“3lbs of apples make every litre of Copella apple juice”

Thus proclaims the label on a bottle of “English apple”  juice. But why this odd mix of units? (It should be said that the bottle is also clearly marked ‘750 ml e’)

The slogan may be worded this way because the arithmetic works well. None of the alternatives looks or sounds as good:

1³/₄ lb in every pint

¾ kg in every pint

1¹/₃ kg in every litre

Alternatively, this could be a new version of a favourite traders’ ploy – 3lbs looks a lot more than 1.36 kg.

Perhaps it is an attempt of emphasise the English origins of the apples that are used to make the juice – a fruity equivalent of the union jack that appears on the labels of some supermarket milk.

This particular combination of units is curious because the imperial alternative to the litre lives on in the UK as a primary unit, albeit only for draught beer and cider, whereas the pound (lb) has had no legal purpose for more than ten years.

Campaigners for imperial measures often claim in support that these are used in the USA, which has the world’s largest GDP. The pound is a primary unit in the US of course, unlike the imperial pint. But it seems unlikely that the advertising agency employed by a Suffolk apple presser would allow US practices to influence its copy.

Others may prefer the simple life, perhaps a can of “The Amber Nectar, 440ml e, alc. 4% vol”.

This query has been received from a reader of Metric Views:

“If Britain were to revert to the exclusive use of Imperial measures, could it actually help trade with the USA, who (sic) uses US customary measures? I know that while I am an US customary/Imperial supporter in the USA, would British goods suffer in the USA if Britain reverted to Imperial units?”

The ‘Review of external trade statistics’ on www.statistics.gov.uk provides information on trade with EU and non-EU countries. It shows that in 2009 the EU accounted for 53.6% of UK trade in goods, both exports and imports. Non-EU countries, including the US, accounted for the balance.

HMRC statistics for general trade are found on www.uktradeinfo.com, and these provide a break down by country. The table for the ‘top 50’ countries shows that in 2009 trade with Germany alone (£64 billion) exceeded that with the US (£62 billion), which represented only 12.2% of UK trade with the ‘top 50’.

It is clear therefore that any reversion to the use of pound/inch units in UK manufacture would not be helpful for UK trade.

A reversion to imperial units for liquid volume would serve no purpose as these are unique to the UK and differ significantly from homonymic US customary units.

The questioner asks if British goods in the USA would suffer if Britain reverted to imperial units. A look at two of the more successful manufacturing companies in the UK indicates that this would be so.

Nissan’s car manufacturing plant in Sunderland is the most productive in Europe, and the second most productive in the world. It exports 85% of its output, some to the USA. High productivity is aided by the ability to source parts and components, metric of course, from around the world.

Rolls Royce in Derby produces, arguably, the best aero engines in the world, fitted to both Airbus and Boeing aircraft – the RR Trent 1000 engine powered the first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. RR aero engines include components and complete assemblies brought in from plants in the UK and the continent in order to optimise the efficiency of a predominantly metric production process.

Clearly, reversion to a measurement system that is not shared with suppliers would increase costs for both companies, and result in products becoming less competitive.

So if metrication has opened world markets to UK manufacturing and brought efficiencies in production, then why does this sector now form only 12% of the UK economy? The new government is talking of ‘rebalancing the economy’ – will manufacturing be able to make the contribution expected from it?

During the ‘Tonight’ programme on ITV1 on 15 July 2010, Lord Digby Jones, Director of the CBI 2000-06, Minister of State for Trade 2007-08 and on the board of JCB (another successful UK manufacturing company), spoke of ways to increase manufacturing output. He pointed out that the UK can not compete on something that sells on price. He said we need to look for quality, value added and innovation – areas where we can’t be undercut, and for innovative products that others can not make.

But he also said that half the kids who leave school this year will do so without a grade C in maths and English. He quipped, “Half the schools’ input to the world of work is not fit for purpose”.

Sir James Dyson was also interviewed during the programme and echoed some of the points made by Digby Jones. He pointed out that the UK is producing one twentieth of the number of engineers of China or India, and half the engineers of the Philippines or Mexico.

