For future reference purposes, I am creating this new thread to contain posts from the previous thread relating to exchanges between Anne Attlee and others.
Please add relevant posts only.

ANNE ATTLEE writes:

I was told that my name is being bandied about here so I am writing to correct the numerous inaccurate statements that have been made over the past few days.

1. The NFCG Survey of Members’ Views on Metrication was undertaken in direct response to a BWMA challenge. BWMA had produced a survey apparently showing that a large percentage of the respondents to the survey said they found imperial units more convenient to use than metric. (The survey failed to ask whether the respondents would be willing to use metric, if metric worked as well here as it does on the Continent.)

In view of the response in their survey, BWMA queried whether the NFCG membership supported the leadership’s pro-metric campaigning. NFCG AGMs have several times passed pro-metric resolutions so the leadership was confident they did properly reflect the members’ views. However they decided to check the up-to-date position and made the NFCG Survey of Members’ Views on Metrication.

The Survey showed that Members did support the leadership’s pro-metric campaigning – and by a thumping majority.

2. BWMA has ignored the other question NFCG asked their Members. The survey asked Members which version of the metric system should be used in the UK. Should Britain change to the traditional user-friendly version of the metric system which works so well on the Continent, or should we keep on with the present version of metrication used in Britain - which the BWMA survey showed is widely disliked by the public?

For example, should we change to 240cm or 2.40m for the length of a panel of plywood, as would be used on the Continent, or should we continue to use the official British measurement of 2400mm for that length?

Only 6% of the respondents did not want the user-friendly Continental version of the metric system – and most of these didn’t want any metrication whether it was user-friendly or not! Over half the respondents agreed strongly that Britain should change to user-friendly metrication. A combined total of 94%, agreed on the need for user-friendly metrication, or were prepared to go along with it

3. No responsible Member of NFCG has ever claimed that the results of its ‘Survey of Members’ Views on Metrication’ reflect the general public’s opinion. It was never intended to do so.

Most of the British public does not realise that Britain uses metric units a different way from the successful usage on the Continent. If you don’t use the correct instructions, how can you expect the thing to work properly? Unfortunately the British media will not pass on that message to the British public.

4. Neither NCF or NFCG have (or had) formal links with UKMA. Unless it is specifically set out in its constitution, no organisation can control what other organisations its members belong to.

5. I am Director of the Metric Sense Campaign and I am also a long time member of NFCG (now NCF). A few years ago NFCG set up a number of groups, called ‘Networks’, to bring together Members having experience or interest in specialised subjects - food safety, financial regulation, etc etc. I was asked to take over the Metrication Network, as having the most expertise on that subject. It is not at all an onerous job (it’s mostly a watching brief) and I do it within the remit authorised by NFCG.

It is quite untrue that NFCG ran a ‘Metric Sense campaign’ as some people in this forum seem to have suggested. First, NFCG (with its many other projects in hand) never had the resources to put that kind of sustained effort into metrication. And second, I avoided using any such words in NFCG material in order to keep the two organisations as separate as possible.

The only time the two were mixed was in the survey to get Members’ views on metrication. The NFCG team designing the survey decided to use a Metric Sense Campaign brochure as the handiest way to remind Members exactly what ‘user-friendly metrication’ means. It was what NFCG would have done on any other issue needing more explanation, where a suitable leaflet was available to do the job.

6. In reply to ‘Vicki’ on 16/6 :-

The Metric Sense Campaign has never claimed to be a ‘consumer group’. Our interest is wider than that. The DTI lumped us in with ‘consumer groups’ for their own convenience. The DTI’s focus in the 1994 metric legislation was mainly on metrication for food shopping.

7. BWMA people seem to be surprised that consumer groups are pro-metric. In the days of the Metrication Board (roughly all the 1970’s) there was virtually no opposition to going metric from anyone. In the 1972 Government White Paper on Metrication I didn’t see any mention of anti-metric opposition, for example from BWMA in its earlier incarnation. Newspapers and magazines were perfectly co-operative on metrication in those days, too.

In 1988 the DTI carried out a Consultation exercise on the draft terms for a new EC Directive. Only two [minor] organisations, out of over 700 Consultees, replied that they wanted the UK to keep imperial weights and measures. (Minister for Consumer Affairs, House of Commons, on 11th April, 1989)

Why should there be any surprise about that? Going metric was expected to be a quicker and easier way to count and measure. Saving time cuts costs in industry. Going metric in schools was estimated to save at least a year of school-time. Going metric should have been a boon and a blessing to us all. Why would anyone not want to go metric to get these advantages that all Continental Europe enjoys? The metric system is the modernisation of counting and measuring.

