SEEING SENSE
(Yardstick, Dec 2001)

The Sunday Telegraph on 23 September reported that "Belgian police arrested two men in Brussels and seized a large quantity of chemicals which could be used for bomb making. This included 220 lb of sulphur and 13 gallons of acetone." 
Rebecca Tyrrel's column in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine of 22 April pointed out some of the difficulties arising from use of metric units for works in old houses.
 In The Daily Telegraph of 11 August, Fenton Bresler, the most eminent of writers on motoring law, castigated the local authorities responsible for erecting illegal metric road signs. 

The presenter of a BBC TV news programme reported on the Thoburn judgement and, minutes later, gave the weight of co-presenter Jeremy Bowen's new baby in pounds and ounces! BWMA Member Joe Hand saw a GMTV weight-watchers' programme entitled "Inch Loss Island" - with a ruler marked in feet and inches across the bottom of the screen. He also saw on GMTV, presenters Penny Smith and John Stapleton arguing that petrol price increases should be quoted per gallon so that customers could understand them. 
Don Whiteley confirms that "imperial measures are the norm on the fruit and veg stalls in Milton Keynes open-air market". 

Trawling 'The Times', Mike Plumbe found the following news items (abridged here): (a) "Norwich City Council, which has been ridiculed for having the shortest double yellow lines in Britain, has beaten its previous record of 45 inches by painting a set just 2 feet long. The lines are between two parking bays in Theatre Street in the city centre." (b) "The Prison Service spent £9,000 installing 4 inch 'anti-pigeon' spikes at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, only to find that inmates could rip them off to use as potentially lethal weapons. The spikes have been removed." (c) "A fish called Mary - the biggest specimen of any species ever to lurk in Britain's inland waters - has reached the end of the line following a suspected heart attack. Mary, a carp which weighed 56lb, was found dead in the 120 acre lake that was his home at Wraysbury, near Staines. The fish - named after an early captor's girlfriend before his real sex could be discovered - was one of a group of 10 inch carp introduced into the lake in 1972. Mary was first caught as an identifiable fish in 1987. Then he weighed 28lb. In 1991 he was caught again, this time at 45lb 6oz. The following year he became one of just 3 or 4 carp living in the wild ever to top 50lb in Britain." 

'The Times' on 27 July had another fishy story, about the hunt for a 40lb Wels catfish: "He comes from mainland Europe, where they can grow up to 300lb". On 25 June the same newspaper had reported that: "A stuffed trout weighing 30lb 9oz - a British record - will be auctioned in London tomorrow." 

Now for three delightful letters (slightly abridged), all published during July in 'The Times' (thanks again to Mike Plumbe). 
One from Mr Peter Cameron: "Thank you for taking the trouble to work out the price per page of James Joyce (almost £20,000) and per square inch of Leonardo (about £600,000). It was disappointing that you didn't confirm Manchester United's "first £200 million team" are actually worth more than their weight in gold - I have laboriously calculated that if they weigh on average 13 stone they are worth £6,243 per oz. One curious result of this grocer's approach is that the longer Joyce's chapter and the bigger Leonardo's piece of paper, and the more David Beckham eats, the less they are all worth. Is this what Hesiod was getting at when he said "The half is greater than the whole" ('Works and Days' 40)?" 

Next, from Mr K L Webb: "I bought six loins of wonderful quality English lamb in Smithfield Market last week and decided to weigh the product and compare with the price in my local Tesco. Two loins weighing together 19lb 11oz and costing me well under £25, even allowing for transport and drying out while tenderising, produced 14lb 10oz of chops. Loin chops are priced at £5.26 per lb in Tesco, so mine would have cost £76.93. I also got 9oz of kidneys and 1lb 3oz of totally defatted minced lamb from the breasts. I saved myself £50, which is much more than a whole lamb costs and probably twice what the farmer receives. I would happily repeat the exercise under controlled conditions. I used to be a food wholesaler and still have extremely accurate scales. Smithfield Market will now serve anyone prepared to get up early in the morning." [Note: no mention whatever of weighing or pricing in metric units!] 

Lastly, the opening paragraph of a lament about scholastic bureaucracy from Mr J C Gibbings: "Recently I received the papers for a meeting of a school governing body. They weighed nearly 3lb. This academic year all my related items now form a pile about 12in. high; and I am not the current chair of governors." [So even this Senior Fellow in Engineering at Liverpool University naturally uses customary measures.] 

