musings

I wrote yesterday about the British media’s role in preserving the old imperial units of measurement. Here’s an example hot off the press: “Murdered schoolboy Rhys Jones was probably the unlucky victim of a bullet shot from 40 yards away …” writes David Smith in today’s Observer.

How difficult would it have been to write “40 metres”?

If you use the excellent Google Maps you may know that they have a distance measurement tool which tells you the length of the line you draw on a map. Very clever and useful. But the choice of units is between Metric and “English”. Of course what they mean by “English” is “the old units still used in the United States of America, where they speak a kind of English”.

In England, it’s true that road distances are expressed in yards and miles. This is despite the fact that (more…)