Things may be slow for awhile in Ireland but I think they're ahead of England. Haven't they got their road signs up in km? UK have yet to do this. I did notice however that all the white marker posts along UK motorways are spaced every 50m apart.
The major reason a metric conversion can be successful is the attitude of the media. Here in Australia we're very lucky to have a media with a pro-metric attitude and so it makes it easier to stick with one system instead of having to live with two systems (as in the UK). All news from the US gets converted to metric as is obvious when we hear things like "the car was travelling more than 160km/h", a translation from "100mph" from the US version. Letters sent to movie producers and TV channels will do a great deal to speed up metrication in your respective country - THEY are the ones who metricate a country, not the government. Good luck with your flying and getting some good travel insurance. You could always take the Eurostar under the Channel tunnel! Best regards Mike Joy Perth Australia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Han Maenen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2002 1:26 PM Subject: [USMA:21446] Back from Ireland | 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 | | | | |
