I think at we need a Monty Python skit. :-) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen Humphreys Sent: Tuesday, 24 May, 2005 10:11 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:32885] Re: Metric in federal legislation
> >No one is advocating denbying people any such rights. The object of the >exercise is to encourage people to do otherwise by reasoned argument and >explaining the benefits of a single system of measurement in the market >place. But what happens when you get the likes of me - educated purely in metric but finding myself choosing an appropriately convenient measure for a task I choose to do at the point I choose to do it - a measure that could be metric or imperial? There are many of us like that in the UK. We call it "convenience" (or as the UKMA call it "A Very British Mess") >What source would they be? > >- Anti-metric campaigners tellng people it's going to cost a billion pounds >to change our road signs, (a figure which is totally unsubstantiatied and a >gross exaggeration)? Do you know how much it would cost? And over, say, 1000 years will it have paid for itself in increased trade, safety or convenience? Or might it be done with the risk of harming British roads being the safest in Europe just so that some people can see 'km' and 'm' in place of 'm' and 'yds'? > >- Journalists like Christopher Booker writing in the Sunday Telegraph >telling his readers that it's illegal for historians to measure artifacts >in feet and inches? I haven't read this story so I cannot comment. > >- Metric martyr campaigners telling everybody Steven Thoburn was >criminialised for selling a pound of bananas? > At both polar ends of the metric / imperial debate either side will make capital out of what is loosely true when viewing the whole case in a specific perspective. Didn't you notice an election just happening? Both sides made claims that were fodder for the listener.
