The Council of Active Resistance to Metrication is delighted to announce tonight that its campaign to keep kilometres off British road signs has been won.

The end effectively came at approximately 11.30pm yesterday, Thursday 23 February, when the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling, announced on BBC TV's 'Question Time' programme:

"I can be very helpful and tell you that we're not actually going to be doing it" ['it' meaning converting British road signs to metric].

He received loud applause from the Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire) audience and even cheers.

His comments came in response to a questioner who asked if Neil Kinnock had been right, earlier in the week, to ask Britain to go 'the full mile' in implementing the metric system.

The Council of ARM will be posting further comments about the government's historic volte-face in due course.

In doing so, ARM acknowledges the help it has had from BWMA over the years in many forms and from many individual supporters, helpers, spotters and donors, and acknowledges the campaign record of the BWMA on this issue and in particular recognises the contribution made by research carried out by its BWMA's current Director John Gardner on the illegality of metric distance signs on U.K. roads.

Today Britain feel miles better.

Signed by:

'Wun Tun'
'Hundredweight'
'Daisy Chain'
'Dr S Cruple'
'Inch Perfect'
'Fathom'
'Rod Pole'
'Percy Peck'
'Yardstick'
'Uncle Tom Cobbleigh'
and all

BWMA Statement, reported on politics.co.uk:

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BWMA: Public does not want metric

The British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA) has today firmly dismissed proposals to change Britain's road signs to kilometres as unwanted and unnecessary.

A spokesman told politics.co.uk the group believed there were over 1.5 million signs which would have to be changed, practically overnight, if the government was to go ahead with a conversion in the future.

"The logistics are absolutely horrifying, not to mention the cost", he said.

The group believes that road signs are simply the 'next target' in a push for full for metric conversion by the UK Metric Association, after a failed attempt to abolish the pint.

He claimed: "The public shall get what it wants. The public does not want metric. There is evidence for this from the fact there has been no voluntary change to metric, only compulsory".

ENDS

What is all this fuss about miles being removed and replaced with kilometres or else keeping miles? I noticed that at sites like http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1213195,00.html there is some support to retain miles, rather than "Keep the miles, it's part of our identity, keeping us separate from Europe", we should remember that it was Europe who gave us miles in the first place.
The word mile comes from the Latin word for 1000, because the Romans invented the mile and decided to make it 1000 paces of a Roman legion. Well, that equates, according to what I read, to about 1.5 km. The modern mile today is 1.6093 km, which is not much more than the Roman mile.
The point is that Europeans (Romans) forced the mile on Britain 2000 or more years ago, and now they want us to use the kilometre.
So, in the usual silly way common to so many people, British people are saying, "Don't give us European measurements on our roads, we want to keep European measurements on our roads!"
Because the mile is more European than the kilometre. It is true that the French invented the metre, but it was mostly British and American scientists who developed the metric system, and it is due to their hard work that kilometres exist the world over. Almost every country in the world uses kilometres (USA does in some places, Liberian and Myanmar (Burma) do not), and the UK does not use km on Dept of Transport signs, but kilometres can be used on private signs and local Council signs (all perfectly legal).
So I would like to say to the British people, give up a European measurement (mile) for an international measurement (kilometre).
I don't know what measurement we used on roads before the Romans, but it was not miles. Maybe the British people who are against Europe should be campaigning for us to revert back to what we had before the Romans came. Otherwise they are just being hypocritical.

Thank you for the very kind remarks paid in the first post of this thread.

What has been wonderful over the past few days has been the teamwork: ARM, BWMA, MMDF coming together to deal knock-out blows to the UKMA proposals (with quite a lot of help from Neil Kinnock, it must be said).

But the real delight has been the massive reaction from the press, the general public and even the government itself. This week has been a huge backfire for UKMA.

THE MOMENT THE MILE WAS SAVED

The historic announcement that British road signs would stay in miles, yards, feet and inches was made by Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport, at around 11.30pm on BBC TV’s ‘Question Time’, Thursday 23 February , 2006.. The programme was transmitted form Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.

Here is a report on the contributions made by the five participants to the programme, which included the Secretary of State for Transport.

Most of the comments are verbatim.

At the end of this report are some quotes from the past about the government’s intention to proceed with the metrication of Britain’s 1.5 million road signs.

Questioner from audience: “Is Neil Kinnock right in saying that Britain should ‘go the full mile’ in implementing the metric system on British road signs before the 2012 Olympics?

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Theresa Villiers, Conservative MP

“No.

“Neil Kinnock is wrong.

“This is unnecessary.

“People don’t ant it.

“Miles work perfectly well.

“It would cost a lot of money to transfer all the signs to metric.

“The United States manages perfectly well with the mile.

“You don’t hear people crying out on the streets of Milton Keynes for metrication”.

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Christina Leone:

“The conversion would cost around £700 million which is a lot of money.

“We can invest that better elsewhere, perhaps to finish off the Wembley stadium [a reference to an earlier discussion about the failure to complete Wembley Football Stadium on time].

“But is does touch on the credibility of the nation.

“We will have to decide eventually. We will have to decide eventually whether we are one of us or one of them – until then we have this rather ‘split’ image, how long can we maintain two parallel systems?”

