Mr Simon Edwards, Editor of 'Freedom Today', the house journal of the Freedom Association, has just sent this letter to Mr Tim Martin, Chairman of J D Wetherspoon:


"I'm a big fan of J D Wetherspoon. The King's Head, Monmouth was predictably excellent.

"Just one thing shocked me. You've included interesting panels on local history and sights, but the panel about the statue of Charles Rolls (of Rolls-Royce) is described as x metres away. Surely you mean yards or feet?

"It is illegal for UK signposts to give metric measurements. This would be bad enough anywhere, but, as a direction to a statue in Agincourt Square,
in the town where Henry V was born, to use an inferior French system of measurement in preference to the superior British one is a bit much!

"I hope you'll change it and make sure Imperial measures are used throughout your admirable and (usually) patriotic company."

_____
ENDS

No one complains about history being written about and described using modern English, rather than the ancient form that would have prevailed at the time of the events being described.

So what's wrong with distances being given in modern units in the same context?

Yeah exactly! Come on JD Wetherspoon - use yards just like kids up and down the land!

Actually - on a serious note - this is quite strange for J.D.W. I'm not a fan of their outlets but I have noticed that they tend to be "British" if you get my drift.

Perhaps an "oddball" wrote this particular item.

Come on, is this another one of those comedy letters?!

THe first line of this thread read

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Mr Simon Edwards, Editor of 'Freedom Today', the house journal of the Freedom Association, has just sent this letter to Mr Tim Martin, Chairman of J D Wetherspoon:
>>

Whose freedom I ask myself?

re (Martin): "Whose freedom I ask myself?"


REPLY: The freedom - or freedoms - of the British subject (unfortunately redesignated 'British citizen' by virtue of the British Nationality Act 1981).

An early demand of the Freedom Association was freedom from from the tyranny of the Trade Union closed shop.

I observed this tyranny at close quarters whilst employed as Principal Welfare Rights Adviser by Harlow Council in the 1980s. A print-worker very popular with his work-mates dared, one year, to challenge the Father of the Chapel and his brutish 6' 5" psychopathic son for control of the Chapel. When he won the election for Father of the Chapel by 23 votes to 2 (guess which two?!), the former FOC went higher up and got the worker disciplined under four obscure NATSOPA rules in the Union rulebook, fined him, and then diverted his weekly Union contributions, deducted at source by his employer, to pay off the fines.

Hey presto! - 13 weeks later, under Union rules, he was dismissed from the Trade Union under a rule where you ceased to be a Union member if you were 13 weeks behind with your contributions.

And - hey presto again! - immediately afterwards he was dismissed by his employer. In those days, before the Thatcher reform of the closed shop, all the Union had to do was say: "Joe Bloggs is no longer a Union member", and the employer had no choice but to fire you.

With the advice of the Freedom Association, I helped the print-worker to bring a case in the Industrial Tribunal and had one of my finest moments when, after they were routed at the first day's Tribunal hearing, SOGAT 82 (which had taken over from NATSOPA) caved in and settled out of Court for £9,250. I had to endure the criticism of work colleagues who denounced me for being 'anti-Union', which was a bit strange since I was active in one (NALGO) at the time.

So you could put it like this, the Freedom Association was interested in the freedom to earn one's living without the tyranny of Trades Unions who could expel you and lose you your livelihood just because your face didn't fit.

As for what other freedoms they defend nowadays, I'm not a member and never have been. Why not ask them?

I know they favour the freedom to retain one's familiar weights and measures, since they published a fsvourable article about ARM earlier this year.

I believe they also support the notion of being free to run one's own country, just as you, Martin, would probably like to retain the freedom to run your own household without jointly running it with 24 other households.

Tony, your discourse on the abuse of power by the unions is irrelevant. This thread started off when an association calling itself the "Freedom Association" objected to the landlord of the Kings Head having the freedom to use metres whe he wished to do so.

The F.A. is a right wing pro-libertarian group headed by Norris McWhirter (of the Guinness Book of Records fame).

It's really quite good.

I agree that the union stuff is all very interesting, but I do not understand why the 'Freedom Association' is telling someone that they may not write the word 'metres' on a sign.

Ross: "I agree that the union stuff is all very interesting, but I do not understand why the 'Freedom Association' is telling someone that they may not write the word 'metres' on a sign."

Ross, you silly boy !
The Freedom Association is about "imperial" freedom of course !
They want us to have the choice between pounds, ounces and stones to buy our apples.
They want us to be free to opt for miles, yards, feet, inches, links, rods, perches or furlongs when we travel.

That's what real freedom is about: the banning of metric and the choice between various imperial units.

No its actually because it would have been more apt than metric measures.

If it were written entirely in French then the F.A. would also be right to be dissappointed that it wasn't in English.

Or am I stating the obvious? Oui ou non?

Hmmm... makes you wonder whether we would still be making such a fuss if the metric system hadn't been invented by the French..

re: "I agree that the union stuff is all very interesting, but I do not understand why the 'Freedom Association' is telling someone that they may not write the word 'metres' on a sign"

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I think you and Martin are getting a touch over-excited. All that the Freedom Today Editor wrote to J.D. Wetherspoons, if you care to re-read his letter, was a polite missive about a metric distance which ended with the words: "I hope you'll chaneg it".

A little bit different from the bully boy tactics of Trading Standards Officers used on traders selling happily to their customers in pounds and ounces, I think you'll agree

<<
A little bit different from the bully boy tactics of Trading Standards Officers used on traders selling happily to their customers in pounds and ounces, I think you'll agree
>>

Not to mention the bully boy tactics of ARM.

