Britannist

The BWMA are doing a good job and have the overwhelming support of the British people. Of that, I have no doubt.

The UK has as big surplus (to its advantage) on trade with the USA which uses Imperial Measurements. The USA is now our biggest single trading partner. We do more trade with countries around the world that use Imperial Measurements than we do with those who do not.

It is not to our advantage to be forced to abandon any reference to Imperial Measurements just because we do a minority of our overall export trade with EU nations.

I hope that the people who support the aims of the BWMA (i.e. most people in the UK) will come to see that the EU works against our interests (such as over its policy to bully us into accepting the continental metric system which, incidentally, in the case of Fahrenheit versus centigrade is not as reliable as the Imperial (i.e. Fahrenheit) measurements system).

eublues

Agreed on the first point - but not so sure about the second (are people even bothered now about the pint?).

What I am saying is that the efforts of pressure groups like the BWMA are not in themselves going to have much effect on us keeping the power to govern ourselves in the long-run.

SGK

The problem is the state we've got ourselves in, not just in the UK but all Europe and in fact the world, where governments do not represent nor listen to the people. A massive blow to all sorts of democracy arguments.
Now that I live in a metricated (metricised?) country, I have grown to hate it. People who believe that it doesn't matter what you measure something in are simply wrong.
I have watched a couple of events on the telly recently, the remembrance day ceremonies and the opening of parliament, and I realised that the country I live in (Germany) cannot hope to do anything like it - it dismisses this with a shrug of its (his) shoulders and says 'we don't want to', which is a lie.
But it's all parcelled together. A lot of the ceremonies, particularly the opening of parliament, are pointless prancing around bordering on farce. Any logical process, or any process devised today, would not include it. But it has something special and important to us all - and it really makes a difference. It's exactly the same with metrication; it may not be based on pure mathematical logic or be the simplest system, but it actually makes more sense to us and works better - probably because we are not (yet) robots.
Back to the subject matter, I've always liked Mr Holland. One of those quirky blokes you just can't help admire. I'm glad he's not an EU communist.

Populist Lee

Also to sign; but too late for Publication were:-
Ian Botham (former cricketer}
Peter Hitchens (Journalist)
Edward Fox, OBE (Actor)


The reply from the Prime Minister's Direct Communications Unit on 4th May was the rather terse:
>> The Prime Minister has asked me to thank you and your members for your recent letters. Mr Blair would like to reply personally, but as you will appreciate he receives many thousands of letters each week and this is not possible. The matter you raise is the responsibility of the Department of Trade and Industry [DTI], therefore he has asked that your letter be forwarded to that Department so that they are also aware of your views. <<

The reply/response from the DTI has been very interesting.
Readers will have to wait a little while yet before matters move forward.

Britannist

If the EU on using Imperial measurements alongside metric is not stopped (from going ahead in 2010) then the issue is well-timed for UKIP to take it up as a major part of its campaign for the 2009 EU Elections.

A campaign by UKIP against the revival of the EU Constitution (under a new name) and against banning Imperial measurements should produce votes for UKIP in 2009 (in both a General Election and the EU Election).

The europhile Blair/Brown Labour regime have to stop the ban going ahead - or they are going to be in trouble electorally.

We can expect a possible sloppy 'compromise' in which the proposed EU ban on the usage of Imperial measurements is 'postponed' again (in the case of the UK).

Blair/Brown will be begging their EU master not to proceed with the ban because they fear the tabloid (i.e. high circulation) newspapers kicking up a great fuss (if the ban is not stopped) in the run-up to the next General Election and the next EU Elections.

Britannist

Thank you Populist Lee for the additional names of other signatories (above). Good to see Edward Fox OBE among them. I think he said he voted UKIP in the last EU Election.

Populist Lee

You're welcome, Britannist.

There has been a further development, which you may have read about in the Christopher Booker Column in the Sunday Telegraph during November.

On 12th November BWMA issued the following Press Release:-

http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=184042

Freebird

The USA does not use Imperial measures, they use their own US customary measures, which they have the cheek to call "English". Their pint, gallon, ton, fluid ounce, etc., all different to the Imperial measures.
The only system that is consistent around the world is metric, so why don't we all use metric and have a much better trade with the world?

Alex McKee

Or why don't we all just mind our own business and use whatever measures we feel are appropriate for the job at hand, and stop trying to force other people to adapt to our own narrow-sighted bias?

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Britannist

Because we don't want to.

Our largest trading partner, the USA, uses non-metric measurements and so do we. Many Commonwealth nations - also key trading partners of the UK - also use non-metric.