Tomorrow (9 September) ARM supporters will be amending a series of illegal metric footpath signs in the London area. Details later

Four sets of finger posts, with 17 fingers signed in metric distances, were amended by ARM supporters today to read in Imperial measurements, along the 'London Ring', the 51-mile circular footpath around north-east and south-east London - due to be opened formally by Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, next Friday (16th).

As they were quite recent, the gold letters, giving metric distances to the nearest quarter-kilometre, were very easy to peel off.

Five other road signs in metric, all of them illegal, in Haringey and Hackney, were also converted to Imperial.

The slapdash approach often revealed when officials use metric distances was discovered once again at Crouch Hill, where Haringey Council had erected one of their new gold-on-black sets of fingerposts.

At the other side of the bridge at Crouch Hill was an earlier white-on-green 'London Ring' footpath sign, giving the distance to Finsbury Park (correctly) at 1 1/2 miles. The Haringey sign, however, claimed (falsely) that the distance had shrunk to 1 1/2 kilometres. The new ARM-amended sign simply reads '1 1/2'.

Information about the existence of these illegal signs came to ARM (inadvertently) via a Haringey Council Highways Official, who said in anis e-mail, which has now been - unbeknown to him - copied far and wide, that "Haringey hasn't spent too much money on them in case they come to the notice of the metric terrorists".

Converting illegal/unlawful signs into legal units, using professional techniques and lettering, hardly seems to justify the use of the word 'terrorists'

I hope you spend plenty of time in prison for your actions, Mr Bennett. In a cell marked out in metric all over, so you can spend all your time there changing all the signs to imperial!

While you are in central London next time, go measure Trafalgar Square. I read somewhere that it was designed to be exactly 100 metres by 100 metres, back in 1840, designed by a British architect.
Metrication has been around a lot longer than we think!
I doubt if anyone at the EU forced the size of the Tralfagar Square to be in metric...

You read it on the USMA server, Daniel.

Where they also talk about pints being "really 500ml" and big ben being "measured in metric".

Oh, son, what are you talking about?

(Necessity being the mother of Invention)