how can someone forbid the future (SI signs)???

imperial sux!

Why should metric/SI be regarded as the future? It's inefficient, unpopular, outmoded and beyond its sell-by date. It's only maintained by threat of criminal penalties.

Just to add to BWMA's message, we would sum up the key advantage of the Imperial system as being its 'natural', human quality, in contrast to the artificial nature of the metric system and the accompanying nomenclature of its units. The same goes for any of the 1,639 other systems of weights and measures that thrive in today's world - who says? - the United Nations!

A weights and measures system evolves. The metric system has never been popular and has relied on force from the 1840s in France onwards. Today's most popular book, Harry Potter (not that this Council member recommends it, mind), is entirely in Imperial.

Someone should tell the Pakistani judges in 'Lahore Law' that everyone's going metric; whenever weights and measures are referred to in evidence on the programme, it's the Imperial system that's used.

The Nazis under Hitler said the Third Reich was 'the future' and inevitable, just as Lenin said about bolshevism in 1917. They both said there was 'no alternative'.

ARM COUNCIL member

Britain is not sick. It is finally joining the rest of the world (with the exception of the USA, where I live, intransigently clinging to a confusing system of its own). It's high time for the UK to finish the job and make imperial signs illegal. This rear-guard 'demitrication' action is sort of like the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 -- a last-ditch effort that will be just as unsuccessful now as it was for the Germans then.

Bravo to the UK -- keep up the effort -- it will only help us over on this side.

Wahay, just moments after posting a comment about "I'm sure you get them in the US too" on another thread , then lo-and-behold here she/he is!!!!

Well, now here is someone who is clearly out of tune with reality. You'd make an excellent college professor (or at the very least, a college janitor), they're all out of touch with reality as well. In their world, 10 is the magic number that fixes everything, the universal answer. SI has given us nothing. America will never go metric, because people like you aren't taken seriously. As for the UK, as long as they keep voting in those Labor nuts, they'll grow closer and closer to Europe, and SI.

I have no intention of joining the rest of the world when it is wrong. We must at all times maintain the appearance of stubborn righteousness. Britain is sick and tired of being ordered to 'come into line with' practice elsewhere. Our practices are our own business, our customs may suit us and not others: each to their own.

Well said sir...

The same goes for any of the 1,639 other systems of weights and measures that thrive in today's world - who says? - the United Nations!

1,639? Where is that information posted?

Vivian Linacre quotes this in a previous issue of 'The Yardstick' - the source of course is a U.N. report! You can check with Vivian direct by 'phoning him on 0131 556 6080

Britain is obviously a country deeply against any form of progress, as shown by some of the contributions here. Had the Internet existed when decimalisation occured, the same things would have probably been said.

Come on, don't you all secretly want the return of pounds, shillings and pence? That hasn't been around for more than 30 years now. Has the UK been 'harmed' by its abolition?

What has coinage got to do with weights and measures?

See my most recent reply under the message 'what is a yard?' on Metric v. Imperial, the Great Debate.

And see my response to the metric fanatics "I've lost the argument" scapegoat!

You've lost the argument (again)

For arguments re the connection between coinage and weights and measures please see my posting on the 'Metric v Imperial' battle board, in reply to 'Suzanne'

Bob

This is completely off the topic but I wanted to put it up anyways.

There's been another accident on the railways, this time at Pottersbar in Herts. A train from London Kings Cross to Kings Lynn in Norfolk came off the rails. Five people are dead, several more injured, some seriously so.

Why not also campaign for better rail safety? When such a thing happens, it makes this campaign for imperial road signs pail into insignificance.

People often mention the fact that Britain has the fourth largest economy (I've seen it on this board a few times). Maybe so, but is it really such a great country when the railways are in such a bad state? In that sense, as well as in others, Britain is sick, yes, to come back to the title of this particular thread

Do we really have to have a rail crash every year? What is wrong with this country, for goodness sakes?

{Do we really have to have a rail crash every year? What is wrong with this country, for goodness sakes?}

Part of the problem is that your rails spent time under government control and and are only now returning to private control.

Public ownership always leads to poor quality.

Of course, this is dependent on whether I'm right about your rails being socialized.

Yardstick:

What really winds me up about the railways in the UK, and the fact they're under private ownership, is the whole 'profit before safety' idea.

Maintenance costs money so is not done. What happens? Look at the Hatfield crash in October 2000. I say no more. After that, a whole flurry of repairs was done which should have been done previously as a matter of routine.

The cause of this particular crash is not yet known for sure, although it's looking as if it's a points problem. It may be because of maintenance not done, I don't know, but it brought back to me the crash at Hatfield and what happened afterwards. Money should NEVER be an issue when maintaining the railways. At least do the basic repairs, like making sure the track doesn't crack!!