For these and many other good reasons, two Select Committees of the House of Commons (in 1862 and 1895) unanimously recommended that Britain should go metric. The Hodgson Committee made its major review of the legislation on weights and measures and unanimously recommended in 1950 that Britain should go fully metric within twenty years, if possible in concert with the Commonwealth and the USA. (It couldn’t be done quicker at that time of severe shortages after the Second World War.)

8. The reason we have problems now is because the conversion to metric was mis-managed from the start, and we use metric units the wrong way.. All the other Commonwealth countries have gone metric – Britain is the only one to have failed so comprehensively. No action whatever has been taken to get metrication working properly for Britons.

Under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, metrication was turned into a battle with the EC. They got the media on their side through a phoney appeal to patriotism. Nowadays it is virtually impossible to get newspapers to publish a pro-metric view.

9. Vicki said NFCG had received a grant of £15,000 from the DTI (May 2000). That grant would be for help with office costs type of funding. It most certainly was not to help fund metrication work. I have checked up, and the DTI are not funding the new NCF at all.

The sums NFCG spent on metrication were very small. The surveys cost very little because NFCG Members work unpaid in the consumer cause. They are highly experienced at such work from having done many surveys on other consumer issues over many years.

10. It is totally incorrect to say that ‘the Metric Sense Campaign functions out of the NFCG office’. No-one from the Metric Sense Campaign has ever even been inside an NFCG office (or an NCF one). I have never visited one, even on NFCG business. The Committee meetings etc I have attended have been held in various rented or borrowed premises in locations handier for members, coming from all parts of the country, to travel to.

11. How could anyone from NFCG say, within the last three years, that “NFCG supports the introduction of metrication”? It has already happened! Legally, the UK has been a metric country since 1995 when John Major was Prime Minister.

12. Just to keep the record straight, I am Director of the Metric Sense Campaign. Our set-up doesn’t need a permanent chairman.

14. The DTI stopped funding the Consumers in Europe Group, and I understand the Group has folded. Anti-metric people may cheer if they like – but Britain has lost its voice in Brussels on a huge variety of consumer issues, quite apart from metrication..

15. Vicki wasted an awful lot of time trying to find an address and telephone number for the Metric Sense Campaign. BWMA officials have known these since 1997.

16. The idea that “a small number of [presumably pro-metric] people are colluding to manipulate information and statistics” is absurd. Pro-metric people, working independently on their own particular metric interest, may be producing facts and statistics that BWMA does not like. That doesn’t make these facts or statistics either mis-leading or wrong.

What the DTI does with information that comes its way is another matter entirely.

Believe me, the DTI is doing absolutely nothing to get Britain happily metric.

17. Vicki on 18/6 – Dealt with at #5.

18. Vicki on 19/6

I hope I have by now sorted out all the concerns about how NFCG (now NCF) and the Metric Sense Campaign operate.

I am not responsible for the way the DTI presents its material. Like you, I find reading their old stuff with hindsight, or deeper knowledge, is a very illuminating experience!

END

BWMA writes:

Thank you for your detailed post. A few points:

If at any point in the past a BWMA committee member had queried whether the NFCG's membership supported the leadership’s pro-metric campaigning, then an internal survey would be entirely reasonable, if only to maintain confidence. However, the views of NfCG's internal membership is not a critical issue here.

The issue is whether consumer groups (eg NFC) and metric groups (eg UKMA, MSC) represent mainstream British public opinion. We know that they do not. We can say this because of the large number of surveys from 1965 to 2002 that show most people in this country prefer traditional measurements, in particular, pounds and ounces, feet and inches, the pint and the mile.

You say, "In the days of the Metrication Board (roughly all the 1970’s) there was virtually no opposition to going metric from anyone".

You are wrong. In 1975, Gallup did a national survey on the following question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the decision to switch over to the Continental system, using metres instead of yards and litres instead of pints?"

The result was:
Approve - 35%
Disapprove - 53%

Surveys in the 1990s show that opposition to metric conversion is higher than ever.