By the time Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, had made his contribution to the programme, speaking of changing the culture in education in favour of maths, physics and engineering and creating a new skills base, the message could not be clearer.

But have not readers of Metric Views heard this before? Remember our article ‘Kids don’t count’ published on 20 May 2010? This suggested that, so long as there is a difference between the measurement units used at school and those on the street and in the home, then this cultural divide will continue, and for many kids the prospect of learning a skill may be far from enticing.

The United States has avoided a divide between school, home and work but at the same time has excluded itself from many world markets by retaining pound/inch units beyond their sell by date. The UK faces the other side of the coin – opportunities for UK manufacturing industry have been created by US inaction but many of these may be lost because too few kids can count.

Both countries need to change. Which will be first?

By international agreement under the auspices of the United Nations, new road signs showing pedestrian escape routes with distances were adopted for international use in tunnels in 2003, providing a common design for use in all countries to improve evacuation in the event of a tunnel incident. These new signs added the distance in metres to the nearest exit, as illustrated in the updated Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals:

In the UK, the Department for Transport (DfT) noted this advance, but decided that new signs using obsolete imperial units should be erected in tunnels across the UK, regardless of whether young people or visitors to this country may need to be evacuated from a tunnel, and heedless of government guidance that metric units are the primary system of units in the UK.

New signs are being installed by highway authorities in tunnels across the UK, including in London, where Transport for London (TfL) are refurbishing road tunnels with new signs showing the distance only in yards (and to the nearest yard!), as shown in this picture taken in the Rotherhithe Tunnel:

Meanwhile, TfL re-opened the refurbished East London line last month, whose tunnels pass below the Rotherhithe road tunnel.

This being the UK, the same standards do not apply in road and rail tunnels. New escape signs have also been installed by TfL within the rail tunnel adjoining the road tunnel:

Unlike the road tunnel, the rail tunnel is signed in metres, meaning any visitors are able to judge the distance to the emergency escape. Full marks to the rail authorities for using units all potential users will understand, but it highlights the mess that the UK is in when adjacent tunnels, one road and one rail, under control of the same authority, provide critical passenger safety information in different units and expect users to be able to understand both.

Sadly, other backward steps have been made within the rail tunnel. Line distances on the London Underground network changed to kilometres as long ago as 1972, but with the conversion of the East London line to National Rail standards, new mile and chain marker posts have replaced the metric signs which have stood for nearly 40 years. The new yellow sign below indicates the 3 ¾ mile mark:

At least these signs are not for public consumption!

“I suspect that all that may change is the lettering on the box; there will still be 6 and 12 eggs (or 9/10/18 etc) with a minimum weight declared on the front.

In my thirty-five year career as a food and cookery writer, I recall going through three changes of egg sizing.

First, we had large, medium and small, bantams, etc.

Then we went to sizes – remember those?  1-2 were large, 3-4 medium and 5-6 small.  That wasn’t satisfactory either and then some ten years or so ago, lo and behold, we went back to large, medium and small.

But egg sizes are based on weight.

I did a little weigh-in tonight on my digital scales, so pretty accurate.  As it happened (really!), I had a box of six medium eggs and six large eggs from a box left over from the weekend.

The 6 medium eggs weighed as follows: 3 x 64 g, 2 x 62 g and 1 x 66 g – a total weight of 382 g.

The 6 large eggs were 2 x 64 g and 4 x 60 g – a total of 368 g.

In other words, the medium eggs weighed more, and if I were a shopper seeing the weight on the front of the box I would buy those in preference to the more expensive so-called large eggs.

Egg sizes also seem to vary according to the season, the summer tailing off I believe.

Interestingly enough, a dozen is from the French douzaine.  They also sell eggs in tens, called a dizaine, I think.

I also weighed a 500 g box of cherry tomatoes =  482 g, and a 250 g pack mushrooms = 256 g.”

For readers who are unfamiliar with this story, MetricViews recommends this summary from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/10432128.stm

During a broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland on 5 January 2009, viewable on the UKMetric YouTube channel, we heard again the suggestion that there is little need for the UK to continue with the metric changeover as imperial measures are similar to those used in the USA. If only this were true.

