When I was in Ireland this summer I saw one strange thing: Irish Rail is
renewing the distance markers along the railways but they have not been
changed to kilometres. So I saw a lot of new markers, all in miles!
Totally contrary what has been done on the roads. Maybe Tom has an
explanation for that.
I haven't, and since I don't use intercity trains, I would never have seen them. If you tell where
you saw them and what they looked like, I will write to Irish Rail and ask them.
I doubt if they are actively anti-metric, but they are a bit of a dinosaur when
it comes to innovation.
The shops that sell carpets, tiles etc. still oppose metric. I have to
see the first shop of that kind in Ireland which uses metric units
rationally. Some shops give the dimensions of carpets in metric and the
price in euros per square yard!
About five years ago nearly all such shops had units completely in imperial. I remember watching an
amusedly as a sales assistant calculated the area of a corridor that was effectively 9 m x 1 m with
a square 1 m x 1 m on the end using a calculator to multiply his feet-and-inches measurements,
getting a result in square yards, and eventually arriving at the same price I had first predicted
(the prices for sq yd and m2 were both displayed). When I pointed out how difficult he was making
it for himself, he conceded he was, but that this was the way he had been trained to do it.
Now there is much more of a mix of both metric and imperial, so it is going in
the right direction.
It is probably marketing nonsense that decrees that the square yard be
used, as pricing by the square metre looks
more expensive.
Of course this is the reason. Price per square yard seems cheaper. However, they are legally
obliged to provide price per square meter (dual pricing is allowed, but not imperial only), and most
of the ones I've seen comply. The ones that don't, I take the trouble to see the manager in charge,
and point out that I won't do business with a shop that has illegal price signage. A complaint to
the Consumer Agency also works wonders.
Tom Wade
