An old and faithful family friend has died this January. Our friend has been a part of the fabric of our lives for, well, it seems forever. Quirky but tried and trusted, this friend served as a link with our family’s past and was part of  what has made us special. Of course, for those very reasons our friend has been hated by those who hate our family and want us to be the same as everyone else, because, they claim, we are the same as every one else.  

 Yes, as from 1rst January 2010, the Acre is no more.

The Acre has been killed off by the EU under Directive 80/181/EEC.   All land must now be registered in Hectares. While acres may otherwise  be used alongside Hectares as has been the case for some years now, this amendment will in time probably mean the end of common usage for this particular measurement. The BBC as ever in the forefront of anything ‘Progressive’ ie destructive of traditional Britain, uses Hectares exclusively. All right, one way of looking at a measure which was the amount of land a man could plough in one day with a team of oxen is that it is well past its sell-by date. But we loved it. We could visualise it easily and were comfortable with it. It has been the template from which our landscape and indeed our entire agricultural heritage has been created. Its very name, coming from the Old Saxon ‘aecer’ meaning ‘open field’ and the Latin ‘ager’ from which we get ‘agriculture,’ is the key to its ancient lineage and so to our heritage.  It is part of our history and literature, indeed of our very selves. Now it is gone, having been fully replaced by the hated ‘Hectare’ (ugly word), which is 2.471 acres. Who would ever want to talk about God’s  little Hectare?’ Or a Landowner’s ‘Broad’ or ‘Rolling’ Hectares?’

'The Scientists adopted the decimal system on the  basis of the metre as  a unit. Nothing is more contrary to the organisation of the mind, memory and imagination. The new system will be a stumbling block and source of difficulties for generations to come. It is just tormenting people with trivia.’

                                                                                                                              -   Napoleon Bonaparte

The European Law was intended to make it make Europe totally metric in the interests of standardisation and ‘modernisation.’ From now, it was intended by those Continentals for whom order takes precedence over humanity and freedom that it should be illegal for any business to sell goods in any non-metric measures whatsoever. It is worth reminding ourselves why metrication is not just an assault on our sense of identity and freedom but is other ways an anti-human, retrograde step.

‘Progressives’ like to think that the metric system of weights and measures is universal, logical and reasonable and therefore an advance on traditional ones.

 But on its own this anti-human system can be just as ‘absurd’ as on the face of it are traditional ones. Take the Hectare for example. A Hectare is 10,000 square Metres. So what is a Metre?  In practical terms, what does one ten-millionth part of the distance of line running through Paris from the North Pole to the Equator, mean to you?  If you are like most people, precious little.  Because this definition of the metre  was based on an  inexact value of the circumference of the Earth, from 1960 to 1984  the definition was changed to the length of a platinum-iridium alloy bar, defined in terms of the optical wavelengths of atoms of krypton-86 in a vacuum. What does that mean to anyone except to a few scientists ?   The definition was changed again to the speed of light in a vacuum in the time interval 1/299,792,458 of a second  What does that mean to you? Answer: In every practical everyday sense, nothing whatsoever. Thanks to these changes in the definition of a metre, and all its offspring; centimetre, millimetre etc, a tool made in 1938 will not fit a part made in 1986. Not much evidence of the vaunted rationality or efficiency of the metric sytem there is there? 

But while they can be just as absurd as on the face of it some traditional measures are, metric measures lack the latter’s human logic and unlike them are therefore genuinely absurd. Whereas with the metric system one needs to carry measuring equipment around with one, that is not the case with traditional weights and measures, because these relate to the human body. They emerged after centuries of rules of thumb  - literally so in the case of the inch, which is the span of one builder’s thumb or the space marked out by two nails knocked in on either side of a thumb.  A hand is a measure for animals and crops. A foot is – an average builder’s foot. Because of the proportions of the normal human body, there are twelve thumbs or inches and three hands to the foot.  From the palm of one outstretched arm to the opposite shoulder of an average person is pretty much exactly three times as long as the sole of your shoe – a yard. A useful length for measuring say, cloth, which you hold in one hand whilst stretching out your arm. This too is the length of your leg from the heel to your hip - the length of a walking stick. An often- present measuring device.