Practice in Britain and in North America had begun to diverge even before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The governments of the thirteen colonies had their own physical standards of English measures, which seldom agreed precisely with those in Britain. And in 1790, when the newly-established federal government set about the creation of a unified system of measures for the United States, alignment with measures in Britain was low on its priorities. Later, a Royal Commission was appointed in the UK, then comprising Great Britain and Ireland, to consider the reform of weights and measures. The resulting Weights and Measures Act of 1824 retained many English measures, but not all of the unit names and with slightly different values, and it was this disparate collection that eventually acquired the title “imperial”.

So where does this leave us now?

The surviving imperial measure of liquid volume, the pint, differs significantly from its US counterpart. This is illustrated by the most popular size of supermarket fresh milk: the quart (0.95 litres) in the US, and 2 pints (1.13 litres) in the UK. The gallon, though obsolete in the UK, is still used to indicate fuel consumption in both countries – identical cars in the US achieve 17% less mpg due to the smaller US gallon. The imperial fluid ounce is now obsolete, so we need only remember that there are 16 (not 20) US fluid ounces to a US pint.

All of the imperial dry measures are also obsolete, so the confusing conversions between US and UK bushels, pecks, dry gallons and dry pints belong, happily, to history.

Problems arising during WW2 from differing standards for Canadian, UK and US equipment gave rise to a decision in 1948 to adopt a unified inch system of threads in all three countries. This led in 1959 to agreement on common definitions of the foot (0.3048 m) and the pound (0.453 592 37 kg). These definitions found their way into UK law in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.

However, although these definitions have been identical for fifty years, there remain many pitfalls for transatlantic travellers. The imperial ton of 2240 pounds is obsolete, replaced by the tonne. The US ton of 2000 pounds lives on. So we need to remember that one ton is about 0.907 tonnes. And of course, if you ask an American his weight, he will give it in pounds; here in the UK, the use of stones is being passed on to succeeding generations, to the bewilderment of the rest of the world.

Campaigners for the retention of imperial measures, confusingly also called ‘British measures’, make much of the importance of the ounce as well as the pound. Practice in the USA may disappoint them, as many supermarkets price random-weight pre-packs of meat and cheese in pounds and decimals, and weigh loose fruit and vegetables at the check-out likewise.

This preference in the US for decimals, instead of the varied relationships enjoyed by users of the imperial system, appears to extend to the highway. In the UK, measures of distance up to ½ mile have to be shown on road traffic signs in yards, not feet. Over this, distances must be shown in miles and fractions thereof. Feet and decimals of miles are prohibited. In the US, distances in feet are normal and distances shown in yards on signs very unusual. It is reassuring to know therefore that distance measures on UK road signs will confuse overseas visitors wherever they come from.

At the beginning of this article, it was suggested that the UK and the USA are linked by a common measurement system. In the light of the above, how can this be?

In their progress in adopting the metric system, the two countries have followed similar courses. In the early 1800’s, while Presidents Jefferson and John Q Adams were looking into the reform of US weights and measures, the UK appointed a Royal Commission with a similar task. In 1866, metric became legal in the USA for all purposes; late to the party, the UK followed in 1896. The USA was one of the earliest signatories to the Metre Convention in 1878. Late again to the party, the UK signed in 1884. However, in 1965, the UK was first to see that an increasing proportion of world trade would be carried out in metric units, and signalled a changeover from the units generally used in industry at that time. The USA followed in 1975. Both countries saw their hopes of a smooth, swift and effective transition dashed with a change of leadership in the early 1980’s. A large number of UK manufacturing companies did not make the switch and many of these have now gone out of business. Could it be that much of US manufacturing industry is now following the same path?

As the two countries work at a leisurely pace towards completing the metric changeover, there exist none of the differences that separate the imperial and the English/US Customary measurement systems. Both the UK and the USA, as signatories of the Metre Convention, share a commitment to adopting a truly international system of measures, and to participating together in its continuing development. So yes, the two countries are linked by a common measurement system, albeit an international one.

Hugo Vickers, chairman of the Jubilee Walkway Trust, told the Evening Standard that “as soon as we at the Jubilee Walkway Trust heard that the Olympic Games would take place in London in 2012, the same year as the Diamond Jubilee, we dreamed up a new route for London, 60 kilometres — one for every year of the Queen’s reign — to help people walk to the main Olympic sites. It will also leave a lasting memorial to the Diamond Jubilee.”

