It is at least possible that one of the five candidates for the Labour leadership will be our next Prime Minister – so it would be helpful to know where each stands on the question of completing metrication.  Here is the result (so far) of a small survey carried out by an individual Party member.

The following question was sent by email to each candidate (or to their campaign team) about one month ago:

“What is your policy on completing the changeover to the metric system, including road signs?”

These are the replies received from their respective campaign teams as at 29 August (listed in order of receipt).

David Miliband (30 July) : “David believes that we should keep the miles system as it is, in the old system.  This is part of the British tradition, is widely understood, and prevents the expensive [sic] of a changeover”.

Diane Abbott (3 August):  “I think that we should complete the changeover.”

Ed Miliband (27 August ):  “I support the use of metric measurements as has been the case since conversion to metric in 1965. In fact, when in government Labour negotiated in the EU to allow continued indefinite use of dual measurement indicators. In practice, this means that most goods must be sold in metric units (as is now the case) but old style units are permitted to be displayed as well. I think there could be problems in exclusive use of one or other style of measurement – for example, many British goods are exported to multiple countries which use different measurement units. Switching to exclusive use of the metric system could raise issues about the viability of those exports, which would need to be addressed.”

Andy Burnham:  No response.

Ed Balls:  No response.

Comment:   Clearly, when deciding whom to support in the election, Party members will take into account a range of factors.  However, metrication is actually quite a good test since it illustrates the candidate’s attitudes to change vs tradition, and the degree to which they support expedient, populist policies rather than advocating the national interest in a modern system of measurement.

It is particularly disappointing therefore that the supposed favourite, David Miliband, should have authorised such a pathetically inadequate answer.  Diane Abbott’s reply is refreshingly clear and unambiguous, and will be welcomed by supporters of completing metrication. The media do not expect her to make it to the final round of the ballot, but if they are right, her second preferences could tip the election toward the other Miliband – the younger brother, Ed.  So it would be useful to have a more focussed and less evasive answer from Ed.  A supplementary question has therefore been sent to his campaign team, asking him to deal with the question of road signs.

The silence of the other two candidates could mean either that their campaign teams are very inefficient – or that they do not want to answer awkward questions.

MetricViews will be updated to include any further replies received before the close of poll.

The UK Metric Association (UKMA) welcomes today’s announcement by the government of an attack on unnecessary sign clutter, but believes that some obvious targets have been missed: in particular, the Department for Transport’s requirements for local authorities to use multiple obsolete units on our road signs.

As UKMA pointed out in our recent leaflet Traffic Signs 2.0, the use of rational metric units on signs would make signs clearer than the current mixture of units on imperial-based road signs. This is particularly evident in Wales, where the requirement to show two languages would be considerably simpler using metric units – with common symbols – than imperial text.

Some examples of current cluttered signs (on the left) and our proposed simplified signs (on the right) are given below:

Current cluttered signs                              Clear metric signs

Metric Views has learned that the coalition government may drop the proposed amendments to road traffic sign regulations, which would have required dual signage of height and width restrictions within four years and which would have achieved savings and improvements in efficiency for the UK economy in the long term.

We reported on these proposals on 10 October 2009:

http://metricviews.org.uk/2009/10/end-of-imperial-only-restriction-signs/.

We are now awaiting further information about the government’s intentions, and we will report fully when details become available.

Before the general election, both coalition parties spoke of ‘rebalancing the economy’, away from the provision of services (in particular financial services) and towards manufacture, with an emphasis on quality, value added and innovation – areas where the UK can’t be undercut, and on innovative products that others can not make. There would however need to be a focus on creating an efficient economy, with a numerate workforce, able to compete with the best in the world. Are we already seeing signs that this long term objective is being downgraded in favour of short term popularity?

A reader of Metric Views has recently written to Phillip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport, on this matter. A copy of his letter appears below.

