ON THE WIRELESS

Derek on the wireless standing up for imperial weights and measures.

From time to time I am invited to give talks or take part in debates about the EU at schools, colleges and various groups, my performances often vary, but when something begins to get me riled that is when I perform best - and this morning my dander was up.

As it happens this dank May morning I am starting a week’s break from work, and like most of my holidays they are spent at home doing all the jobs I haven’t had time for, so in keeping with holiday tradition the first job of the day was to a local garden centre. Listening to Radio WM on the way the topic of the statement made by that silly old duffer, Lord Howe came up regarding his intolerance to our Imperial weights and measures - he wants to fully inflict metric only upon us.

I could not resist calling the radio station from the garden centre whilst standing next to the ‘Mile a Minute’ plants and was asked to wait before going on air. What I didn’t know was that before me the presenter, Adrian Godberg, was about to introduce and interview one of Lord Howe’s sycophants, a chap named Robin Paice of the pointless Metric Association.

He waffled on about why we should go fully metric, it seems the main reason he had for this was due to the fact that some years ago Nasa built a satellite with some measure in metric and some in imperial because one of the part manufacturers had confused metric for imperial and the thing blew up - so according to this chap we must all go metric because of this interstellar mishap.

Adrian Goldberg then said he was going to ask members of the audience what they thought and said: “the first caller on the line is Derek from Walsall’, by now my blood was boiling and I went for it.

My first comment was that I was a member of the British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA) which, unlike the intolerant Metric Association, has no problem with people having the basic freedom to use both systems, as we had been legally free to do so in law from the late 1800’s. I also made the point of poor old Steve Thoburn, who sadly is now dead and gone, and asked; why should it have been illegal for him to sell a pound of bananas to an old lady who asked for exactly that? If both were happy with the deal and no one was ripped off, then where is the problem?

This Robin chappie retaliated with the nonsense that t is confusing having prices in both metric and imperial and having just metric would remove the confusion, which of course it wont as most know imperial but not metric and don’t know what they are buying in metric. I made the obvious point that often packaged goods shown only in metric keep the packaging size the same but the content weight reduced, which people would notice in pounds and ounces but not in metric as they don’t associate with them.

The point I raised on the wireless this morning can be weighed in the very difference with those who are pro-EU and pro-metric and those, like the members of the BWMA and myself who worry about the anti-democratic nature of the EU and the intolerance of the metric only fascists. We stand up for tolerance and freedom while they stand for intolerance and the suppression of freedom.