Our chief objection to the consumer groups is their refusal to stand up for consumer opinion and interests. The past twenty years have seen wholesale reduction in packaged food quantities as companies cash in on the metric switch while keeping prices constant. Just one example: Express Dairies downsized their 4-pint cartons to 2-litres (half a pint less) with no drop in the retail price.

You say: "The Metric Sense Campaign has never claimed to be a ‘consumer group’...The DTI lumped us in with ‘consumer groups’ for their own convenience".

We say: It is not simply a matter of convenience; it is a matter of DTI dishonesty. By referring to the Metric Sense Campaign as a consumer group, and by citing the NFC's support for metric conversion, the DTI has successfully bypassed consumer opinion altogether, since the NFC has never represented consumers on the metric issue. Consumers have been marginalised, and the NFC has remained silent.

Until the metric lobby - whether NCG, MSC, UKMA or, indeed, the DTI and the EC - actually recognise and respect public opinion, and start thinking about winning hearts and minds, "metrication" will never be anything more than a form of repression, achieved only through force, compulsion and criminal penalties.

ANNE ATTLEE writes:

Re BWMA on 24/6

1. First proper paragraph. There was no “if” about it. BWMA did challenge NFCG.

NFCG leadership was perfectly confident that its metric campaigning was supported by the Membership. The survey was done to prove it convincingly to BWMA, and any other organisation which might have doubts.

2. BWMA objects to consumer organisations continuing to pursue pro-metric policies in view of the results in the RSL survey in Nov 1997. Unfortunately that survey had several limitations, and BWMA is mistaken in its conclusions.

The DTI and its predecessor, the Board of Trade, mis-managed the conversion to metric. The British public therefore has no experience of the user-friendly version of the metric system that works so well on the Continent for the everyday needs of ordinary people. The British version of metrication is not nearly so handy – in fact it is often incomprehensible! It’s a bit like counterfeit goods – they’re alike, but not the same.

As a result, the British respondents in the survey could not make a fair comparison between imperial weights and measures and metric working properly for the everyday needs of ordinary people.

3. The correct conclusion to draw from the survey is that the mis-management of the conversion to metric has been so dire that our people are still not enjoying the benefits we should have had from modernising our weights and measures with the change to metric. It is now a quarter of a century after we should have been pretty well fully metric!

Why is officialdom doing nothing to investigate that?

The fact is that the metric system is a far quicker and easier way to count and measure than imperial, when used properly. That is why almost the entire world has gone metric.

So consumer groups, and everyone else who wants quicker and easier counting with measurements, are quite right to continue to press for getting Britain properly metric, and for the public to be better informed about using the metric system and the advantages that going properly metric should bring us.

4. Britain is faced with two choices:-

a). The BWMA route

We could muddle on much as we are with most Britons thinking in imperial, while legal measurements are in metric. How can it make sense to live in a mess like that?

* Imperial is a measuring system which is 200 years out-of-date.

* It takes at least a year more of school-time to learn imperial than metric. BWMA seems to want our children to learn both!

* Working in dual systems of measuring increases British production costs by around £5,000 million every year (at 1980 figures, when that was around half the cost of the entire NHS - from a Report to the CBI.) That makes our manufacturing industry un-competitive in international markets.

or b) The Metric Sense route

* Acknowledge a mistake was made over a quarter of a century ago.

* Change to the traditional user-friendly version of the metric system – proved successful by millions of people on the Continent, for well over 150 years.

* That should get Britons happily using the metric system and enjoying the benefits that were confidently expected to come from this modernisation of weights and measures.

Which seems the most sensible course for Britain? ….. It’s metric, of course!

5. There is no need for repression, force, compulsion, criminal penalties, etc, etc, or any other horrors the DTI has inflicted on Britain as a result of their mis-management of the conversion to metric.

All Britain needs is a fair chance for user-friendly metrication to prove itself.

6. To give an example:- After 15 years of pushing it, the DIY stores gave up using ‘2440mm x 1200 mm x 6 mm’ for sizing plywood boards. They went back to the imperial that customers preferred.

But! …. they are using ‘8 ft by 4 ft x 6mm!’ – because millimetres are far handier than fractions of an inch when used appropriately for fine or small measure!

Showing how people will willingly choose to use metric when it is properly user-friendly.

G BROWN writes:

I offer some modest responses to one of your recent postings:

"The fact is that the metric system is a far quicker and easier way to count and measure than imperial, when used properly. That is why almost the entire world has gone metric."

Response: this is not a fact but an opinion.