“Dear Mr Hammond:

I have just learned that you are proposing to avoid when possible metric measurements on our road transportation system.  What a simply brilliant move!  We’ve had far too much of this foreign metric nonsense.  I must say, your proposal has already excited my friends and colleagues in Canada, Australia and South Africa, all of whom have emailed me and asked me to confirm that this is true.  As you may know, all these three countries (and I believe about 188 other countries) use the metric system on their road signs.  How silly is that?  But then they’re all foreigners, and as you and I both know, foreigners are ignorant.  We should have made Canada, Australia and South Africa and all the countries we once owned stick to their imperial road signs – let them know that it is us Brits who know what’s best for them. Cheeky upstarts, the lot of them.  I will admit that my Canadian, Australian and South African friends and colleagues wondered whether this was a good thing, given Britain’s precarious foreign trade situation and all that – one even suggested that this could hurt our exports!  Sends the wrong message to the rest of the world, they said.  What rot!  These people need to understand that the world NEEDS British imperial-designed things – far superior to all that metric designed foreign rubbish.

Now, having decided that our entire road system will, quite rightly, remain in imperial units, we should do the same with the vehicles on those roads.  I mean, it doesn’t make sense to have metric cars, buses and lorries on imperial roads, does it?  So I believe you should take the next logical step, and allow only imperial designed and manufactured vehicles on British roads.  THAT would stop all those nasty foreign vehicles cluttering up our roads – and rejuvenate our car manufacturing industry at the same time.  Now I admit this will be a bit of a challenge – every car manufactured anywhere today, including in the USA, is designed in metric.  Even our British manufacturers of the day agreed to go metric – how unpatriotic is that?  So there might be a few problems here and there (all the bits that go in these cars – things like tyres, light bulbs, minor things like that – are all currently made to metric standards).  But nothing that, I’m sure, a good old bit of British knowhow and ingenuity can’t overcome.  Show Johnny foreigner a thing or two, I’ll wager.

Of course, with our imperial-only roads and the imperial-only vehicles on them we will have to educate the rest of the world in imperial units – if they want to sell their nasty German, American, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish and Italian tin boxes here, that is.  What a golden opportunity for our universities!  We all know British education is the best in the world – this will REALLY prove it to all those ignorant foreigners who don’t know the difference between a stone and a furlong.  Hundreds of thousands of foreign engineers, designers, professionals of every kind, who all now need to know how many inches in a mile and how many yards in a foot.  Did you know Mr Hammond that there are 5.7 billion metric-only foreigners in the world, many of whom now might need to learn imperial measurements?  I bet they can’t wait to get started!  And there are 300 million other foreigners that also need to be taught our proper British imperial system, and will need re-educating.  Currently they use their own system called US Customary – but they’ve got it all wrong!  (Just as they did when they argued with us over some stupid tea.)  Their gallons and bushels and tons and fluid ounces are all different from ours!  Don’t these people understand that our British imperial system is the best?  It’s unique in the whole world – NO-ONE ELSE USES IT!  How cool is that?

Finally, as you are obviously firmly convinced – and the entire rest of the world will agree with you – that we British should revert to the 19th century imperial measuring system for our entire transportation infrastructure, we should bring back some of the 19th century traffic laws as well.  The worst thing we did was repeal the red flag act in 1896 – the one, you may recall, that required a man with a red flag to walk in front of every motor vehicle.  Do you know what the repeal of that law did to the flag industry in this country?  It decimated (sorry, wrong word) – it all but destroyed it!  Factories up and down the country making red flags had to shut down.  Now, if we brought back that law, all those foreign countries that never had a red flag act would see how wonderful it would be (especially in terms of traffic deaths – we all know that speed kills, don’t we?  I see signs everywhere telling me so).  All those 191 silly metric countries will now enact their own red flag laws, following our superior British imperial lead – and will be beating down our doors wanting to buy our superior, imperial red flags.  What a golden day for British industry that will be.

Mr Hammond, your proposal to revert to imperial-only represents a truly brilliant piece of strategic thinking – the kind of forward-looking thinking that we British are noted for.  It sends a clear message to the rest of that horrible metric world out there – and will certainly make the rest of the world sit up and take notice!  We’ll show ‘em!  It makes you proud to be British!

Well done, sir, and a jolly good show!

Yours sincerely”

A slogan appearing on the label of a bottle of apple juice leaves some of us guessing about its intended message.

“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”.

Two questions from a reader have prompted thoughts about the impact on UK trade of the continued use of pound/inch units in the US, and about the future prospects for manufacturing industry.

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?

Signs indicating the emergency escape routes in tunnels are of critical importance to the safety of tunnel users, given the particular hazards of fire and smoke within tunnel environments. Sadly, the government’s irrational position on units of measure even extends to these safety critical signs, as illustrated by the different units being used by the same authority on adjacent tunnels.

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!