Paul: What you say is perfectly true, although the US and the UK have different reasons for maintaining a perception of national identity (and I will also include Canada here, as I lived there for very many years and experienced that country's, as yet incomplete, switch to SI).
In the UK's case, national identity does come into it, but this is primarily because of the UK's membership of the EU, headquartered in Brussels. Many of the UK's current laws and directives now come from Brussels rather than Westminster, and a good proportion of the UK population resents this - and, it has to be said, with good reason, for the EU in making these laws is subjected to far too little accountability and oversight. Unfortunately, completing the UK's switch to SI is now inextricably caught up in this, aided and abetted by those UK politicians who have shamelessly capitalized on this EU phobia to win votes, and further reinforced by a media that is openly hostile to SI. Compounding this is the perception, also reinforced by the media, that the UK and the US share a common (non-metric) measuring system (much of it is not common at all, but again that is ignored by the media), and therefore, so the reasoning goes, the UK should not go any further down the metric road until the US does. I am sure that similar reciprocal sentiments operate in the US, even if only at a low level. Where politicians of all stripes in the UK have failed miserably in their duty to the country is showing that the metric system is world-wide, and has nothing at all to do with Brussels ramming it down the UK's throat. It is however going to take a brave leader to sell that to the country, even though having two systems (one legal, one quasi-legal, even though it's not taught officially in schools!) is costing the country huge amounts in lost productivity and education time. Finally, in Canada's case, while the country does not have quite the same hang-ups about sovereignty in the same way the US and the UK have, it is also caught between two competing national identity idealogies - one, wanting to keep some (metric) distance (sorry!) between itself and the US, in case it becomes subsumed by the US, the other recognizing that the US is by far Canada's largest trading partner, and that therefore Canada is still going to have to undertake some business in Imperial units. If we could square that circle, resistance would be much more easily overcome. I do hope you enjoy Scotland - a lovely country. ----- Original Message ----- From: Paul Trusten To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 4:13 PM Subject: [USMA:43491] the UK--metrophobia run riot It seems to me that the U.S. and the UK share one thing in common with measurement: a jingoistic fear of changing to metric. A past issue of Metric Today (March-April 2005) theorized on the origins of this fear, part of which is a kind of metrological nationalism. The editorial stated, in part: But metrophobia finds one of its best lightning rods in patriotism: that Americans will be somehow less American if they use metric. The often-repeated riddle in the 1994 film, Pulp Fiction, "What do they call a (McDonald's) Quarter PounderT in France? . . .they have the metric system . . ." popularized the distorted concept in the U.S. that metric is an overseas threat instead of a world standard. The issue often comes down to tying U.S. superpower status with its measurement units: that the country is somehow supreme because it adheres stubbornly to its antiquated system, as if the adherence to outdated measurement units confers a talisman-like protection against conquest. I have never lived in the United Kingdom, and cannot speak personally for the British people. Maybe I'll be able to find out more when I visit Scotland in August. But, now, I see an island nation beset with a world measurement system closing in on all sides. Ireland, which, in 2005, changed its road signs to read in kilometers and kilometers per hour, faces the UK border at Northern Ireland. And, of course, the Channel Tunnel pipes the metric system into the country from the southeast. So, in the case of the UK, it seems that a new system of measurement is closing in. I wonder to what extent, in both America and Britain, it remains necessary to continue to reinvest in the old units as a cache of national identity. I hope that, one day, for the sake of both countries, national strength and popular honor will be found in common sense. Both Britons and Americans should conclude that metrication is victory, not defeat. Paul Trusten, R.Ph. Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. www.metric.org 3609 Caldera Blvd. Apt. 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 US +1(432)528-7724 trus...@grandecom.net