There hould be limits to the freemarket.

Re: Problems with the railways, transport, health service, education etc.

Many of these problems are caused by:
1. The drain of (net) £6 billion a year from Britain's membership of the E.U. (equivalent to 3p. off Income Tax)
2. The soaring cost of immigration, including housing, benefits, legal aid etc.
3. Government interference: telling people in thes sectors what they should do, how they should do it, keeping all kinds of useless or semi-useless statistics and league tables, setting targets, changing the targets, keeping innumerable records, political correctness etc. etc.
4. E.U Regulations - notoriously the 1991 E.U. Directive that forced us to break up and separate the rail service from track maintenance.

As the the public v private argument, let's remember that things like defence, education and health have up to now been substantially in the public sector and there'e been a good track record of achievement; you can have well or poorly run public and private services.

Yes, all these issues are important; but so is the destruction of our weights and measures, i.e. part of English heritage and culture. You might turn this around and ask: Why when there are so many other problems to sort out does our government want to prosecute honest traders for selling by the pound, and spend a billion pounds of our money on converting four million road signs to metric? Couldn't the money be better spent?

T Bennett

{The cause of this particular crash is not yet known for sure, although it's looking as if it's a points problem. It may be because of maintenance not done, I don't know, but it brought back to me the crash at Hatfield and what happened afterwards. Money should NEVER be an issue when maintaining the railways. At least do the basic repairs, like making sure the track doesn't crack!!}

This is an advantage to private ownership. If railways owned by several people are allowed to compete, they will keep tracks in better condition in order to people shipping freight along their tracks instead of the competition's.

Of course in a country the size of Britain that may be difficult.

{There hould be limits to the freemarket.}

I'll have to disagree. All the government need do is promote competion and regulate (not control) industries that present a hazard to health and safety. The government should have no industry of it's own.

Here in the States, even military technology is often developed by private companies under military supervision.

"Many of these problems are caused by:....."

I say to you: Prove it. Prove that A) these things are true and B) they alone are the (real) cause of current problems
Intersting your stance on immigration. A question: do immigrants contibute to our economy?

You may care to remember the Ugandan Asians when you answer this.

Another question? Are all immigrants the same?

I'll agree with the above posting. Before going off on a wild rant, back up your allegations with some facts. Understandably, there isn't really enough space for it here but maybe give references at least?

Many immigrants, in fact the huge majority of them, contribute a lot to the economy. Coming to think of it, with the so-called pensions 'time bomb' and there being less workers around in the coming decades, we may well end up needing more of them and not less!

Or or more for Mr Bennett.

1. Do YOU currently claim any state benefits (including bus passes, housing benefit etc)?
2. Have you EVER claimed any benefits?
3. Do you work?
4. If you do, how many hours per week?
5. Do you pay income tax or NI?
6. Do you smoke?
7. Do you take regular exercise / keep healthy?
8. Do you take foreign holidays?
9. Do you ONLY buy British made goods or British based services?
10. Do you do anything that exploits people in other countries, including you benefitting from cheap overseas labour etc?

I think people are confusing "immigration", with "bogus asylum seekers".

One seeks a new life here and is willing to contribute, the other has heard that the UK is a "soft touch" and that the UK is very generous - socially. Lets keep it real.

Private ownership and safety? Think "British Airways" to realise that it can be done!

Hey, can anyone remember BR? They were great weren't they? Yeah, I remember that train that could do 160mph and lean around corners - it was called the APT. But then it was scrapped after spending millions of tax payers money. But then you can do that if you are state run. - give me a rest!

P.S. As far as I am aware, the fact that our gov't bankrupted railtrack means that it's practically state run anyway.

Don't forget just how BR was broken up. A multitude of different companies, no-one knowing who does what then we get Hatfield and Potters Bar, among other accidents.

The Dutch privatised their railways but under the control of one company, mindful of what has been happening in the UK. Interestingly enough, delays have increased since the Dutch privatisation and when I'm in Holland (at least once a year as I have family there) and I experience the delays I think to myself 'hey, I thought this was only meant to happen in England!'

Why couldn't control of BR have been given to just one company? When British Gas, BT, and British Airways etc. were privatised, were they split into a multitude of companies? No. Relatively speaking, those have been successful privatisations. I'm not against the principle of it, I just don't like the idea of it being botched as in the case of BR.

We are well off topic here.

