Banned wagon
A wee/4 survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
BUTCHERS and greengrocers aren't the only ones heading for a life behind bars should they refuse to obey the new metrication laws which came into effect on 1 January. The rules forbidding the sale of loose goods by imperial weights also apply to the sale of goods by impe- rial volumes and lengths. What if you happen to have an old house with imperial-sized floorboards and you need to replace a section, or if you need to replace some imperial-sized bolts? 'You are entitled to go to a wood merchant and ask for imperial sizes, but they must sell you the nearest metric equivalent,' says a spokesman for the DTI. Too bad if you trip up on the resulting lumps and bumps.
But it is the aircraft industry which faces the gravest problems. No one ever died because they bought the wrong quantity of sprouts, but who would want to be an engineer servicing an American plane — they are still built to imperial units — now that the sale of imperial-sized spare parts is banned? Fortunately for airline passengers there is a solution, but it is not one which is going to do much good for British industry: according to Terry Holloway of Marshall's Aerospace, which services and refurbishes airliners, the company will simply have to buy its imperial parts from America in future.
For amateur enthusiasts trying to keep their 60-year-old Tiger Moths fly- ing, the only option may be to cheat: specialist companies selling imperial- sized parts will have to have them code- named to avoid the wrath of the weights and measures man. In other words they will have to disguise a three- eighths screw as 'part number 3/8' — and label it as a 9.615384mm screw. And even then they'll probably have to meet their customers by the third litter bin on the left, clutching a rolled-up copy of the Times beneath one arm.
Ross Clark
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