Whenever I was in Britain I have respected Imperial units and used them as well and I had never trouble with that. Phil Ligget does not think that he must respect our units when he is in mainland Europe, no he pretends that France is an Imperial country.
I honestly don't believe that Mr Ligget has an agenda of pretending that France is an Imperial country - I really don't. Most people don't have much of an interest in the imperial/metric debate. I would suggest emailing him to make sure though.
The Irish Times, in contrast to the Irish Indepedent, covers the Tour de France in metric, as it should be. This is one Irish newpaper that supports metrication.
I really don't think its that sinister. The press use a variety of sources in their coverage - and the data they get may be left as-is, converted, translated etc etc. Maybe they decided that because the vast majority of Irish don't "speak" in kilometres theys simply presented it as spoken by "the man in the street" so to speak.
I see it as not sinister at all - either way (metric or imperial).
