Metric Views

In an attempt to reduce packaging waste, Sainsbury’s has begun selling milk in 2-pint plastic bags. It is claimed that the bags will reduce milk packaging waste by 75%.

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LACORS (the Local Authority Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services) has confirmed its earlier advice that, where office floorspace is let per unit of floorspace, that unit must be metric. In doing so, it implicitly says that previous Government advice on this matter is wrong and/or misleading.

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I recently had the pleasure of visiting the splendid (Chinese) First Emperor exhibition at the British Museum. Apart from the terracotta warriors, what impressed me the most was the way that Qin Shihuangdi imposed standardisation on his vast empire - including, of course, weights and measures.

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The Trading Standards Institute (whose members are responsible for enforcing weights and measures law) has declined to support the UK Metric Association’s campaign for a single, rational system of measurement that everybody understands and uses for all purposes. In response, UKMA has accused the TSI of “an abdication of professional responsibility”.

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An item on a BBC Radio 4 programme today included some interviews in a Tyneside market. A market trader was heard selling his wares with the cry, “Best bananas. Two pounds for a pound!”

[Article by Martin Ward]

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The BBC have just published an article on their “On this day” series (15th February) about the year 1971 - the time of “D-Day” and the change to decimal currency from the old shillings and pence. A link to this article appears below. (Comment for Metric Views contributed by Phil Hall)

See news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday

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According to a BBC report the Spanish government is proposing a new clothing sizes initiative which conflicts with the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) proposal described in MetricViews last year. If this report is true it threatens to undermine the progress that had been made toward a Europe-wide sizing system for clothes.

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The Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail have followed the far-right British National Party in drawing attention to the case of a market trader in Dalston, East London, who prefers to sell fruit and veg by the bowl (see previous posting in Metric Views). This may come as no surprise to some readers, but we wonder where it is leading.

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The following news release was issued by UKMA at 02:00 on 18 January:

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MetricViews has come across an interesting letter in a newspaper published in Georgetown, Guyana.
Extracts are reprinted below (acknowledgements to Stabroek News http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_letters?id=56535420). The UK authorities could learn from the determined approach to metric conversion adopted by this former British colony.

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