Thursday, February 23, 2006

Ye old wind bag

From the Guardian:

Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, will today join the former deputy prime minister Lord Howe and the Liberal Democrats' Lord Taverne in a campaign to persuade the nation of the joys of the kilometre.

In a manifesto published today, the UK Metric Association will say…how intensely boring they are, and wear wacky novelty ties to show that they have a fun side, it's not all serious this kilometre business.

No one in this land over 20 years of age has a clue what the real value of a Kilometre is. 67km to London anyone? Yeah, no idea.

Kilometres are rubbish, and so are metres for measuring people. When I see height displayed in metres it’s meaningless to me. 1.62 m? Are you a midget or a giant? Am I a Luddite?

Anyway this campaign is a big waste of time by some old time wasters with nothing better to do, who have woken up from their slumber in the Lords to jump on a bandwagon that is short of passengers. I can’t believe I am wasting my fingers and brain cells on this.

Kinnock says that signs with miles on them:

contradict the image - and the reality - of our country as a modern, multicultural, dynamic place where the past is valued and respected and the future is approached with creativity and confidence

I’d say there’s an argument that the House of Lords is more of a contradiction to our societies dynamism, multiculturalism and modernity, Mr Kinnock, sorry Lord. (You did help drag the Labour party away from the loons though, credit where it is due)

Comments:
It is about time we switched fully to metric. I learnt it at school, I am nearly 40 and still waiting for the UK to go metric. If we had kilometres on our road signs, instead of those awful European units called miles (invented by some imperialists in Rome before the time of Christ), then we would be much further to being a modern country with a sensible measurement system used by all and by the majority of the world. We expect the majority of the world to use the English language and they comply. So the least we could do is to join the international world and use metric.
 
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