There is welcome news of yet more metric signs which will be coming down, this time in Yorkshire - due to the sterling efforts of North Yorkshire ARM supporter Graham Wood.

Last year, he noticed a couple of new-looking wooden metric footpath signs at Monckton Moor, a village near his home village in Poppleton, North Yorkshire.

One of these signs was later amended by an ARM supporter.

Now it has been realised that there are several other new-looking wooden metric footpath signs - at Rufforth, Tockwith, Long Marston, Green Hamerton, Kirk Hamerton and near Redhouse School. Some of these signs are within the area covered by York City Council.

After a lengthy correspondence, Assistant Footpath and Public Rights of Way Officer for York City Council, Paula Dunn, has reluctantly conceded that the signs are indeed unlawful and will be converted to read in Imperial as soon as funds are available - which is said to be shortly.

She had originally attempted to argue: "Well, maps are in metric so we decided the signs should be as well".

She was defeated when it was pointed out to her that the Lea Valley Park Authority in Hertfordshire and Essex had decided - after taking Counsel's opinion - to erect new signs in Imperial, following 140 of them being changed from metric to Imperial by ARM supporters in 2001 and 2002.

She was also impressed to learn that North East Cambridgeshire Council had also reverted to erecting new signs in Imperial after a similar raid in Ely by ARM supporters in December 2001.

And even more impressed to learn that there is a Footpaths Officer in Basildon, Essex, who carries a can of aerosol in his car to ensure that distances in kilometres are sprayed over with black paint on a number of footpath signs in kilometres, wrongly erected by Essex County Council in the Basildon and Brentwood areas of Essex in the 1990s (many of these have since been amended to read in Imperial by ARM supporters).

The Council of Active Resistance to Metrication will give York City Council and North Yorkshire County Council a short period in which to comply with the law.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

The Council of ARM would like to record their warm appreciation that Andy, on these bulletin boards, has given his full public backing to ARM's successful campaign against metric distance and height signs on Britain's roads and footpaths. He thus joins the 86% of Britons who want to see British road and footpath sigms stay in Imeperial, as against the mere 8% who would prefer that we go metric

Further excellent news.

Paula Dunn, Assistant Rights of Way Officer, York City Council, has today confirmed to the Council of ARM that a total of 50 discs with the correct distances in miles and yards on them have already been ordered - and will shortly be placed over the illegal metric distances erected by York City Council on their footpath signs over the past 2-3 years.

Still more encouraging, she concedes that it was an error, and that the law requires miles and yards - and also, unusually, concedes it was her error, albeit in good faith.

ARM is still pursuing North Yorkshire County Council and a formal warning has now been issued by the Counci of ARM that the unlawful North Yorkshire metric footpath signs will be amended shortly, unless North Yorkshire Council falls into line with York City Council's action.

The number of metric distance and dimension signs on British roads and footpaths which have been amended, replaced or removed is now approaching 3,000

<<She had originally attempted to argue: "Well, maps are in metric so we decided the signs should be as well".
>>

Yet Ordnance Survey maps do use a kilometer grid, so wouldn't it, in fact be a hello of a lot more convenient to use kilometers? Of course, ARM is about maximizing inconvenience and ensuring only obsolete measures are used. Why should signs match maps?

Even US topographical maps use a metric (UTM) grid and it is easier to work in kilometers, than to carry a pair of dividers in the field and use the scale at the bottom.

re (JohnS-MI): "ARM is about maximizing inconvenience and ensuring only obsolete measures are used"

REPLY: Ah yes! - with millions of British motorists using British roads every day, with around 1,500,000 road signs on them, all with only Imperial-unit distances and dimensions. Keep 'em coming, JohnS-MI, as they say in that great U S of A magazine 'The Reader's Digest', 'Laughter is the Best Medicine'.

Are miles, gallons, pints, feet, pounds and tons 'obsolete' over there as well? LOL

I was speaking specifically of footpaths.

Since your Ordnance Survey maps appear very similar to our topographical maps, and are used mostly for hikers (and campers, mountain bikers, cross country skiers, etc) the use of the km grid, either the UTM grid or whatever the grid system is in the UK, is the easiest way to manage distance.

I assume you have roadmaps showing highways in miles, and I'm not arguing that. After all, we need someone to metricate even slower than us.

