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Tag Archives: metrication
Who should pay for metrication of road signs?
The Department for Transport have claimed that converting road signs to show metric units would be an unjustifiable diversion of resources from other priority areas. So is there an argument that the costs should be met from some other budget? … Continue reading
A very Caribbean muddle
Metric Views has received news on the progress of metrication in the Caribbean.
"Can the economy survive without a national measurement system?"
This was the question posed at a recent seminar organised by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in Portcullis House, opposite the Palace of Westminster. Typically, however, the keynote speeches skirted around the central problem.
ASDA downsizes strawberries – brilliant publicity stunt
Reports in the tabloid media suggest that Asda has reverted to selling strawberries in “pounds”. So what has really happened?
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, Law, Media
Tagged metrication, weights and measures
64 Comments
Will the Americans get there first? A challenge to Obama
Everyone knows the fable of the tortoise and the hare. Does this story have a predictive message for metrication in the UK and the US? A recent letter from the US Metric Association to President Obama invites the question: Could … Continue reading
How decimalisation succeeded while metrication stalled
The media like nothing better than an anniversary, so it was predictable that the 40th anniversary of “decimal day” – 15 February, 1971, when the UK finally gave up its archaic and inconvenient coinage and currency – would get a … Continue reading
Posted in General, History, Media, Road signs
Tagged decimalisation, Department for Transport, metrication, weights and measures
14 Comments
Did “Victorian values” block metrication?
What is it about the British that makes it so difficult to implement a simple, obvious and necessary reform – the adoption of a single, rational system of measurement, used by everybody for all purposes? A newly published dissertation attempts … Continue reading
Ministers refuse to update obsolete HGV speed limits
Metric Views can reveal that Government ministers have quietly wound up all efforts to align motorway speed limits for buses, coaches and HGVs with the settings of their respective vehicle speed limiters.
Posted in Law, Road signs, Transport
Tagged metric road signs, metric speed limits, metrication, speed limiters
6 Comments
“Half of that mince, please”
Two little anecdotes illustrate the difficulties still being experienced by customers because neither the Government nor “consumer advocates” will try to help them adapt to metric units in the supermarket.
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, Law
Tagged consumer, Department for Transport, metrication, weights and measures
23 Comments
Parts of the knowledge economy hit the buffers in South America
It has been said that Britain is becoming a knowledge economy, and also that metal bashing can now be safely left to the low-wage economies of the Far East. If only it were that simple. Consider the railway industry …
Posted in General, History, Technical, Transport
Tagged knowledge-economy railway-industry high-speed-line, metrication
3 Comments