Monday, 28 September 2009

How Many Cubits In A Metre?

The answer to the above question is 2.187226597 and not a lot of people know that!
I don't know if I have mentioned it before but I am becoming increasingly annoyed by the slow, back-door metrication of Britain. The BBC and the politically correct newspapers are the chief culprits. Is it it a bit of under-hand government policy to soften us up for our accepting the Lisbon Treaty that we will not be allowed to vote on? They talk of km/h, not mph - which everyone uses. Fuel consumptions are given in km/litre - normal people use mpg - roughly speaking you can divide mpg by 3 and get km/litre with only a small error - again, not a lot of people know that.
Last night Charlie Boorman started another of his odd journeys, leaving Sidney to go to Tokyo - by any means. Again we were given distances in km as he travelled up the east coast of Australia. I know Australia has gone metric years ago - I think they did this just to spite Britain and get rid of the Imperial system - but, again, I found myself doing the mental conversion to miles.
On Time Team - not the BBC, I know - they also give us sizes and distances using metric units. Why? No one used metres on a single one of the sites they investigate. One loony on one TV channel doing a cricket commentary told us that a cricket pitch was 20 metres long. Of course it has always been 20 metres - or 22 yards - to be exact. We all know that 22 yards = 1 chain and 10 chains = 1 furlong and 8 furlongs = 1 mile. What can be simpler than that?
We could note also that 2 spans = 1 cubit and 2 cubits = 1 yard. There is no end of practical units that have stood the test of time. The cubit had its origins in Egypt 4500 years ago.
Newspapers like The Guardian and The Observer go metric - also to demonstrate their political correctness, to spite Britain and show their support for every nation on earth - except Britain. In my days working for a well-known international company in Crawley, we - the engineers and scientists employed in Crawley - noted how hard it was to get the senior management to take on any of our ideas but, "Come through the front door with a few sketches on the back of a fag packet and a foreign accent and we would buy it at once." It's the same with measurement. The old Imperial system was developed out of common sense measuring. The metric system was developed out of French bureaucratic thinking - and we all know where that can lead.
Which brings us back to the Lisbon Treaty.
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