 What about weights and so forth? Do they follow the same pattern of superficially rational but actually stupid, unreasonable and coldly inhuman Metric system  v. comfortable, humanly logical and ever so useful Traditional system?  

 Yes they do. A Kilo is ..what? Why, the weight of a Litre of water. And what is a Litre? One might well ask. It has in fact been abolished, but this curious circumstance has yet to percolate through to those who use it and imagine that it is ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ to do so. The Litre is in fact an old French measurement, much amended, which has been in and out of favour with those who are keen on ‘Progress.’  It began life in pre–French Revolutionary times as the ‘pinte’ and came in at 952 millilitres, or thousandths of a Litre. Napoleon rounded the 952 millilitres up to ‘one cubic decimetre’ and, renamed the ‘Litre,’ it replaced the then new primary measurement of volume, the widely detested cubic metre.  That is not the end of the story, though. This ‘Litre’ was abolished in the twentieth century when it was discovered that the ‘official’ Metre was too big, and the cubic Metre was reinstated.  So we have in the new official system of weights and measures  a measure of volume which has already been abolished once  because people hated it.

                                  An ounce is to dangle from your finger

                           A pound is to hold in your hand

                          A Stone is to carry under your arm

                          A hundredweight over your shoulder

                          And a ton a horse pulls in a cart.

                                                                                            - Traditional

On  or rather in the other hand almost every society has had a weight which is that of a smooth round stone which you can comfortably hold in the palm of your hand with your fingers round it but not totally enclosing it. It was called the libera pondo or pound by the Romans.   And so on. The best of these ‘rather good, useful and reasonably accurate’ measurements which have evolved towards the way people really are and what they really need, handed down from generation to generation, become a system –  our traditional weights and measures. A Kilogram is twice the weight of pound.  A gram is too small to  relate to anything useful.

But never mind what people want and what comes easily and naturally to them and being related to the the human body is just as universal in its way as metric. The ‘rationality’ of the metric system appealed, not to what ordinary  people want and to the way they are, but to the ideologues of the French Revolution, so called intellectuals who, as always, while patronisingly thinking they were acting for the best for people actually despised and oppressed them. These French Revolutionaries were charmed by the fact that the new system was a product of thought and science.  Abolishing traditional measures was all in accord with their naive worship of ‘Reason’ – that same worship that brought the Revolutionary Terror in the first attempt at a Year Zero remaking of a society.  

The BBC and the Guillotine

There has always been a strong odour of leftist progressivism, compulsion and the Guillotine about metrication. No wonder the BBC has shown itself to be so strongly in favour of it. But even Napoleon was opposed to it and brought back the old system, until it was forced on the unwilling French later on in the 19th Century by the usual kind of fanatics. And we have them here in Britain. They are such as the petty Hackney Dictators who told Market Inspectors to harass the metric martyr  Janet Devers and brought criminal charges against her –all in the cause of New Labour’s very own Year Zero in the remaking of Britain. .

‘Suppose that in 1945 , with the Nazi war machine smashed and Britain rejoicing after the greatest victory in her history, we had been told: ‘Of course, fifty years hence your leaders will have surrendered your sovereignty to the people you’ve just defeated and those you have liberated. In effect they will be your masters, your law makers - oh, and incidentally, it will be a crime to sell in pounds and ounces…’  The prophet would have been ridiculed, perhaps even reviled as a traitor, and probably put in a padded cell.

 - George Macdonald Fraser, Journalist and Editor, Film Scriptwriter, Author of the Flashman novels and prominent member of the British Weights and Measures Association. (‘The Light’s on at Signpost’)

2010 was the year by which according to its treaty obligations with the EU, Britain was to convert to totally metric measurements. Pints and Miles, Pounds and Ounces have been officially reprieved for certain things in certain circumstances, with the help of the Metric Martyrs for the moment. But whatever straight jackets the radical social engineers might try to shove us in to   you cannot change the human body and you cannot change what’s natural and convenient. At least some traditional - style weights and measures will always be with us.

 Sources: Warwick Cairns: ‘About the Size Of It’

               Vivian Linacre  :  ‘The General Rule’