China has been misbehaving in this respect for years. I have seen photoframes and other Chinese products with labels etc. in ifp-only. It seens that they are strictly oriented towards exports to the USA and just like the TABD, they probably think that metric labels are too expensive, meaning everybody else must cope with ifp trash. If the EU does not cave in in 2010, the Chinese will have to stop with this nonsense or risk seeing their non-metric stuff being dumped on their doorstep. The BWMA is planning a lawsuit against the EU directive! Flooding the world with this stuff happened between 1945 and 1960. In the end it provoked resistance and it failed in the end. In 1957 the adoption of a 55 mph speed limit on French highways was stopped in time. It was proposed as a speed limit of 88 km/h by Maporama type idiots in the French Ministry of Transport and Public Works. The French magazine Mesures et Controles Industriel blew the whistle and nipped it in the bud. The film Five Miles to Midnight (about 1960) showed Maporama like road signs in Northern France, miles and km. I can assure you, I have not seen any sign of that type while on the bus to the Channel Tunnel. The worst thing is being betrayed by elements on your own side. It seems to be happening again. But I am sure that it will provoke a reaction and then this nonsense will collapse. Madness will never win! Han ----- Original Message ----- From: kilopascal To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Wednesday, 2001 August 29, 05:49 Subject: [USMA:15051] Homemaster 2001-08-28 Last autumn while on a trip to the Chicago area, I stopped in a store to check some things. While there I bought an Outdoor lighting timer that turns yard and garden lights on at dusk and can be set to turn off a selected number of hours later or at dawn. The one I have out there was going bad, and I bought this one as a replacement because it was reduced to half price. The one I was using finally died and today I opened the package of the replacement. The product was made in China for Homemaster Corporation. No address is shown on the package. The instructions inside are in English and Spanish. The attached scanned image is the instructions for installation. Notice, it is TOTAL FFU. Not one metric unit used, not even in Spanish. And look, 12 inches in Spanish is written as 12" pulgadas. That's right, both the " symbol and the word pulgadas. This is what I was writing about the other day. Why should an American company ever consider going metric, when they can easily have an FFU product made in a metric country (China) in FFU and sell it in FFU in Spanish speaking countries. There are thousands of countries like this. No wonder the TABD is fighting the EU. The EU is the only area of the world making an issue about metric. No one else really is. The fact is, the world would abandon metric and adopt US units if the US tries hard enough. And the way some of these companies do business, they are succeeding in supplanting metric with FFU. For every little drop of metric we see here, there is a flood of FFU going the other way. John