The national press widely reported on the "Briton who took the lean out of the Tower of Pisa" (to quote 'The Weekly Telegraph'). John Burland, a 64 year-old professor of soil mechanics at Imperial College, London, is the man who has finally stopped the leaning tower from leaning too far. What he has done is to ease the whole 19,000 ton marble-and-stone tower back 20.16 inches [20 and 1/6th] from the very brink of disaster where it has teetered for more than 160 years. He has pulled off this feat of engineering by, each day, pondering the latest measurements taken at the tower and then sending a fax to show precisely where a few more buckets of soil should be excavated from under the base. As a consequence of each fax, the whole tower would ease back another 1/50th of an inch or so, sinking a little deeper into the ancient river silt on which it was so inadvisably built almost 830 years ago.By the end of the year, tourists will be clambering the staircase to the top of the 200ft edifice for the first time in more than a decade. 

'The Sunday Telegraph' on 12 August reported that "The largest roller-coaster in Europe is due to open at Europa Park in Germany next spring. 'Silver Star', a 229ft 'hypercoaster', will feature an enormous 210ft initial drop at a 70 degree angle. It will have a motor-sport theme and passengers will race along 5,315ft of steel track in one of 3 trains reaching speeds of up to 81 mph. The first looping roller-coaster was built in Britain and exported to the Frascati Gardens in Paris in the 1840s. Passengers rode down a 43ft high slope on a small cart and through a 13ft6 wide circle." 

'Metro' reported on 20 August that the world's largest crop circle, covering more than 500,000sq.ft [say 12 acres] and measuring 300 yards across, has appeared overnight in a Wiltshire cornfield. Made up of more than 400 separate circles, it is described by experts as a 'Julia Set' design - a computer-generated pattern relating to Chaos Theory equations! Sceptics immediately denounced as a hoax, but as one farmer commented: "You have only five hours of darkness to work in, and there are so many circles you would have to make one every 30 seconds - with no room for error or a second attempt." 
'Metro' reported on 23 July that, according to the results of a study by Marks & Spencer, who had measured 2,500 men in the past year, the shape of men has changed in the last 50 years, the average man being an inch taller and 2 inches wider around the waist and chest. The survey showed that the average 20 year old was 5ft 10in. tall with a 40in. chest, 35in. waist and size 10 feet. Meanwhile, the government is apparently carrying out a "£5 million two-year survey to discover the real size of men and women". But will that also be conducted in customary measures or will it be incomprehensible? 

'The Daily Mail' on 21 August reported on a study from the University of California, published in 'Nature', into the amazing aerodynamics of the bee and the housefly. This claims to improve upon the findings of a report by Cambridge University scientists some five years ago. Typically less than half an inch long and weighing less than 1/100th of an ounce, some bees can belt along at 40 mph, while houseflies can take off backwards and change direction by 90 degrees instantaneously, their wings whirring thousands of times a minute. Arguments among engineers and other academics continue to rage as to how they can do it. The problems are at least intelligible when expressed in customary measures! 
'The Daily Mail' in the same issue devoted a page to the cleaning of Big Ben, whose face is 23ft across, the 14ft long minute hand travelling at just a foot a minute. When completed in 1858, the 314ft high tower was the highest non-ecclesiastical building in Europe. The arch-shaped vents around the top of the tower were a novel idea to release the sewage gases from the Houses of Parliament. Weighing 2½ tons, the original cast iron hands of the clock, when installed in 1859, were too heavy for the clock mechanism to move and had to be replaced by lighter ones made of gun-metal, which were in turn replaced by the present ones made of copper. The bell, too, was a problem: the original, 16 tons of an unsuitable alloy, sounded too tinny and broke when tested, while the second, 13 ton version, cracked after four months' use. The crack is still there - hence its distinctive tone. 

The name Big Ben allegedly comes from overweight Chief Commissioner of Works Sir Benjamin Hall who was said to be speaking in the Commons during a debate over naming the bell when a back-bencher shouted: "Why not call it 'Big Ben' ?" Another legend says the name comes from the heavyweight boxer Ben Caunt, who weighed 18 stone and who retired undefeated at the time that the first bell cracked so disastrously. Big Ben is driven by weights, weighing 2½ tons, which until 1913 were wound by hand - taking two men 32 hours throughout the course of a week - but now wound by electric motor. The pendulum is 13ft long and weighs 6cwt (672lbs); time-keeping being regulated by placing pre-decimalisation pennies on a tray near the end of the pendulum - adding or subtracting one old penny makes the clock gain or lose 2/5ths of a second a day. The new coinage lacks that degree of precision! 

