this out of the fortune stashed under his mattress but, having been a grocer myself, I can assure you that the average High Street or corner shop is fortunate to make a bare living. The cost of conversion will be paid for by you in higher prices over the coming years.
The big superstores are vociferous in their support of metrication, not with an eye to the needs of their customers, but because they know it will drive thousands of those little shops to the wall and so increase their own share of the market.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of perfectly good stock is already being ordered destroyed by Trading Standards inspectors because it does not conform to the new law. Vast mountains of business literature brochures, labels, cartons and tags must be destroyed and replaced. Computer programs must be rewritten and systems adapted. Confusion is inevitable, and the cost of it all will be paid by you, the consumer. Dig deep and be happy!
"Metrication is inevitable"
This is one of those odd arguments designed to overwhelm the simple-minded and to avoid reasoned debate. The imperial system has existed for 800 years whilst the first recorded objections to the introduction of the metric system were made by Napoleon who judged it to be a recipe for confusion. Nothing is inevitable and everything can change.
"Compulsory metrication is simply the final stage in a process begun in the 1960s. It has 'not been adopted at the behest of Europe' (Michael Heseltine)."
In the late 1970s the Conservative party formally declared its opposition to further statutory metrication (Sally Oppenheim Government spokesman, 1978). In 1979 Mrs Thatcher abolished the Metrication Board.
The Government reversed this in response to EC Directives 80/181 and 89/617.
But it's the law. What can I do about it?
The "Poll Tax" was the law once! It fell because it did not have the consent of the British people. Laws have fallen throughout our history in response to opposition and protest by ordinary people who believe that their representatives in Parliament should be just that and carry out the will of the electors.
Mr Heseltine says that it will not become "illegal to ask for a pound of apples." He does not go on to point out that by the end of the decade it will be illegal to sell a pound of apples and that the penalty for doing so could be a 5,000-pound fine (or, if unpaid, even a term of imprisonment). And that is the mark of the cleverness of our leaders. The "Poll Tax" affected millions who, by their very numbers, could not be subjugated by threats of jail. Easier by far to inflict this unwanted new system on the general public by targeting a few thousand shopkeepers who would, at the very least, face bankruptcy if they defy the government. At worst it would only take a couple more prisons, and you don't mind paying for that, do you?
There is, in fact, a great deal you can do. This Government faces a general election in a little over a year and 300 odd Tories will suffer that rare and distasteful feeling of needing your vote. Write to your MP and tell him he is not going to get it until he starts to listen.
Ask him if he thinks a shopkeeper who sells a pound of apples should (either now or in a few years' time, depending on whether they are pre-packed) be regarded as a criminal. Ask him why you should not be allowed to buy six-foot fence panels for your garden, or half a pint of shandy in the pub, or a pound of marmalade for your breakfast.
Ask him why the units of measure, which marked the gauges of the guns and shells which won our (and Europe's) freedom from tyranny through two bloody world wars, are now legal in Germany and a criminal offence in Britain. Is that what your fathers fought for?
(David Rogers is a garden furniture maker and a member of the Guild of Master Craftsmen.)
[From "The Yardstick", April 1996]
William J. Holdorf (Illinois, U.S.A.)
Give the Government an inch and it will take a kilometer.
The federal government, through the Department of Weights and Standards, the only agency that has not been corrupted with graft, fraud and special interest groups, unlike all other federal departments, at least up to now, establishes what are the exact lengths of anything. In the Anglo-Saxon world, which we are part of, that means an inch, a foot and a yard has an exact meaning and length. That standard is now under attack by a group of people who think we must join the French Revolution which gave birth to a new set of measurements called the metric system.
While a number of countries have succumbed and adopted the metric system, the United States has held out and that bothers a number of social reformers in our government. They think we have to join the rest of the world in using the metric system in order to compete in the world of business. They forget, the United States has created the greatest financial and industrial nation in the world; the greatest amount of wealth for the greatest number of people; has created the greatest number of inventions; and provided the greatest amount of money and gifts to other nations and peoples in need, both through the government grants (our taxes) and through charity from numerous private organizations, all the while we were using our system of measurement which we inherited from our great English heritage. If there is something wrong with the measurement we have been using for centuries, it certainly hasn't stopped us from being tremendously successful in a world that has seen governments and nations struggle and even collapse while using the metric system.
