Imposition the real reason for this confusion

EACH ANNOUNCEMENT of an addition to the successive families occupying 10 Downing Street – Blairs, Browns and Camerons – has quoted its weight at birth in pounds and ounces. Yet their respective fathers have introduced, enforced and upheld the EU law – with no popular mandate – which made use of these units for trade a criminal offence.

The same was displayed by your Farming Editor, Ewan Pate, on July 25 (“Let’s stop milking the customer and ditch pints”), who conceals the fact that by urging total metrication of weights and measures he is by implication advocating criminal enforcement; for that is the only means of achieving abolition of customary units, requiring prosecution of thousands of pub licensees who all sell pints of beer and traders selling pounds of fruit and veg – as well as expenditure of vast sums of public money scrapping millions of speed and distance road signs and finger posts.

His argument that confusion over the price of a pint of milk can only be remedied by eliminating the use of the pint in favour of the litre is perverse. That confusion arises solely from imposition of the litre which most people do not understand.

Customers were protected when groceries like tins of baked beans or jars of jam always contained one pound but with metrication the 454 grams equivalent soon rounded down to 450, then in most cases reducing by stages to 425 or lower. Cutting the contents without cutting the price is a stealthy way of increasing the price. If you examine a dozen brands of these products in supermarkets you will see the chaotic range of sizes. It’s a free-for-all. That’s what Mr Pate advocates for all merchandise – again with no popular mandate.

A pint is the right size and a litre too big; a pound is the right size and a kilo too big; a foot is the right size and a metre too big; an acre the right size and an hectare too big. Mr Pate’s suggestion that only “those with exceptional arithmetical gifts” know the ratios is absurd: the arithmetic paper in the grammar school entrance exams which I sat at the age of 10 included questions of conversion between metric and imperial which were already familiar to us and presented no difficulty – but metrication is another means of dumbing children down, reducing them to zombies who can only shift decimal points on a calculator, incapable of mental arithmetic.

The French Revolution’s Reign of Terror decimalised everything, including months and hours of the day, but soon the calendar and the clock had to be restored to their natural duodecimal basis – for the whole of nature is based on twos and threes.

The imposition of metrication is like a lodger who moves into a household, is treated as one of the family then suddenly complains: “This has become too confusing and the only solution is for you all to move out.” The Bible, Shakespeare and everyday language are full of customary measures. The USA will never convert from “English units” – pounds and gallons and miles were good enough to take men to the moon – and nor shall we. Compulsory metrication has nothing to do with the merits of either system but is purely political, dictated by the EU’s loathing and envy of the commercial and cultural bond between the UK and USA by virtue of a common language and common system of customary weights and measures.

Vivian Linacre is a Perth businessman.