This letter, reproduced in full, was sent on 30 January 2003 from Mr Chris Slade, Senior Rights of Way Officer, Dorset County Council, to Frau Ute Freiberg, in Mannheim, Germany - an enthusiastic German supporter of British weights and measures:
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"Dear Frau Freiberg
METRICATION
Thank you for your letter dated 10 January 2003. I am to visit the area of Grid Reference 344933 next week and shall look for the sign.
It is ironic that you choose to identify the site by means of a national grid reference, which is metric and has been in use for about 70 years.
I do, though, have some sympathy with your anti-metric campaign, being possessed of an imperial body. My compressed thumb is an inch, my hand four inches, my fingers spread are six inches, a span is what it should be - half a cubit, my arms stretched measure a fathom and my feet are feet.
As a beekeeper, I note that worker cells are five to the inch, drones four to the inch, a worker bee is half an inch long, and a Queen bee three quarters of an inch. A National Brood box is about a bushel but for a small nucleus I might use something the size of a peck.
But we have to do as we are told by Parliament.
Yours sincerely..."
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[To which I would only add that I always understood that Parliament was there to do as it was told by us]
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