[USMA:34837] Re: Metres have not overtaken yards in the UK

[Stephen Humphreys]

On further investigation I note that the UK-based person who claims not to 
know what an inch is on the "hair" forum  is also on the forum that daniel 
has posted (from the open university) and I note that he has - how shall I 
say this - "a more than average" interest in the question of Imperial vs 
metric ;-)

From: "Stephen Humphreys" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Subject: [USMA:34836] Re: Metres have overtaken yards in the UK
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:55:19 +0000

The best way to gauge "how little people in the UK use inches, yards, etc" 
is to listen in on discussion programmes on the radio (ie not on net 
forums, people normal people physically calling into radio stations that do 
discussions).
In reality if someone claimed not to know what an inch was in an average 
office in the UK then he'd (she'd) be looked at in an odd way.
Having said that, many of the 9 million people in London are from 
communities that would not be seen as "architipically British"- which - if 
he/she is from london - could explain things.

In reality almost no-one uses kilometres, very few express walking 
distances in metres, practially no-one measures themselves in anything 
other than feet/in st/lb.
Also - on the feet/yards "thing" we tend to measure heights and short 
lateral distances in feet, not yards while medium distances we tend to use 
yards, not feet (as I believe the Americans do).

Two good "listen in" resources I can think of right now are BBC london:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/ (click on BBC London listen live)

and

http://www.lbc973.co.uk/ (again click "listen live")

Ok - these are london based, but you can pick up many stations across the 
UK - try Cardiff, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Belfast etc.

Personally I wouldn't be inclined to do a search via google on the lines of 
"discussion forum metric bad imperial excellent" to build up an image like 
Daniel did - I'd go straight to the horses mouth (almost literally)



From: Pierre Abbat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Subject: [USMA:34833] Re: Metres have overtaken yards in the UK
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 00:21:36 -0400

On Wednesday 12 October 2005 22:48, Daniel wrote:
> Some of you may find this forum discussion very interesting.  It shows
> proof that a growing number of British are using metric and imperial is
> dying out in common speech and usage.  This is noted from people not 
tied
> in with the metric/imperial debate and whose opinions are biased.
>
> Check out this site:
>
> http://www.open2.net/forum/thread.jspa?threadID=3448&tstart=0

I saw the name "Avoura" in this thread. I suspect it's he (I later found 
out
she's a he) who in 
http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=30841
claimed to have no idea of inches.

phma