The route will take in many of central London’s main sights as well as the Olympic Park at Stratford, and sections of the Thames Path, and will be marked with 60 illuminated beacons.

Sadly the 60 kilometres of the new trail will not actually be signed as such despite walkers’ reliance on kilometre-based Ordnance Survey mapping. This is due to the insistence of the Department for Transport (DfT) that, despite more than 30 years of metric teaching in schools, the British are not considered to be ready to see signs in metres and kilometres.

While some enlightened authorities erect informal signs in kilometres (understandable to British walkers and tourists alike) while others prefer to use signs that visitors can’t understand, the DfT is introducing yet a third system of hours and minutes for walking and cycling signs – which are of limited value to anybody not walking or cycling at the assumed speed (see this article).

Many others, knowing that foreign visitors are not familiar with imperial units, that journey times are useless for anyone slower or faster than the assumed speed, and that metric units are not permitted on official signs, choose to do without distances (or times) at all.

So two systems are permitted by the DfT, but not the one which is most readily understood by those who need to follow them.

The Système International (SI) has been carefully designed as a coherent system of units intended for use in all applications independent of language and national origin. At its heart is the principle that one and only one unit is used for each type of measurement. The same unit is used regardless of scale and the former traditional practice of distinct units for different ranges is supplanted by the use of a common set of prefixes based on powers of ten as an optional alternative to exponential notation also based on powers of ten.

Some measurement applications however do have key units of measurement that, by virtue of their definition, are very convenient for the purpose and if were to be incorporated into the SI would create anomalies, contrary to its principles.

In this article the discussion will focus on astronomy which has a significant number of non-SI units in common use. Readers knowledgeable in other subjects will no doubt think of examples in their own sphere.

For a very recent example consider the tables of data from the NASA/Ames Kepler mission:

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/

Note in particular the mass measurements: Solar (mass of Sun = 1), Jovian (mass of Jupiter = 1) and Earth masses which are in wide-spread use. The Astonomical Unit (AU where the mean distance from Sun to Earth = 1)  is also very common. Other common units of distance are the parsec (distance of an object from Earth such that two position measurements made over a 6 month interval yield a discrepency of 1 arc-second due to parallax) and the light year (the distance travelled by an object in a year if moving at the speed of light).

The kilogram is probably used in astro-physics for calculation involving fundamental physical laws (e.g. the gravitational constant is a key parameter in the equations of stellar structure) but the results are presented and discussed in terms of the mass ratios referred to above. This is not because the SI is being rivalled by dogmatic alternatives but, probably, for valid scientific reasons. It is likely the comparisons are significant in helping to assimilate the data and to formulate or refine theories about the formation and evolution of stars and planets.

The AU has its uses in helping to visualize the scale and structure of the Solar system which is probably more memorable than distances in metres. 1 AU is about 150 Gm so conversion to metres isn’t too bad e.g. the mean distance of Pluto at roughly 40 AU is about 6000 Gm or 6 Tm. However, its use should really be confined to circumstances where a comparison with Earth’s orbit is significant (its use in the Kepler observations may well be important).

Incidentally, when interplanetary distances are expressed in metres suitable prefixes should be used e.g. Tm not billions of km.

The light year has some usefulness for larger distance scales. For example a galaxy 2 million light years away is effectively being seen as it was 2 million years ago. It is also a significant parameter for very distant objects because a quasar say 13 billion light years away is effectively a window on the very early universe. As it happens the light year is within 6% of 10 Pm (approx 9.46 x 10¹⁵ m).

In the opinion of this author the parsec, however, is overused. It is of course sensible for the intermediate results of parallax measurements (which is necessarily limited to relatively nearby distance determination) but a poor choice as a general purpose unit due to its awkward relationship to the light year (3.24 ly) and metre. Retaining it is almost (but not quite) as bad as retaining the mile alongside the kilometre.

As a general conclusion, standard SI units should be used where it is feasible to do so and non-SI units, where justifiable, should be rationalised to avoid unnecessary proliferation and confined to appropriate circumstances.