To sum up, immigration has costs and benefits for a community. Until the late 1970s, for decades there had been net emigration from Britain, albeit small. This has been replaced by a rapidly rising net immigration, which currently has reached around 250,000 a year, maybe more as no-one really knows how many 'illegals' enter each week. That has real and significant costs in terms of state benefits, other welfare provision including medical facilities and childrens' homes for the hudndreds of unaccompanied children who arrive here each year, translation requirements, provision of hotel, bed-and-breakfast accommodation and permanent housing, especially around London, detention centres, including the one that went up in smoke weeks after being built, legal aid (now £120 million a year just on immigration appeals) etc. Plus its contritbution to community tension as is manifest from several northern towns. Also, one cannot duck the fact that, for example, around 90% of drugs are brought into Britain by Asians or blacks, and that black people are 8 times more likely to commit violent crimes than white (Metropolitan Police Statistics). For all that is rightly said about the contribution of immigrants to the workforce, future pensions, diversity etc., the scale of current immigration is bringing with it significant costs, financial and other.

T Bennett

Judging from what the above message contains, it's time to get back to the actual topic.

Now, about those road signs.......

Not a shred of evidence.

I live in a northern town - the tension comes from the idle or underachieving white people (& I am white) looking for someone to blame for their problems. The Asians (many 2nd generation) seem to contribute more, work harder and higher ambitions than the complainants.

As for the rest of it - there is a poem about Hitler's Germany whic ends up with a line (and this is from memory) saying:

"nd when they came for me, there ws no-one to speak for me."

We live in a very rich country, compared to many.

What are we doing to help others (in the true British tradition)? Or, are we simply saying Keep Out - It's
Mine and you can't have any?

I note that you have not had the courage or honesty to answer any of the questions.

A true measure of your moral standing perhaps?

APP:

I admire how articulate you are and wish I could express my ideas as well as you do. I agree with much of what you say.

APP:

I admire how articulate you are and wish I could express my ideas as well as you do. I agree with much of what you say.

I could type more accurately!

Final point about BR and privatistion.
The Japanese train system is one of the best in the world - it is privately run and unbelievably on time (computer controlled to stop the trains within 5 seconds of the alloted stop time). They speed along like bullets and we never hear of rail tradegies from Japan.

I believe the reason why they split BR into multiple train companies is because before they were nationalised they were seperate and were the best rail companies in the world (the days of steam). So good that the French got us to make there rail system (that's why French trains "drive" on the left - it's true!)

And now the French have a train that can do 200mph, safely!

A further question May 13 2002, 9:57 AM

One or more for Mr Bennett.

1. Do YOU currently claim any state benefits (including bus passes, housing benefit etc)?
2. Have you EVER claimed any benefits?
3. Do you work?
4. If you do, how many hours per week?
5. Do you pay income tax or NI?
6. Do you smoke?
7. Do you take regular exercise / keep healthy?
8. Do you take foreign holidays?
9. Do you ONLY buy British made goods or British based services?
10. Do you do anything that exploits people in other countries, including you benefitting from cheap overseas labour etc?

Something that comes up again and again in these threads and postings, with the exception of the few 'sane' sounding ones (APP and Bob C seem to sound fairly sane) is the idea of it all being a big conspiracy.

Paranoia reigns, perhaps?

Only "fairly sane"?

As I was saying to Napoleon, only the other day, We're the only sane ones here.

Then we had to land the spacehip.

When Nero burnt Rome, he blamed it on the Christians. But history shows it was Nero and his agents who burnt Rome.

Hitler blamed the Reichstag fire (1933) on opponents. But it was his men who did it.

In 1942, Pearl Harbour was claimed as an unprovoked and unknown attack - yet Roosevelt knew all about the coming attack and allowed 3,000 of his fellow countrymen to die when they could (and should) have been saved.

Conspiracies, every of them.

And who knows what history will tell us about who knew beforehand about the World Trade Centre Attack on 11 September and who really planned it? - unless we believe the occasional FBI and Pentagon sources who dribble out convenient 'information'.

I adduce just one quote in support of my argument that there is an agenda (a word I prefer to 'conspiracy') to destroy nationhood - Brock Chisholm, Director of the World Health Organisation, in a keynote speeach to the United Nations in 1985: "To achieve One World Government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, their loyalty to family traditions, and their national identification".

The insidious erosion of our sense of national identity over the past 40 years or so is fully in line with Chisholm's stated 'One World' aim (which has been repeated before and since by countless others). The record is there for all to see. In a very real sense, the advance of the metric system by compulsion has been the work of just a handful of powerfully-placed conspirators. It has been and continues to be the work of political elite, not the wish of the people.

Are those who speak of such a conspiracy 'paranoid'?

Or are those who reject the evidence in favour of such a conspiracy 'in denial'?

T Bennett

Come off it, Mr. Bennett.

Is everything one big conspiracy for you, then?

Are you from the David Icke (not sure of the spelling) school of thought, then?