Last Sunday I returned home. I got the Ryanair plane from 07:40 to Brussels South, Charleroi.
I think that the plane almost crashed just before touch down. I have never experienced a landing as the one on that flight. It began with a very sharp turn to line up with the runway. During the last minute of the approach the plane, an old ex-KLM B737-200, made very violent movements. The wings went up and down! I think that there was windshear or turbulence because of the hot weather (28 degrees and rising). I know that planes have smashed on the runway while approaching in the past because of such turbulence. When I got off the plane, I walked into the glare and heat of a scorching day. The temperature reached 30 degrees and more. Metrication in Ireland has not been advanced by the change to the euro. The media and the retail trades remain the major stumbling blocks. Yes, on the street market in Henry Street I saw decades-old scales with ditto avoirdupois weights, the same kind of devices that were found on Thoburns stall. There was no metric at all there. I wonder whether such scales and weights are still being verified and re-verified in Ireland? This is usually done every year. If not, they are doubly illegal: non-metric and not re-verified. I think that the government is afraid of creating metric martyrs, and thus tolerates the sabotage of metrication by the retail trades. The butchers especially are non-metric, they use their metric scales to weigh out lbs and oz, and I think that when this goes wrong they say: "Stupid metric system!" I have not seen any butchers' shop that even used dual pricing; all in avoirdupois only. They really should have that "English spoken here" BWMA-sticker on their shop window. There are also supermarkets that price in the format euro per lb/0.45 kg, the metric quote completely misses the point. In many places property is increasingly advertised in metric or metric and Imperial. Han Historian of Dutch Metrication, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