Readers may disagree with the tolerance expressed here to some non-SI units and are invited to comment or give other examples in areas of their own knowledge and interest.

Now that the General Election is out of the way and a new government installed, there is an opportunity for politicians to take a decisive step toward completing the metric conversion that was begun nearly half a century ago. UKMA has argued that, without decisive Government intervention, the current muddle of conflicting measurement systems will continue indefinitely.  One way of speeding things up would be the passage of a “Weights and Measures (Completion of Metrication) Bill”.  Such a Bill might include some of the provisions listed below.

Ostensibly, the policy of all governments since 1965 has been “that the United Kingdom should – in stages – switch from imperial to metric units of measurement for an ever-increasing range of uses” (quoted from a letter from Tony Blair to Lord Howe in 2004). However, in recent years the Government have taken no significant practical steps to achieve that object, and they are explicitly relying on the false hope that “this is a matter that will solve itself in time” (quoted from Baroness Thornton, Hansard, House of Lords, 25 Feb 2010 : Column 1081).  The reality is that the Government has virtually given up on the great metrication project and wishes that people wouldn’t keep mentioning the subject.

What the noble Lady presumably meant was that, as the older age-cohorts of imperial-educated people die out and are replaced by younger metric-educated people, the transition from imperial to metric as the default system in common use would occur “naturally”.  However, if that were true, it surely would have happened before now.  It was in 1974 that the then Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher, required metric units to be taught in the maths and science curriculum.  Thus, anybody born after 1964 (i.e. well over half the working population aged 18-65) would have received at least their secondary education in metric units.  Yet there is little sign that this transition is occurring.  The popular media are still predominantly imperial, or they mix metric and imperial indiscriminately. In order to function effectively in the UK in the 2010s, adults need to be fluent with both systems.

If the “very British mess” of trying to operate two incompatible systems of measurement at the same time is ever to be ended, then it is idle to pretend that the changeover will happen of its own accord.  It will require decisive government action – and this inevitably will have to include legislation.

MetricViews suggests that a new Act of Parliament – perhaps called the “Weights and Measures (Completion of Metrication) Act” – will be needed.  It could include some or all of the following clauses:

(a)  A statement of the purpose of the Act – perhaps along the lines of the Australian or American declarations¹ quoted below.

(b)  Declaration that metric is the primary system for all legal and official purposes in the UK unless otherwise required by international agreements (i.e. currently aviation and maritime navigation)

(c)  Duty on all organisations in receipt of public funds (inc. Government Departments and Agencies, the Crown, local authorities, statutory bodies, schools and universities, police, BBC, contractors on publicly financed projects, charities receiving grants) to work toward becoming primarily (and eventually exclusively) metric.  This could include an appropriate clause to be inserted in all procurement contracts and grant agreements.

(d)  Power of Secretary of State to direct such public agencies (either selectively or generally) to cease using non-SI or non-SI-compatible units

(e)  Establishment of Commission to manage remaining stages of transition to primary or exclusive use of metric units

(f)    Power of the Secretary of State to give directions to the Commission

(g)  Reserve power of Secretary of State to take over enforcement powers of local authorities under the Weights and Measures Act where they are failing to act

(h)  Cut-off date (say, 5 years) for ending the exemption of “road signs, distance and speed measurement” from the requirement to use SI units

(i)    Power to prohibit manufacture, import and sale of measuring instruments that show non-SI units (might need to be some exemptions, eg. for legacy components and artefacts)

(j)    Requirement that measurement units used in advertising and product description shall be metric, with optional supplementary indications (to be enforced against advertising agencies, estate agents, newspapers, internet service providers – but not against private individuals). (It would be counter-productive to enforce against private individuals as this would simply lead to the creation of “martyrs”).

Ideally, this Bill should have been part of the new Government’s legislative programme.  Indeed, without Government support it would have little chance of becoming law. However, if the Government is reluctant to propose this measure at present, then perhaps an individual Member (of either House) – with the assistance of the Parliamentary draftsmen – would be prepared introduce it as a “Private Member’s Bill” – possibly under the “ten minute rule.”  Whether it then attracted Government support or not, it would obviously have to be published, might attract some publicity, and would put down a marker for future reference.