The inch is something not to treat lightly. It has served the United States well for over 200 years, in fact, more so than some governments have lasted, included the very French Government that adopted the metric system during the Reign of Terror by sceptics in 1790. Those running the French Revolution rejected anything that savored of the Divine or was linked to the past they considered corrupt. In spite of the new French government's search for purity, the French government, itself, has changed many times since it adopted the metric system, which certainly should be a warning that the metric system enhances no stability to a government.
The metric system, therefore, really has no claim being more beneficial or even more scientific than the inch. In fact, the very foundation of the metric system of measurement was actually conceived in error. The French merely estimated the length of a quadrant of the earth's circumference along the meridian passing through, of all places, naturally, Paris. This length they divided by 10,000,000 and so obtained the unit of a meter. The French government was mistaken since the earth is not a perfect circle, so their estimate was in error by 100,000 inches, or 254,000 centimeters, whichever you prefer. However, regardless, the French set the meter in motion as they determined it and have been convincing others for centuries to adopt their system.
As for the inch, it all began in days gone by, all the way back to the Romans, when a foot was something associated with a real foot, the distance from the heel of Roman to his big toe. The Romans divided that distance, as they determined it, into 12 unciae, from which both the inch and the ounce was fashioned, an ounce being 1/12th of a pound.
Of course, everybody did not always agree with the Romans through the centuries and, as a result, the foot was divided into various lengths. In the 17th century, the Dutch used 11 inches for a foot. However, the inch, itself, still survived, if the foot did not. Also, King Henry I established the yard in the 12th century as the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of his outstretched thumb. And afterwards, as kings will do, Edward I didn't like what his predecessor did and changed it to 3 feet in 1305.
The inch has rightfully earned its way throughout the centuries of human history not only in terms of measuring exact proportions, but has even endowed poetic meaning in great literature, such as Shakespeare's Ay, every inch a king. And as a building mould for larger measurements, such as the mile, the words of Robert Frost has an understandable message in:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
If Robert Frost had lived under our present day bureaucratic dictatorship, that attempts to legislate society's measuring mind under threats of physical retaliation against any opposition, his distinguished poetic expressions would have had taken on a dreary:
And kilometers to go before I sleep.
And kilometers to go before I sleep.
It is nonsense to think that any nation that does not adopt the metric system of measurement will lose its financial and industrial place in the business world. The greatest industrial and financial center is still the United States, and for the United States to be forced to accommodate lesser industrial and financial nations that have foolishly adopted their measurements to the metric system, is ridiculous. It should be the other way around. But, of course, politicians are a breed all alone, many times apart from the sphere of intelligence and logic, as well as the will of the people. It is merely for purely political reasons that they insist the United States must change over to the metric system. Never mind the fact that for the United States to accommodate the lesser industrial and financial nations of the world is like putting the cart in front of the horse.
Changing to the metric system in the United States also takes on a bureaucratic financial disaster when one realizes the horrendous amounts of tax dollars that will be wasted just to change the signs on all the roadways of the U.S. At a time when federal road improvement and new construction tax dollars to the states are waning because of restraints to balance the nation's budget, state governments will be forced to spend hundreds of millions or billions of those tax dollars to convert all road signs, including all those mile markers, from miles to kilometers, just to please other nations who prefer the metric system.
But the cost to the American tax payer to change all roadway signs to the metric system is just the tip of the metric boondoggle financial iceberg. All government contracts must now be measured using the metric system, such as building plans and blueprints. Also, all government supplies must use metric standards, such as stationery and other office supplies. The federal government is belligerently attempting to go metric, whether the public will follow or not. No doubt, the bureaucrats feel, once the metric system is fully in place in the government, then they will apply their coup de grƒce to any opposition. So much for the degeneration of freedom in America, thanks to our politicians who seem to value the opinion of other nations more than the opinion of the constituency that elected them.
Through the use of our hard-earned tax dollars, the federal government is attempting to ram the metric system down our throats whether the people want it or not, which clearly reflects the mental attitude of a dictatorship by members of Congress. It is time, therefore, to start voting out of office those in Congress with such gross disrespect for the will of the people and, most importantly, such gross disregard for the intelligent use of our hard-earned tax dollars and our American heritage in the way we successfully measured things for over two hundred years. The United States does not need to "measure-up" to the way other nations measure; let other nations "measure-up" to our very successful measurement standards.
Mr. Holdorf is a retired office manager who worked 23 years for an insurance company. We have left the American spelling in his article unaltered.
[From "The Yardstick", April 1996]
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