I'm so glad that ARM are not seen as bullies!

After all, WHO would they be bullying? The Roads agency? The government?

LOL

Local Authorities and others who put up metric signs are bullied into thinking that the signs are illegal even though the claim in many cases is dubious.

If they don't get their way ARM resort to graffiti.

ARM are a bunch of undesirables.

"Ross, you silly boy !
The Freedom Association is about "imperial" freedom of course !
They want us to have the choice between pounds, ounces and stones to buy our apples.
They want us to be free to opt for miles, yards, feet, inches, links, rods, perches or furlongs when we travel.

That's what real freedom is about: the banning of metric and the choice between various imperial units."

I see. The farthing may finally be dropping.

"I think you and Martin are getting a touch over-excited. All that the Freedom Today Editor wrote to J.D. Wetherspoons, if you care to re-read his letter, was a polite missive about a metric distance which ended with the words: "I hope you'll chaneg it"."

I think 'surely you mean yards or feet' somewhat conflicts with BWMA's Damascenely converted policy of freedom of choice.

Incidentally, I did think at first glance that this was the flip-side of the John Davies/Eleanor Rothwell/Fred Ashley messages.

Something like, "I was walking down the road when I saw a sign which said 'Statue of Tony Bennett celebrating the work of ARM, 2000-2003: 45.67 yards'. I passed out on the spot and only after regaining consciousness was I able to get to a nearby phone box to call the local authority who had erected the sign. 'What's all this?', I said, 'surely you mean metres or centimetres?'. When I finally got home I had a good de-stressing bath followed by 15ml of Bailey's and my choice bedtime reading magazine, 'This Europe'."

Perhaps the "Freedom Association" would be better served fighting real erosions of our liberty rather than imagined ones.

How about campaining against plans for compulsory ID cards or road toll schemes that involve every car in the land being fitted with a GPS tracker ?

Surely much more useful than having a go at some pub for daring to use the word "metre".

Ross - are you aware of what 15ml of baileys in some ice would actually look like? Not even a mouse would get tipsy!

Engineer - I believe they do champion other libertarian causes too - especially the stuff you are highlighting

Yes, it was just 'a taste'.

Steveh, who said he wanted to get tipsy ?
I know you drink litres of cider to get blind drunk, but not everyone does things the way you do. ;-)

But who on earth would enjoy just a teaspoon of Baileys?

It'd be like me demanding a floz of cider!

Incidentally this is isn't me, it's some hypothetical person.

Also, 15ml is equivalent to a tablespoon and not a teaspoon.

OOps! That means I've had too much Benylin cough medi........ZZZZZzzzzzzzzz

re (Evil Engineer): "How about campaigning against plans for compulsory ID cards or road toll schemes that involve every car in the land being fitted with a GPS tracker?".

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My reasons for campaiging for the retention of Imperial weights and measures and opposing metric compulsion have been well rehearsed on this board.

But I agree with you, Evil Engineer, on the seriousness of the points you make here.

GPS trackers are of course already being used to collect fuel tax in a pilot scheme in Wisconsin. The GPS tracks every inch of road your car travels and bills you accordingly. And it tracks what speed you go at!

ID cards have good arguments on both sides but ultimately they can be forged, just like passports can be. ID cards would not have prevented September 11th.

I read this in a newsletter received from the United States yesterday:

"Attorney General Ashcroft is constantly demanding more power than even the intrusive USA Patriot Act gave him. Now we are seeing surveillance cameras attached to light poles in cities and along highways, and everyone is being watched. Privacy is something that used to be treasured and was safeguarded by the Constitution, but is now being surrendered for a false sense of security.

On 2 July 2003, it was revealed by the Staten Island Advance Newspaper that Pentagon cameras will be tracking all cars in a city. The project is overseen by the Pentagon agency known as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency or DARPA. The article goes on to say that the cameras work with a computerised database that monitors everyday transactions and personal records world-wide and creates a computerised diary that *records and analyses everything a person says, sees, hears, reads or touches*" [article by Michael J. Sniffen].

Well, we're a bit behind that in the United Kingdom, but we're watched by speed cameras like no other country in the world - and just two weeks ago a school in Sunderland pioneered their students ordering food from its canten by the use of iris recognition.

The only protest against all this that I am aware of is the actions of speed camera vandals, some of them led I understand by the mysterious, masked 'Captain Gatso' (believed to be an IT worker somewhere in London), whose greatest moment so far came when a dozen or so of his motorcycled accomplices trashed 17 speed cameras in the space of one hour along the notorious [more speeding fines than any other stretch of road in the country] North Cirular Road (A 406), to the sound of hundreds of motorists tooting their support

Bloody Hell !

I agree with something that Tony is saying.

I think I'd better go lay down for a while. I've come over a bit faint all of a sudden.

By the way, for any "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear" types out there just remember the following points about ID cards:

1. The government wants to charge you 40 quid for the privilege. The bloody cheek!

2. It will cost £1.5bn to set up and that's the government's own estimate. Any guesses as to what the final cost will be? £3bn? £6bn? More? That's a lot of propper real life police officers.

3. The state can't set up a complex IT system for toffee. Anyone remember the passport fiasco when they computerised that? Just imagine everyone in the country trying to get an ID card at the same time!

4. I'd give it about six months before some bright spark cracks the card and starts banging out fakes.

And besides, I already know who I am. Everyone else can mind their own bloody business

As far as I understand it, the idea has been shelved.

If the government says it's shelved, it's going ahead.

I equally find the need for some rest - since I also side with Evil Engineer!

Nice to see a few more libertarians around here!