________________________________________________________________

¹Quotations from other legislatures:

“The object of this Act is to bring about progressively the use of the metric system of measurement in Australia as the sole system of measurement of physical quantities.” (Metric Conversion Act, 1970)

“Sec. 205b. Declaration of policy

It is therefore the declared policy of the United States–

(1) to designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce;

(2) to require that each Federal agency, by a date certain and to the extent economically feasible by the end of the fiscal year 1992, use the metric system of measurement in its procurements, grants, and other business-related activities, except to the extent that such use is impractical or is likely to cause significant inefficiencies or loss of markets to United States firms, such as when foreign competitors are producing competing products in non- metric units;

(3) to seek out ways to increase understanding of the metric system of measurement through educational information and guidance and in Government publications; and

(4) to permit the continued use of traditional systems of weights and measures in non-business activities.” (Metric Conversion Act, 1975)

Alan Young, who has been mathematics teacher for three decades, has written to Metric Views as follows:

“As I watched the programmes, it began to dawn on me that the problem is much worse than even I had thought. When I was young, even though I lived on a council estate and I now see my childhood home as an educational desert, we did nevertheless do quite a lot of computation at home, albeit in imperial units. We used to measure our heights and mark them on the wall. We worked out how much taller mum and dad were than my brother and me. We weighed things when my mother cooked and so on. In other words, we were able to build at home on what we had been taught at school.

Now, when children come home and say they weigh 35 kg and their height is 1.35 metres, the reply from mum or dad is that they are 9 stone 7 pounds and 5 ft 8 in tall. It is impossible to do the calculations that we so enjoyed doing at home. Children learn to cook in metric units at school, parents use imperial units. Gone are a multitude of opportunities for calculation and the reinforcement of their mathematics.

Not only that, but when you think about it in detail, virtually the whole of the Primary syllabus is based on, or derived from, measurement. The typical SAT question of, ‘What is the cost of 5 metres of something at 56p per metre?’ is an obvious example, but even something like 156.5 divided by 3 equates to, ‘The total body mass of three children is 156.5 kg. What is the average body mass?’

Without the opportunity to practice measurement using only one system of measurements, children find it difficult to see the relevance of the sums they are required to calculate and are consequently not improving their skills as children elsewhere in the world are. Like most things mathematical, this is accumulative.

Despite not having had this practice, they are then expected to do calculations that no children anywhere else in the world are expected to do such as convert degrees Celsius to degree Fahrenheit and kilometres to miles.

Neither of the two Dispatches programmes even hinted at the root cause I am suggesting and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is the real problem because it is the one big thing that is unique to this country. We have been in this mess for some forty years now and that is about one and half generations, which just about covers most of the primary teachers currently teaching in our schools.”

So if Alan is right, how did we get into this mess?

Our forbears were well aware of the link between industry and education. The Factory Act of 1802 required that during the first four years of their apprenticeship, children employed by the owners of the newly arising factories were taught reading, writing and arithmetic. The Elementary Education Act 1870 established district school boards all over the country whose duty was to provide facilities for the elementary education of all children not otherwise receiving it. In reality, these boards ensured that the work force attracted to the rapidly expanding industrial towns could read, count and measure. And the changeover to metric in schools began in 1974, just nine years after the announcement in Parliament that “… British Industries on a broadening front should adopt metric units sector by sector …”.

The respected educationalist, Dr Tagg, wrote in 1968 about metrication, “Education of children is a process not limited to schools, and measures used in the home will need to be changed to keep in step with those used in school or there will be a conflict of ideas between the two.” He added, “It is in the kitchen that a great many children have their first experience of weighing flour and butter and measuring volumes of water or milk.”

Alas, his words went unheeded, and the importance for education of the world beyond school received little attention in the ensuing 35 years. During a broadcast of BBC “Question Time” in February 2006, politicians from UKIP and the Conservative and Labour Parties were asked if the UK’s road signs should be converted to metric. All said “No”. None prefaced his or her answer with, “We realise that this muddle is damaging our children’s education, but on balance …”. Indeed, if you review recent TV and radio programmes concerning the metric changeover, you will scarcely find any mention of education. Those you find are likely to be unhelpful, for example Philip Schofield on ”This Morning” saying that there is no connection between what his kids learn about measurement at school and what they do at home.