However, I should probably ask. Are you talking about hiking trails, or city sidewalks alongside roads? If the latter, "nevermind."

<<Are miles, gallons, pints, feet, pounds and tons 'obsolete' over there as well? LOL >>

Well, mostly they are for trade, aren't they? I know you have pints of beer, miles of road, and feet of clearance to your bridges. The others have no legal use for trade, do they.

re (Tony B): "Are miles, gallons, pints, feet, pounds and tons 'obsolete' over there as well? LOL" - re (JohnS-MI): "Well, mostly they are for trade, aren't they? I know you have pints of beer, miles of road, and feet of clearance to your bridges. The others have no legal use for trade, do they?"

REPLY:

Square feet when renting or buying office space

Length of garden in feet and room sizes when selling property

Gallons - miles per gallon when buying cars

Pounds - how much weight you are likely to lose by joining a slimming club or going on a diet of some kind

Pounds per square inch - Tyre pressures

Pints - sale of certain sea foods

Inches - sale of TVs, photographs from films, pizzas and bicycles

Acres - sale of land

Feet - sale of carpets

Ounces - sale of steaks in restaurants

etc.

<<<The Council of ARM would like to record their warm appreciation that Andy, on these bulletin boards, has given his full public backing to ARM's successful campaign against metric distance and height signs on Britain's roads and footpaths. He thus joins the 86% of Britons who want to see British road and footpath sigms stay in Imeperial, as against the mere 8% who would prefer that we go metric>>>

Cheers Tony, If I give you my address can you send me my ARM badge and spraycan.

;-)

<<Yet Ordnance Survey maps do use a kilometer grid, so wouldn't it, in fact be a hello of a lot more convenient to use kilometers?>>


No.
Two reasons:
1) Those maps have a mile key as well as a km key. In fact the mile key tends to be larger by design
2) People in the UK are unfamiliar with kilometres. (ask how far a Brit lives from his workplace to get the defacto unit).


<< Of course, ARM is about maximizing inconvenience and ensuring only obsolete measures are used. >>

I've always wanted to know: When does an obsolete measure become....

...erm..


..erm....


(can anyone tell me a subtley different word for "obsolete"?)

I'm reminded of the notorious case of the coelacanth, a fish hailed by evolutionists as 'an intermediate form' or 'missing link' and said to have died out 80 million years ago, as no-one could find a coelacanth fossil in any rocks younger than the so-called 'Cretaceous' period (hardly surprising, really, because it's mostly land animals that you find in the higher rocks - Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene etc., since they were the last to perish in the Great Flood).

There was serious embarassment for the proponents of the discredited theory of evolution when several live specimens of coelacanth were found 50 years ago swimming away happily at depths of 1,000 feet or so in the Indian Ocean. It was also discovered that the design of the coelacanth was such that it could live happily at these depths and form part of the ecosystem there. Unhappily for the theory that some of the coelacanth's fins might have been early incipient feet, as the coelacanth tried to crawl on land, it was discovered that the coelacanth would literally burst if taken to above 600 feet below sea level. It was designed to live in mid-ocean.

The scientific boffins who had written screeds about the 'obsolete', 'missing link' coelacanth now scrabbled to their evolution textbooks and rapidly rewrote or edited out altogether the false claims that they had made that the coelacanth had died out 80 million years ago!

Just as whole chapters of the same textbooks had to be deleted or substantially revised after the discovery in 1952 that 'Piltdown Man' was a hoax - not discovered to be a hoax for 40 years - probably, by the way, perpetrated by Catholic French religious philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, along with several other similar hoaxes

<<No.
Two reasons:
1) Those maps have a mile key as well as a km key. In fact the mile key tends to be larger by design
2) People in the UK are unfamiliar with kilometres. (ask how far a Brit lives from his workplace to get the defacto unit).
>>

I've never seen an Ordnance Survey map "in the flesh," only a web image of part of one. However, they appear to have a 1 km grid on the map, just as US topographic maps do. Here we have clear plastic grids available that subdivide the main grid to 100 m, available for each map scale. It is MUCH easier to use the grid than the scale at the bottom of the map (which is both km/mi).

However, if actual hikers dogmatically refuse to use the grid and prefer miles, I suppose it doesn't matter. ARM would be advised not to open an American chapter; they would be likely to encounter some upset folks, ARARM, so to speak (Armed Resistance to Active Resisance to Metrication).