" Imperial is a measuring system which is 200 years out-of-date."

Response: how can a measuring system, a human contrivance designed for the convenience of users, ever be 'out of date'. Out of date in respect of what, or whom?

"It takes at least a year more of school-time to learn imperial than metric. BWMA seems to want our children to learn both!"

Response: what evidence do you present to substantiate this assertion? A year seems a very long time to learn any system of measurement, even among Britain's drug-raddled and retarded youth.

"Working in dual systems of measuring increases British production costs by around £5,000 million every year (at 1980 figures, when that was around half the cost of the entire NHS - from a Report to the CBI.) That makes our manufacturing industry un-competitive in international markets."

Response: Dual measurements in industry aid export to the US, the world's leading market. This does place the UK at a competitive advantage over other EU countries, the main reason why the EU is so keen to have use of Imperial criminalised here.

"There is no need for repression, force, compulsion, criminal penalties, etc, etc, or any other horrors the DTI has inflicted on Britain as a result of their mis-management of the conversion to metric."

Response: I'm glad you acknowledge that the DTI is spearheading a campaign of state-sponsored intimidation and that this is reprehensible. People already maintain a user-friendly form of metric: they call it Imperial!! I agree that the metric system in use here is particularly incomprehensible and that people will pick and choose which measurements suit them according to the circumstances. For example, people seem to use Celsius for cold temperatures and Fahrenheit for hot temperatures, probably because 0 degrees SOUNDS cold, and while 30 degrees does not SOUND hot, 80 or 90 degrees, does. I would imagine millimetres might be useful in the building trade for the tiniest measures, and the foot advantageous for intermediate lengths. Certain other measures are culturally embedded - the pint and the mile most obviously.

This should not detract from our basic objections to metrication: it is being imposed by dictat against the express wishes of the people, and curtails the citizen's freedom of expression without just cause.

If people wish to use metric, that's fine by me. So long as I can continue to trade in Imperial, have my children educated in Imperial and be permitted to think in Imperial without intimidation or threat of criminal sanction. And so long as my taxes aren't spent on propaganda justifying metric.

I would like to reply to some of Anne Atlee's points in her posting of June 24, 2002.

AA states that the DTI carried out a consultation exercise .... out of over 700 consultees, only two (minor) organisations wanted to keep Imperial. According to Hansard (11.4.89) EC Weights & Measures) there were only 140 responses (an indication perhaps that metrication was not high on the agenda of business, etc) There were two against metrication and the rest were either neutral or in favour. If the number of those in favour had been high, I suspect the Minister, Mr. Maude would have given it.

AA states it is totally incorrect to say the the MSC functions out of the NFCG office

I phoned the Leeds office of the NFCG and was told the MSC was a separate organisation which used its facilities. The MSC survey was on the NFCG website. Someone put it there (whether physically in an office or on the London Underground is immaterial). The NFC states one of its objectives is to provide a channel for consumer opinion. Yet in one of their "magazines" on their web site AA writes" people will continue to use imperial measure....this makes it practically impossible for those of us who want to go metric to do so." If that doesn't sound like a pressure group at work within a so called "independent" organisation, I don't know what does.

AA states How could anyone from the NFCG say within the last three years that "NFCG supports the introduction of metrication." Try Walsh, S. (I think) or M.

AA states the DTI clumped the MSC with consumer groups for their own convenience. Did the MSC make any effort to correct this impression? From my correspondence with the DTI, I suspect not.

AA states that with the demise of Consumers in Europe Group, Britain has lost its voice in Brussels. What a voice! Before its untimely death, however, it urged the Treasurey to consult on its national changeover plan for the euro. the CEG again assisted euro information initiatives of other organisations, and was represented at a Commission training seminar on consumers and the euro in Brussels and at a Commission forum on the euro (Vienna this time). I wonder how many consumers were consulted on the euro before the CEG packed their bags for these continental trips!

AA states BWMA had produced a survey apparently showing that a large % of respondents found imperial units more convenient than metric. Can she clarify what she means by the word "apparently". Is she (and the NFC as they are now called) suggesting that the survey was not accurate or in some way cobbled up?

AA states that her name has been "bandied" about. I notice that Hansard devotes 19 lines to a Ms Quinn extolling the work of Lady Atlee and the MSC. How is it that an organisation led by a woman, both unknown to the vast majority of people, can have the ear of Parliament. Oh, that I could get on the old girl network!