This lack of appreciation of the importance of the link between the measurement units taught in school and those used elsewhere was further illustrated in December 2008 when the Minister responsible for the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills boasted “Government saves the pint and the mile”

So, how much could joined-up government save?

In 2004, UKMA suggested in its report “A very British mess” that much teaching of numeracy and measurement is wasted since kids “have little opportunity to practise their skills outside school”. Now Dispatches shows that “kids don’t count”. So how much could this be really costing?

Estimating is difficult, but it is clear that the sums involved are large. The Office of National Statistics gives the budget for education for the UK  in 2009-10 as £88 billion (yes, billion not million), but this includes everything from nurseries to universities. To narrow the field, we may look at the education budgets for 2009-10 for Haringey and Kent County Councils (two very different education authorities) which each give a figure of about £700 per head of population per year for their delegated schools budgets, that is the costs of running primary and secondary schools. For the UK as a whole, this gives a total of about £40 billion per year for primary and secondary education in the public sector. To put this in perspective, a 1.5% saving of this total would pay the total cost of changing speed and distance road signs in the UK in less than one year, based on the DfT’s hugely inflated estimate, and would at a stroke remove one of the principal causes of the “conflict of ideas” between school and elsewhere.

Still not sure? Alan Young explains his thoughts on his web site, www.drmetric.net. His flash movie “It’s worse than I thought” should help to convince you.

While you are on Dr Metric’s web site, do listen to the “Revealing Sound bite” from Paul (”British now living in Australia”) which demonstrates that change is possible.

Finally, if you are a parent, concerned about your child or children’s progress in mathematics at school, then try using more metric measures at home. Dr Metric has some tips.

UKMA’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/ukmetric has a selection of clips from about twenty five broadcasts from the past decade, including both “Question Time” and “This Morning”.

References

‘Metrication’ edited by FW Kellaway
‘Chapter 5. Metrication and the teacher’. E D Tagg MA PhD. p. 110. Penguin. 1968.

‘A very British mess’. para 3.5 (g) and (h). UKMA. 2004.

Firstly, the Prime Minister himself – David Cameron.  MetricViews is not aware of any public statement he has made on the subject.  Certainly, he has given no indication that he is personally committed to resolving the “very British mess”.  Equally, he has not associated himself with the wilder actions or comments made by some of his party MPs.  When he was responsible for the Conservative manifesto in 2005, he did not include an earlier proposal from a party think-tank that would have legalised imperial weighing.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, is also not known to have expressed a view on completing metrication.  However, his former rival for the Liberal Democrat leadership, Chris Huhne, is a longstanding supporter of metrication. Unfortunately, his portfolio – Energy and Climate Change – affords little opportunity for progress on metrication, but we may hope that he may speak up for the cause in Cabinet if the opportunity arises.

Committed opponents in the new Cabinet include the former Conservative leader, William Hague, now Foreign Secretary, who once wrote an article in the News of the World denouncing UKMA!

The key post of Transport Secretary (responsible of course for road signs and speed limits) has gone to Philip Hammond (Conservative).  Nothing is known about his views on metrication.  He will no doubt have difficulty in defending his departmental budget in the forthcoming spending review.

The other key post that could have real influence on the progress or otherwise of metrication is that of Business Secretary, and this post has gone to the Liberal Democrats’ former Treasury spokesperson, Vince Cable.  Like Chris Huhne (see above) he abstained in 2001 on a motion to revoke the W&M (Metrication Amendments) Regs 2001 (SI 2001, No 85). His background is the social democratic rather than the civil libertarian wing of the LibDems.  However, as it is thought that he has big disagreements with the new Chancellor (George Osborne) on economic policy and banking reform, he may not find time to champion metrication even if that were his inclination.

So, with no known commitment at the top, and divided sympathies (at best) within the new Cabinet, I don’t think we should hold our breath in the expectation of progress during the lifetime of the new Parliament.  We shall see.