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Art Malik, Film Star (Jewel in the Crown):

“I keep thinking about all those countdown markers at 100-yard intervals on all our motorways – 3 stripes, then 2 stripes, then 1 stripe.

“Every single one of those will have to be uprooted and moved. Every road sign in Britain will have to be changed.

“Why?”

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Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Transport

“You know, of all the many complaints I receive form members of the public about transport, I have had not one complaint about our road signs being in miles.

“The cost would be around £600 to £700 million, that would be the cost of sending a man round the country painting out road signs in miles and putting on new kilometres signs” [sic].

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Questionmaster, David Dimbleby:

So what’s got into Neil Kinnock?

(laughter)

[Short discussion about Neil Kinnock where the questionmaster refers to Neil Kinnock being voluble and Alistair Darling points out that Lord Howe (Conservative) is supporting Lord Kinnock (Labour)]

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Alistair Darling:

“You know, I don’t buy this argument…I don’t think people judge us on what kind of road signs we have, whether we have kilometres or miles on our signs.

“They judge us on what we do and what we are like as a people. It’s a daft idea to spend this sort of money; really I don’t think it’ll make a blind bit of difference to the way people feel about us.

“You know, I can be very helpful and tell you that we’re not actually going to be dong it” [metricating our road signs].

(sustained applause and loud cheers)

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Nigel Farage MEP, U.K. Independence Party

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, if Neil Kinnock is in favour of it, it’s got to be a bad idea”

(laughter)

[refers to the case of Steve Thoburn being given a criminal record for selling bananas to an old lady by the pound]

“We don’t want to be harmonised, homogenised, pasteurised, and all turned into the same people”.

(loud applause)

“On 1 January 2010 it’s going to be a criminal offence to give supplementary indications in pounds and ounces .Can the Minister assure us that he will endeavour to stop Europe making this a criminal offence?

(applause)

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Alistair Darling:

I don’t like your nasty euroscepiticsm hating everything that comes from Europe…we’re getting used to things like the kilogram now…

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Nigel Farage:

“What could be nastier than to make it a crime to buy goods in pounds from a grocery store?

(loud applause)

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Alistair Darling:

“There is a commons sense argument about spending all that money on road signs, which would be daft”.
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WHAT THEY SAID MANY YEARS AGO:

1999-2001: Correspondence form John Prescott, Secretary of State for Transport

“We aim to metricate Britain’s road signs in 2006, by which time we estimate that over 50% of drivers will have been metric educated” - John Prescott, Secretary of State for Transport

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April 2001

Report in Daily Mail: “Whitehall Signals the End of the Road for the Mile”, by Ray Massey, Transport Editor

“Preparations arte under way to ditch the mile and replace it with the kilometre, government documents have revealed. Road signs will be switched when half of Britain’s motorists have been taught the metric system, say Transport Department officials in letters obtained by the Daily Mail…The papers show the internal Whitehall debate is about when - not if - the mile will go. Experts at the AA have been told privately by Transport Department officials that they are waiting for the Education Department to tell them when the target number of ‘metric motorists’ has been reached. AA Policy expert Paul Watters said of conversion: “The Department for Education says that once more than half the population understands kilometres, that‘s when they’ll do it. The Department of Transport are minded to do it”. BWMA spokesman John Gardner said: “These letters appear to confirm that metric signage will be on the government’s agenda in or around 2006. There is clear evidence that the government is already gearing up for ‘K-day’ with a slice-by-slice approach”.

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2002: Newspaper report: “Metric signs now ‘inevitable’

Motorway signs in metric are ‘inevitable’, say motoring organisations alarmed by a Transport Department ban on Imperial measures. The DTI has ordered civil servants to go metric for public business .The AA said metric road signs were inevitable .Policy spokesman Paul Watters added: “Kilometres will be common parlance in a generation”. A DTI official said that the new rules on the speed camera locations being in kilometres and metres ‘would not signal an immediate end to miles on road signs’.

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August/September 2005

The UK Metric Association claims - entirely falsely - that Britain is coming under pressure to convert road signs to miles.

This is answered emphatically by Gunter Verheugen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, when in an interview he gave with Eupolitix.com on 19 September, he said that he did not intend to force the UK to implement metric measures.

He said: "I am not pressuring the UK to go metric. As long as I am in Brussels I will not touch the issue. Full stop...I personally have a lot of sympathy for the pint and for the mile in the UK .. what is the problem here for the internal market. Really, what is the problem?”

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FINALLY:

Several opinion polls have been run in the past few days on whether British road signs should be changed to kilometres. The results:

Sky TV - overewhelming opposition, no exact figures

Good Morning (ITV): 3% Yes, 97% No

Daily Express (verbal report received) - overwhelming opposition, said to be at least 95% against

AOL News - opposition at least 6 to 1 when last viewed

ITV Teletext p. 347, poll closed after 1300 votes: 4% Yes, 96% No


Report by Tony Bennett, Secretary, Council of Active Resistance to Metrication,
Friday 24 February 2006 Tel: 01279 635789
Mobile 07835 716537

AOL News has been running a poll on whether or not British road signs should be converted to kilometres.

The results from the first 30,000 votes:-

Keep miles on our signposts: 82.5%

Switch to kilometres: 17.5%

This is 5 to 1 in favour of miles.

This - 17.5% - is the highest opinion poll in favour of kilometres over miles ever recorded