A leading article in 'The Mail on Sunday' on 19 August, following the threat of prosecution against the Sandringham estate sawmill, is worth recording: "The best way to destroy a stupid law is to enforce it without mercy. So it would probably be a good thing if Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Defender of the Faith, etc., etc., were to be hauled before King's Lynn magistrates for selling good oak timber by yards, feet and inches. If such a trial went ahead, it would not be the Queen in the dock, but all the mean, narrow, stupid, officious and vindictive people - civil servants, MPs, Ministers and the rest - who have sought to tell us that our ancient, practical, human measurements must be banned. No doubt the very same people would ban the Queen as well if they could, along with everything else that makes this country of ours special, different and fortunate." 

Peter Frost from Kelvedon sent a news story from 'The Essex County Standard' about the graveyard at All Saints' Church, Shrub End, Colchester, where the Vicar laid about 30 headstones flat for fear that any one or more of them might fall and cause an injury to one of the children who play there. Families of the deceased were outraged but the Vicar insisted that many of the stones were unsafe. He said that the stones should be able to withstand "eight stones of pressure, according to EU guidelines"! How appropriate to use the ancient English measure of weight, the stone, as the unit for determining the stability of head-stones! But unlikely, we fear. Anyhow, why refer to a weight of 'eight stones' instead of 'one hundredweight'? Is this the graveyard of the EU? 

One of our Honorary Members, the historian Andrew Roberts, kindly wrote, enclosing a letter from The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's Trading Standards Manager, clarifying the Council's policy on enforcing metrication. After the usual waffle to disguise the evident facts that no prosecutions have been or are likely to be initiated, he makes the surprising statement that: "We do not to my knowledge have any traders who 'continue to defy' any such Regulations. No such study as you mentioned has occurred in the Royal Borough. The conversion is taking place but at a slower pace than anticipated because of all the adverse publicity surrounding this issue." How like bureaucrats to blame 'adverse publicity'! If they had their way, all such publicity would be banned. As Andrew commented, this "shows how successful we're being." 

Peter Scott of Higher Denham sent a postcard from Madrid to advise that the C & A Store there was selling jeans with the waist and leg measurements marked only in inches; while El Corte Ingles (the major department store) was selling photo-frames marked only in inches. But that's a free country! 
Roger Dykes sent a copy of an advertisement by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, in the July issue of its own monthly publication, 'East Riding News ', announcing a ban on commercial vehicles and trailers at household waste and recycling sites. Among the forbidden classes are "Vehicles over 7cwt" and "Trailers over 6ft x 4ft or with twin axles". Evidently, the only comprehensible way the Council can explain all this to the public is by using imperial units, in breach of its official 'metric-only' policy! 

Ian Proctor from St Austell kindly sent a copy of the standard form of Garden Allotment Tenancy Agreement produced by Restormel Borough Council, his local authority. It defines the area of the plot in rods (the example states "and containing in the whole approximately 9 rods") and expresses the yearly rent as "£2.00 per rod (£1.00 per rod per annum for 60 year-olds and over)". Hurrah! Of course, the rod as a square measure (5½ x 5½ = 30¼ square yards or 1/16th of a square chain or 1/160th of an acre) is a universal measure for agricultural and building land in the USA. From the land-owner's viewpoint, it is so easily divisible. Ian Proctor points out, moreover, that as a linear measure 16'6" is particularly handy as a short run for quick-growing vegetables, while 2 rods (half a chain) is a full row for root crops. 

The Dozenal Society of America (c/o Math Department, Nassau Community College, Garden City, LI, NY 11530-6793) devotes almost the first 12 pages of the latest issue of its 28-page journal, 'The Duodecimal Bulletin', to reproduction of material from the last issue of 'The Yardstick' along with John Gardner's article entitled "How Metric is Europe" from our issue no. 3, published as long ago as November 1996! "The most famous bunch of bananas in legal history" are illustrated on the front cover. An editorial note kindly adds: "BWMA is a wonderful organization opposing the forced imposition of the awkward decimal metric system. 'The Yardstick', their journal, is a terrific source of interesting information. They can be reached at." Our Members, Arthur Whillock and Robert Carnaghan, are DSA's principal UK representatives. 

Finally, it's not often that the EU sees sense, but several Members have rightly commended the reason given on the official website for the circle of twelve golden stars: "The number of stars is fixed, twelve being the symbol of perfection and unity." We wholeheartedly agree: twelve - not ten!