Imperial versus Metric

I found the following good news on AOL this morning...

"Campaigners fighting EU plans to abolish imperial measures have claimed victory for pounds and ounces.

A deadline of 2009 had been set for metric measures to finally replace Britain's traditional imperial measures, but they have now been shelved following a change of heart at the European Commission.

Both the Conservative Party and the Metric Martyrs campaign group say they have won the battle to keep Britain imperial.

Conservative industry spokesman, Giles Chichester MEP, said that he had received confirmation from the European Commission's Industry Commissioner Gunther Verheugen that dual marking of goods in imperial and metric will "continue indefinitely"."

This is extremely good news for the whole country as we can continue to trade with our English speaking friends in America and worldwide who use the imperial system without the upheaval and upset of being forced to use metric.

Let us hope the same sanity prevails... and we continue to use miles to denote distance in our country, in perpetuity.

And whilst we are on the subject, why does the BBC ruin many decent programmes by stating distances in kilometres?