Tom,
I will have to take pictures or even film them when I am in Ireland again.
The old mile markers are made from stone, the new ones are modern metal
signs.I saw them on all intercity lines I travelled on this year. They use
quarters
of a mile, the rounded miles are given for instance: "125 M.P." I reallly
think that such distance markers are a thing of the past with the
navigational aids we have today. I am searching on You Tube through videos
about Irish Rail, if I can see one of these mile markers.
I have to disagree with you about their lack of innovation spirit. Irish
Rail is rolling out superb inter city trains and I have travelled on them
and their service is improving all the time.
Those who really oppose innovation are the Luddite Irish trade unions,
because they used the roll out of new inter city trains for fomenting
industrial disputes.
I think that IR uses a lot of metric, but these distance signs are a mystery
to me.
Carpets etc. When I read Des Kelly ads in newspapers, they are never metric,
Des Kelly seems to be militanty imperial.
Han Maenen
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Wade" <[email protected]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 2009, November 10 11:53
Subject: [USMA:46154] Re: Ireland
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 on 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
