Dear All,
I found this page at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100402183300AAlPjkT
and it reminded me of a media quote near the time when Margaret
Thatcher left office. She is reported to have said in listing her
achievements:
'We have saved the mile and the pint for Britain'.
Now that the mile and the pint are the last remaining legal Imperial
measuring words in the UK their existence is often used to justify the
use of all of the old paraphernalia of the old defunct and deprecated
measuring words. Somehow the simple (legal) existence of the mile and
the pint allows people to morally justify the use of acres, inches,
ounces, pounds, tons, and so on interminably.
Margaret Thatcher might have been right in that the Tories 'saved the
mile and the pint' in a legal sense, but in doing so they created a
culture dedicated in large part to the dual expense of the hopeless
muddle that measurement in the UK has become. With hindsight the
damage that Margaret Thatcher has done to the education of children in
the UK and to the economy is extraordinary. If we apply the
Confederation of British Industry estimate of 9 % of turnover each
year then the cost of simply saving two words is extraordinary.
It is interesting that the mile and the pint have been defined in
terms of metric units since 1959 so the Margaret Thatcher versions of
the words mile and pint are, in fact, metric units hidden behind
Imperial words. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK from
1979 to 1990.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com
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