I grant that metric isn't in common use, but it is well entrenched in niches here. The use of 1 km UTM grids on topographic maps for any "outdoorsman" is one such. On roads, everyone is happy with miles, because cars have mile odometers. On backwoods trails, different story.

I'm surprised Martin hasn't appeared with his "National Grid" thing that almost no Brit (outside these boards) knows about...

;-)

I'm surprised no one uses it. The false origin, and the lettering scheme for the large grid are a bit strange, but it appears to work just like UTM which is really handy, and supported by most GPS units. Do GPS units offered there support National Grid?

<<<I'm surprised no one uses it>>>

A casual user of an OS map might just look at the scale, but in my (admittedly quite limited) experience of outdoor pursuit type things where people actually "use" OS maps more seriously, I would say that people do use the grids.

GPS units here (all that I've seen including my own [Tom Tom]) show a 3D version of life and use miles and yards.

Yes they can be switched to kilogrammes.

Stimpy wrote

<<
GPS units here (all that I've seen including my own [Tom Tom]) show a 3D version of life and use miles and yards.

Yes they can be switched to kilogrammes.
>>

... did you really mean kilogrammes?

Martin - please don't forget my great, if slightly odd, sense of humour!

;-)

OS maps have been dual marked since they went turgid in the seventies. Pale imitations of the one inch maps. The distances at the sides give km then miles.

HOwever the map references HQ365836 or whatever, a metrical invention will soon be obsolete with the prevanlence of GPS which give places in degrees and minutes. Will the Frogs try and revive their 100 grad right angle which never caught on. LIke their 10 hour day.

All we're left with is the tattered remains of the unified metrickery system.

May it die quickly.



Steven Cruple

<<
HOwever the map references HQ365836 or whatever, a metrical invention will soon be obsolete with the prevanlence of GPS which give places in degrees and minutes. Will the Frogs try and revive their 100 grad right angle which never caught on. LIke their 10 hour day.
>>

1. The Ordinance Survey Grid first appeared on OS maps in the late 1930's. Go to the Local History section of your public libvrary and check that out.


2. GPS units give readings in whatever units you want. When I last checked there were about 12 different units (For example see http://www.gps1.com/HandHeld/pdf/sportrak.PDF).


3. The French 100 grad right angel is obsolete and is unliekly to be revived. It does not appear as a permitted unit on the EU directive on metrication. (The same document that permits the use of the mile, foot, yard and inch in certain applications in the UK, RoI, Cyprus and Malta).


4. The French 10 huor day was discontinued in 1806. It too is unlikely to be revived. (See noet 3)

Heh, you picked a metric based GPS unit.

I picked the first hand-held genreal-purpose unit I could find - one which can be used by hikers as well as by motorists.

John:
"Well, mostly they are for trade, aren't they? I know you have pints of beer, miles of road, and feet of clearance to your bridges. The others have no legal use for trade, do they."

Stan:
I'll try and clarify this for you John.

Basically the only imperial unit that is still legal for trade is the pint for draught beer/cider and milk delivered in returnable bottles (i.e doorstep delivery where the milkman collects the empties). In fact it isn't just allowed it's mandatory for those purposes.

However what needs clarifying is that phrase "legal for trade". In this context it means that metric can only be used when the commodity being sold is charged by weight or volume, i.e. unit pricing.

The requirement doesn't extend to that which is said to be descriptive. For example a rental company describe office space as being so many square feet but they are not allowed to publish a rental rate that says £x/square foot. In that case it has to be £y/square metre. The only constraint on purely descriptive things is that they are accurate and not milseading.

Metric is also mandatory on packaged goods when it comes to labelling. A tin of beans for example must have a metric label on it somewhere showing the weight in grams. In such cases the quantity itself may be subject to a regime of prescribed amounts.

Then of course there is the business of supplementary labelling. All of the above (I'm not sure about the pint) can have an added indication showing the equivalent in imperial, although the unit used in that case has to be approved also, otherwise there'd be no way of ensuring that the extra information isn't misleading.

However as you've probably seen elsewhere the current situation with supplementary labeling is due to expire in Dec 31, 2009 - now I've said that I'll go and get my flack jacket on :-)

<< but they are not allowed to publish a rental rate that says £x/square foot.>>

I've seen plenty, Stan.

I think some of your post is a bit misguided. But then I would, wouldn't I?